Another Day of Work
short bit about Ipsen Thor, my Mage / Technocracy character
Ipsen Thor looked at the clock above his office door. Seven minutes to 4.
“I’ve only got time for one or two more questions”, he stated without further explanation. Ipsen adjusted his glasses and looked at the three students on the other side of his desk. They all shared awkward smiles and look at each other in silence for a second.
“I don’t think there’s much more to say”, said the black-haired student in the middle. She had pushed her chair a bit closer to his desk at the beginning of their conversation and continued to play with a single strand of silver-coloured hair, probably due to nervousness. “Do you have any suggestions for further improvement of our presentation?”
“Everything looks fine.” Her English was a bit clumsy but at least she was one of the few students who spoke during his classes. He shuffled through their printouts and shook his head. “If you correct the errors I pointed out, I see no problem with your material.”
“Thank you for taking the time, Professor Thor”, said the left student and they all nodded in unison.
“Herr Thor. I’m afraid I’m still not a professor.” He smiled and added, “Yet.”
“How old are you anyways? You can’t be that much older than us?”, asked the red-haired girl. He tried to remember her name but Ipsen had always been bad with names. The three students laughed. “Must have been an impressive career so far.”
“I’m afraid that’s a bit personal”, he answered. He tried to act approachable to his students and colleagues but had to pay attention to his privacy still.
“I’m very sorry.” She seemed honestly surprised and looked away.
“It’s not a problem”, he said after a few seconds of awkward silence. “My time is up now.”
“What?” She stared at him confused.
“My office hours.” Ipsen pointed to the clock, exactly as it reached 4. “I’ll see you on monday in class.”
The students thanked him again and shuffled out of his office. After they had closed the door behind them he could still hear their muffled voices.
He started reviewing papers, and with the blink of an eye it was past 6. Occasional footsteps went by his door but slowly the floors became more quiet. Ipsen preferred this time of the day when most students and teaching staff had already left the Department of Mathematics.
For the last few hours her last question kept bothering him. Age was a useless concept so, for the most part, he never cared to remember his own birthday. Now that he tried and couldn’t think of an actual date, it was unnerving.
“It’s probably nothing”, he mumbled and pushed the thought away. “I’ll look it up at home.”
When he stepped out of his room and locked the door somebody had already turned off the lights. It was past 7, still a few hours of daylight left, but the insides of the building had an eerie quality that Ipsen couldn’t quite explain.
Save for a few stray students, the campus was empty. He enjoyed the calming atmosphere and last rays of late sunlight. It was still a bit too cold to go without a coat but summer did not seem far away.
Ipsen left the Freie Universität behind and reached the subway station just in time to catch his next train. He changed trains after a few minutes and finally had time to sit down.
There were a few new messages on his phone, all of them classified. He panicked for a split-second and quickly switched to his regular account. Nobody would probably read or understand any of the messages but regulations were regulations. Negligence led to mistakes - and the union was strongly in favor of not making mistakes. Ipsen would go as far as assuming that any mistakes happening were to blame on the failures of single individuals, not the union as a whole.
Instead, he picked up on an article about “The Late Goodbye” that was exactly where he left the tab ten hours ago, waiting for him. Ever since he had moved to Berlin for his new job he had developed an unusual fondness for neo noir movies. He never really liked crime stories, not as far as he could remember at least. They were cruel and illogical for the most part. Something about the aesthetics and storytelling of noir was immense enjoyable though. With a few more swipes he had bought the movie and his computer at home would start downloading it any minute, hopefully.
When he stepped out of the subway station the world was dark and cold and filled with tiny squares and dots of bright lights. He mentally browsed through the content of his fridge and made a quick detour to the closest supermarket.
Ipsen’s Grocery-shopping consisted mostly of convenience food, in today’s case lasagna, orange juice, dark chocolate and cigarettes. He had tried cooking once or twice. He didn’t like it. The kitchen was the smallest part of his tiny apartment and recipes were misleading in terms of accuracy.
Ten minutes later Ipsen unlocked his apartment and squeezed to the half-opened door. The room was small enough that the door was half-way blocked by his sleeping couch. Beside two separate rooms for bathroom and kitchen, about two square meters each, the single room apartment was furnished with a couch, a small wardrobe and a desk with his computer. The spaces between were filled with stacks of books, scientific journals and DVDs. He closed the door with his foot and went into the kitchen to set microwave to hopefully ‘cook’ his dinner.
While the microwave hummed away he sat down at his desk and nudge the mouse a few centimeters in order to make the computer come to live. The download was only 73% done so he opened up his classified account to look at the new messages and orders.
The newest message’s subject read ‘Project Phi-Blue-7 / .9451: New Directive. Effective immediately!’. Ipsen frowned. There was not Phi-Blue-7 / .9451. At least none he was part of.
“Probably a malfunction”, he thought and clicked on the message anyways. “I’ll just inform them and report the error.”
There was no text in the message’s body but a file attached that Ipsen had not noticed before. The file was named ‘Important Readjustments!’
“What a nondescript file description”, he mumbled and slowly rubbed his cheek. He considered just sending a note back to the original sender and a report to central communications but his curiousity got the better of him.
He didn’t recognize the name in the first line.
“it took me TWO MONTHS!! to hunt down this address. If you get this and answer me then you’re FUCKING ALIVE!!”, the message continued after that. Ipsen furrowed his brows.
“If not.. well.. shit, you know how they are: if you still have digital contact data you’re probably out there somewhere. I put LITERALLY my heart and soul into this code so I think it will reach you without them realising it. Security is tough but there’s some loopholes for hexes and spells in the subroutines. You should be able to circumvent any detection with your answer as well, when I calculated everything properly. Shit, I hope you’re still out there,” He looked away from the screen for a second, and then another, and another one. There was nothing but the obnoxious humming from the next room. Ipsen did not expect anything else to happen while he stared at the grey-ish ceiling. Then kept reading.
“Look, I know it doesn’t mean anything to you, probably, but I’m sorry for Madrid. It was my fault. We were in this together and I flaked. You took the hit. I’m not much of matyr - you know that - but I wanna make this right by you.
I will get you out of this,”
Ipsen blinked. Then he blinked again. He clicked ‘Reply’.
“Dear Operator and most-likely Superstitionist,” He paused for a moment and looked at the words on the screen. Then he continued, “I’m breaching various regulations by simply typing these words. I don’t know who you are or what the meaning of your message is. The content of your message, if you have even reached the right contact, is a severe violation of union principles and laws. As soon as I have finished typing this message I will immediately report this incident.”
As Ipsen hit ‘Send’ the microwave bing-ed from the kitchen. He sighed. He would have preferred a quiet evening over filing a report and dealing with the following paperwork.