The Agency (You Do Not Understand)

SYSTEM: You don’t understand... DIRECTOR: No one built the Agency. DIRECTOR: No single hand carved it or planned it or designed it. It started off as a single piece of advice. AGENT: “This works.” AGENT: “We do it this way.” ADMIN: More advice piled on, from the experienced to the new blood, and advice became habit. Habit became procedure. Procedure became policy. (x2) CONTROL: Policy needed to be enforced. Procedure needed to be followed. Staff had to be hired to handle the things everyone knew they were supposed to be doing. ADMIN: And advice was given on how to best follow policy. Habits formed around supporting the procedure. DIRECTOR: Bureaucratic fungus and the algae of practicality bound to each other symbiotically to survive and evolve into the lichen that was the Agency. DIRECTOR: Like any form of life, that lichen grew everywhere it could. ADMIN: Like anything that grows, the Agency evolved. ADMIN: Evolved. AGENT: The Agency is not changed from without. AGENT: It changes from within. AGENT: It adapts. AGENT: It grows. AGENT: It builds. AGENT: It is. SYSTEM: Understand: SYSTEM: Even attempts to reform it, to destroy it, are merely new strains seeking their chance to survive. To be the best-fitting. DIRECTOR: Every new memo a mutation in the Agency’s memetic code. DIRECTOR: Every new memo a mutation in the Agency’s memetic code. DIRECTOR: Now that you understand the nature of the system, the unmade bureaucracy that girds society, the Agency, within whose strange limbs you flow like a platelet, there is something you must always remember. SYSTEM: Always remember. SYSTEM: Do not lose your ID badge. DIRECTOR: They take forever to replace.