Help Wanted: BUA
Apr. 18th, 2008 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danalwynSo I've been asked, because recruitment at late has been a little low, to encourage people to join up. Now, normally I'm against this sort of thing, but it's been made abundantly clear to me that refusing to do a bit of advertising could result in me losing some of my workplace privileges, such as my ability to walk without experiencing extreme amounts of pain. Hence, you get the usual spiel:
Do you crave danger and excitement? Do you want a job exploring the unknown, bringing the past, the present, and the future to light? Do you find yourself struggling with boredom and tedium in your office job, wondering what awaits you on the other side of the door? Are you prepared to face the challenges that wait beyond? Then we have the job for you. You don't need special qualifications or training, all you need is a willingness to challenge what lies beyond. If you're still game, and not intimidated by a little risk, perhaps you're ready for a job at:
The Bureau of Unusual Architecture
The Facts:
The Bureau of Unusual Architecture (BUA) is responsible for investigating the world's supply of somewhat unusual buildings.
We've all had the feeling. We're going down the stairs in an unfamiliar building, or maybe just walking along the hall, paying no attention to anything except the final destination, when we suddenly pass a door that is somehow just different from the others. We stop and wonder, trying to discern why it's different? Is it just a bit to one side, a bit too tall, a bit out of place? And what's behind it? A closed door is a challenge, a puzzle to be unlocked, a mystery to be solved, and every one of us secretly desires to know what's on the other side, what lies beyond. For some of us the urge is overpowering, until we reach out and grasp the handle, all to often finding it locked.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, the only thing on the other side is a broom closet, but once in a while it's something else. Maybe the interior is a little larger than the outside, the walls are covered with strange art or eldritch symbols, or, strangest of all, there is just another door, leading outside, out and down from this reality and into the next spiraling stairway through the looking glass.
That's where the BUA comes in. BUA explorers and scouts are called in whenever an especially tenuous region of reality leads to a breach, entering the continuum of realities attached to your particular region of space. And there's a lot of business.
Among people there's a strange belief that unworldly events are somehow related to ancient sites or places in the far-off wilderness where man can commune with nature in peace and inherit the inspiration of his forebearers. This, as far as I'm concerned, is so much horseshit. Nature ticked on just fine for billions of years, the sun spinning, the Earth orbiting, without the slightest need of human intervention. Science governs the rocks, the trees, and even the animals with meticulous precision. It's humans that screw the whole thing up, humans whose imagination transcends barriers of space and time and bring into being things, concepts, that have never existed before.
People are like mass, the most of them there are together the more their collective imagination warps reality, bending and twisting it until finally one weak spot after another simply tears. And the more rips there are in reality, the more that there will be. It's people who do this, not fuzzy bears, or ancient stands of trees, or even strange, glowing moss, people. And for millenia the best place to find large concentrations of people has been in their cities. Stonehenge may have a lot of mystic energy, but it's nothing compared to London, or, God forbid, Tokyo. The only difference is that there are a lot more people in London, so the weirdness gets spread out over more people, until most people can go their whole life without noticing anything out of the ordinary.
This is why the average city skyscraper has a higher occultic potential rating than an Indian Graveyard, why so many strange things happen, hidden away in the depths of the city, where nobody but the abandoned ever go, and why you should always be careful when stepping out of your own backyard.
And it's also why we need the Bureau of Unusual Architecture. Given that a rift in reality can form simply because someone's thought up a new jingle to use to sell cheese-flavored deep-fried snacks, there's always a door that opens somewhere that it isn't supposed to. Sometimes it's totally innocuous; people have lived out their entire lives without realizing that they walked through the wrong door when they were 23 and have been living out a life that is not theirs, in a universe that is not their own. It's the job of BUA explorers to plumb these depths, to open those doors and see what's on the other side.
A scout with the BUA can expect to spend a lot of their time in strange locales, worlds where things are just a bit different, where Al Gore won in 2000, or where Stephen Douglas was President of the Union in the Civil War, or China was under Japanese control until 1960, or where Canada won the Hockey War (have we fought the Hockey War yet? I've been a participant in seven space-times already and I don't remember). They face death and danger every day, often stumbling into rooms hostile to human life, to free thought, or just plain hostile. It's a dangerous profession, for those who feel that danger is its own reward.
My take:
There are no requirements to join the BUA. This should tell you something. They give you all the training on the job, which usually means while people are shooting at you/hacking at you with swords/burning you at the stake, or doing whatever they do to interdimensional visitors on other planes. The lucky retire young; the rest tend to leave on a slab, or, if they're really unlucky, in a ziplock bag. And that doesn't even deal with the most tedious or dangerous moments of the job.
Mostly you spend your days working your way through the urban distortions that human imagination can create, most of which look fairly urban. After all, what did you expect a building to be distorted into, a petting zoo? After miles of empty corridor, lit by fluorescent lighting, or hours of hauling yourself down staircases, or through ventilation shafts, you may finally find yourself at a door. If you're lucky, the door doesn't lead into the heart of a star or the vacuum of space, or an infinite regression loop (where you open the door to find yourself still holding onto the doorknob), and passing through the door doesn't reverse you or turn you inside out, or, worse still, geographically transpose you (people have opened those doors and turned Australian. Or possibly New Zealandish. It was difficult to tell).
And then you probably have to explore a blistering hot desert, or a steaming jungle, or spend three weeks trying to communicate with the natives by doing something more complicated than pointing and grunting. Let's be honest, it ain't glamor work. And at any time you may be gobbled up, fried alive, or generally reduced into a state of biological decomposition usually referred to as non-living.
So take my advice, and don't take the job. Unless you really don't mind spending the rest of your life sweating in an Artonian torture cell. Or Australian.
Do you crave danger and excitement? Do you want a job exploring the unknown, bringing the past, the present, and the future to light? Do you find yourself struggling with boredom and tedium in your office job, wondering what awaits you on the other side of the door? Are you prepared to face the challenges that wait beyond? Then we have the job for you. You don't need special qualifications or training, all you need is a willingness to challenge what lies beyond. If you're still game, and not intimidated by a little risk, perhaps you're ready for a job at:
The Facts:
The Bureau of Unusual Architecture (BUA) is responsible for investigating the world's supply of somewhat unusual buildings.
We've all had the feeling. We're going down the stairs in an unfamiliar building, or maybe just walking along the hall, paying no attention to anything except the final destination, when we suddenly pass a door that is somehow just different from the others. We stop and wonder, trying to discern why it's different? Is it just a bit to one side, a bit too tall, a bit out of place? And what's behind it? A closed door is a challenge, a puzzle to be unlocked, a mystery to be solved, and every one of us secretly desires to know what's on the other side, what lies beyond. For some of us the urge is overpowering, until we reach out and grasp the handle, all to often finding it locked.
Ninety-nine percent of the time, the only thing on the other side is a broom closet, but once in a while it's something else. Maybe the interior is a little larger than the outside, the walls are covered with strange art or eldritch symbols, or, strangest of all, there is just another door, leading outside, out and down from this reality and into the next spiraling stairway through the looking glass.
That's where the BUA comes in. BUA explorers and scouts are called in whenever an especially tenuous region of reality leads to a breach, entering the continuum of realities attached to your particular region of space. And there's a lot of business.
Among people there's a strange belief that unworldly events are somehow related to ancient sites or places in the far-off wilderness where man can commune with nature in peace and inherit the inspiration of his forebearers. This, as far as I'm concerned, is so much horseshit. Nature ticked on just fine for billions of years, the sun spinning, the Earth orbiting, without the slightest need of human intervention. Science governs the rocks, the trees, and even the animals with meticulous precision. It's humans that screw the whole thing up, humans whose imagination transcends barriers of space and time and bring into being things, concepts, that have never existed before.
People are like mass, the most of them there are together the more their collective imagination warps reality, bending and twisting it until finally one weak spot after another simply tears. And the more rips there are in reality, the more that there will be. It's people who do this, not fuzzy bears, or ancient stands of trees, or even strange, glowing moss, people. And for millenia the best place to find large concentrations of people has been in their cities. Stonehenge may have a lot of mystic energy, but it's nothing compared to London, or, God forbid, Tokyo. The only difference is that there are a lot more people in London, so the weirdness gets spread out over more people, until most people can go their whole life without noticing anything out of the ordinary.
This is why the average city skyscraper has a higher occultic potential rating than an Indian Graveyard, why so many strange things happen, hidden away in the depths of the city, where nobody but the abandoned ever go, and why you should always be careful when stepping out of your own backyard.
And it's also why we need the Bureau of Unusual Architecture. Given that a rift in reality can form simply because someone's thought up a new jingle to use to sell cheese-flavored deep-fried snacks, there's always a door that opens somewhere that it isn't supposed to. Sometimes it's totally innocuous; people have lived out their entire lives without realizing that they walked through the wrong door when they were 23 and have been living out a life that is not theirs, in a universe that is not their own. It's the job of BUA explorers to plumb these depths, to open those doors and see what's on the other side.
A scout with the BUA can expect to spend a lot of their time in strange locales, worlds where things are just a bit different, where Al Gore won in 2000, or where Stephen Douglas was President of the Union in the Civil War, or China was under Japanese control until 1960, or where Canada won the Hockey War (have we fought the Hockey War yet? I've been a participant in seven space-times already and I don't remember). They face death and danger every day, often stumbling into rooms hostile to human life, to free thought, or just plain hostile. It's a dangerous profession, for those who feel that danger is its own reward.
My take:
There are no requirements to join the BUA. This should tell you something. They give you all the training on the job, which usually means while people are shooting at you/hacking at you with swords/burning you at the stake, or doing whatever they do to interdimensional visitors on other planes. The lucky retire young; the rest tend to leave on a slab, or, if they're really unlucky, in a ziplock bag. And that doesn't even deal with the most tedious or dangerous moments of the job.
Mostly you spend your days working your way through the urban distortions that human imagination can create, most of which look fairly urban. After all, what did you expect a building to be distorted into, a petting zoo? After miles of empty corridor, lit by fluorescent lighting, or hours of hauling yourself down staircases, or through ventilation shafts, you may finally find yourself at a door. If you're lucky, the door doesn't lead into the heart of a star or the vacuum of space, or an infinite regression loop (where you open the door to find yourself still holding onto the doorknob), and passing through the door doesn't reverse you or turn you inside out, or, worse still, geographically transpose you (people have opened those doors and turned Australian. Or possibly New Zealandish. It was difficult to tell).
And then you probably have to explore a blistering hot desert, or a steaming jungle, or spend three weeks trying to communicate with the natives by doing something more complicated than pointing and grunting. Let's be honest, it ain't glamor work. And at any time you may be gobbled up, fried alive, or generally reduced into a state of biological decomposition usually referred to as non-living.
So take my advice, and don't take the job. Unless you really don't mind spending the rest of your life sweating in an Artonian torture cell. Or Australian.