Introduction
Bienvenue à la Division du Confinement.
Regardez autour de vous ; dans votre salle de réunion, la Division du Confinement forme toujours un groupe étrange et éclectique. Des gratte-papiers et des techniciens, des ingénieurs et des concierges sous un même toit, une douzaine de spécialités et de responsabilités qui ne correspondent pas à un thème précis comme les deux autres Divisions. Nous ne sommes pas une bande de docteurs et de scientifiques, et nous ne sommes certainement pas une armée d'espions et de tireurs.
Nous avons un thème, mais vous ne pouvez pas le résumer avec un microscope ou un fusil ; un travail dur, et nécessaire. Le Confinement, c'est des combinaisons bioscellées et des gants tachés de graisse ; le Confinement, c'est de la paperasse ingrate et des corvées sans fin. Certains d'entre vous vont se demander ce que cet endroit a de si spécial, tandis que la Recherche se pavane avec des autorisations de haut niveau et que la Protection nettoie ses armes en vue de la prochaine mission héroïque.
Well, if you haven’t picked it up by now, we're the core of the Authority, down its bones and nerves and calorie intake. We build the glass walls that Research gets to sit behind; we run the Sites and make the shackles for the monstrosities that Protection drags in. The food in the cafeteria, the concrete in the walls, and the haven in the storm that other Divisions take for granted.
Sure, Containment never gets the glory. Even with in-Division merit and conduct award statistics, Containment honors its own the least out of the Divisions of RP and C. We’re not looking for breakthrough discoveries or heroic battlefield deeds; and in situations when we award for heroism, the very bravest men and women in the Authority spring from the ranks of our janitors, bureaucrats, technicians, and the other unsung personnel.
Containment only expects and has a long tradition of producing hard, diligent, and quietly crucial work. The other Divisions idolize geniuses and heroes; in contrast, every one of you is capable of matching our very best. I wish you luck, wherever you are headed.
Please report to your specialized departmental briefings at this time.
- Head of Containment, ███████ Vasquez
Engineering Component
The Component is an enormous department with wide-ranging responsibilities in Sites and in the field. Personnel from this Department expand the global infrastructure of the Authority, plan and construct Sites, and follow the containment cell plans of the Prolab with absolute precision. The greatest marvels of human engineering are routine for the professionals of the Component, hidden from the world, ignoring fame or recognition in their labor.
Welcome to Engineering. I won't waste words - we're not the labcoats - and I can't tell you where this job will take you. Engineers of the Component are disguising urban Sites in plain sight, working miracles in the harshest and loneliest corners of the globe, and everywhere in between. We've got materials NASA doesn't work with and we build sites in the darnedest places.
You're the absolute best. You're the pinnacle of the craft, the summit of thousands of years of architectural progress. No one will know of the miracles you work, and that's no loss. This is the finest pride any engineer can feel. Savor it, and get back to work.
- Chief Engineer Keales
Maintenance Union
The Union is the department responsible for the general representation of miscellaneous site staff. Janitors, cooks, low-level technicians and logistics personnel, and others; the people that keep the lights on, the facilities livable, and equipment maintained. Giving a voice to low-level staff in Containment is often seen as strange by the other Divisions, yet behind the absurdity is a time-proven expedience.
The employee representation and subsequent increase in employee morale is a secondary benefit; the true purpose of the Maintenance Union lies in the procedure errors and missteps of laboratory staff, guards, and others that are often noticed by low-level staff before anyone else. Slight deviations from the norm in maintenance tunnels and lonely hallways can indicate an imminent containment breach; the only ones placed to observe these are low-level staff.
Sending these reports up to other Departments and Divisions prevents unnumbered disasters in all corners of the Authority. Deceptively powerful in the specific & eccentric ways that janitors often are, the Union is scrappy, proud, and found in every corner of the Authority.
Yeah, I don't have much to say. If something's off, report it and we'll send it up the chain. If you've got a complaint or a suggestion, we'll fight for it. If there's a clever or common-sense kind of shortcut in the bureaucratic nightmare of Site Regulations, I guarantee it came from the Maintenance Union.
Also, don't forget to vote in the Chief elections. Clerk Office's polls say I'm screwed, but I think the cook vote will come through. Only department in the entire Authority to elect its leaders, and we take pride in that.
Maintenance Union Chief Bates
Protocol Laboratory
The Prolab, as it is colloquially called, is a specialized research and bureaucratic department responsible for creating effective Containment Protocols for RPCs. A mix of scientists, engineers, and liaison officers, the Prolab has an equal hand in the construction blueprint for a cell and the highly specific instructions given to site guards.
Frequently working with specialists from Research, security experts from Protection, and engineers from the Component, the Prolab represents the heart of their Division's mission: to build the shackles so Research can do its job and Protection's effort and blood is not wasted.
The Prolab - a convenient acronym, and a jab at our counterparts over in Research. Good natured, a little stupid, but make no mistake, deadly serious. Many of their fields of study are theoretical - speculative - and the consequences of failure are low. Things are different in the Prolab. You all are specialists in material strength, chemistry, biology, procedure; creating the hardest steel and the most impossible physical maze are both equally valid containment methods, depending on the anomaly. Salt baked into the walls, the blood of Swedish moose, and a lot of reinforced concrete. We are the pros; when you leave an error in your design, shackles shatter and personnel die.
- Head Researcher ████
Authority Extraterrestrial Defense Force
Ex Terra, Per Ardua.
A amalgamation of various legacy Authority space programs, the AEDF operates beyond the Earth's atmosphere with advanced technologies. Entirely at odds with the Containment Division standard of being tied to Sites (moving a high speeds across the vastness of space), the AEDF is a precise and elite force; advancing humanity to the stars, and beyond.
From Earth to the stars, unto the vale of Heaven. Graves in the roiling void. No one shall know, but the spirit of all humanity still stirs, never to touch but content to brush our fingers against the glimmering expanse. My soul won't have far to go home to God.
- Josef Milsovec, written prior to his death on the crippled AEDFS Munificent.
Unusual & Interstellar Infrastructure Bureau
Experts in the construction and maintenance of off-world Authority sites; for example, the Authority's moon infrastructure, including Site-019 (formerly Fort Columbiad), the Sauron Laser Installation, and Site 099. Frequently works with the AIA to suppress accidental detection of space assets by civilian enthusiasts. Additionally, the U&IIB often has responsibility over cross-dimensional sites and operations, particularly in non-euclidian locations.
This briefing is somewhat superfluous; none of you are newcomers to the Authority. Engineers from the Component, astronauts of the AEDF, the most elite janitors the Maintenance Union can muster, even experts transferring over from the Research Division. You know the absolute standards this work requires, and I trust you will meet the standards.
Our web of outposts across the stars and beyond the veil is entirely classified, of course, but it represents the very finest of the Containment Division's work. Take pride in this; take heart in humanity's true progress into the greatest unknowns.
Department Head Chelomey
Contractor Liaison Office
The Office is the strongest bureaucracy in the Containment Division, an acknowledgement of the real limits of the Authority's logistical power. Tasking the Engineering Competent with directly building every possible Site, especially ones with no special requirements is prohibitively expensive and a waste of their expertise. Likewise, the mundanities of food and fuel need to be addressed.
To this end, to construct and supply many Authority sites, the Office hires civilian contractors and obfuscates the true purpose of their work. Agreements with many governments will allow then to mask Authority facilities with the guise of the local military or intelligence agency; for other cases, the Authority maintains an immense catalog of front companies.
The Authority can make people disappear, bend nations to its will, and safeguard humanity from unimaginable dangers on the daily; and yet, contrary to the brilliant scientists and deadly operatives, the Authority is not all-powerful. You're all bureaucratic professionals, recruited for your expertise and efficiency, and paper-pushers know the limits of logistics better than anyone. The Engineering Component can’t create huge containment Sites, motor pools, airstrips, and other infrastructure out of thin air. Or, rather, it can, but flying in concrete, rations, and work crews anywhere in the world gets prohibitively expensive, and wasteful.
There are perfectly competent construction companies and foodstuff suppliers in most corners of the globe, and they tend to be far more economical to use. As much as the Component jokes about bureaucracy and substandard local crews, they need us; they can focus on building a top-secret base under Antarctica all the better when they're not toiling at an airstrip in Mali.
Linguistics experts and field agents work in the wider world, leveraging your experience in NGOs and government services; the boys and girls back home crunch the numbers and work with the other Divisions to satisfy their more mundane needs. The food on the plate, diesel in the generators, and concrete in the walls; this job isn't flashy, but we'd be royally screwing up if it was.
- Head Supervisor Kui-Xing.
Département des Communications
To truly secure its independence from powerful national governments and rival organizations, the Authority requires rapid and utterly secure communication links between its scattered presence on every continent of the Earth - and beyond. In reality, this translates to a shadow network of cables and satellites, robust and advanced, able to weather anomalous disasters and the best efforts of rival spies.
The Department of Communications oversees the maintenance and construction of this vital web; serving as technical consultants in every Site, working with the Engineering Component in the field, and obfuscating the records whenever a surveyor or diver finds a comms cable where none should be.
Keeping the phone and data lines open at any cost; often unsung and unknown, the Comms Department knows the absolute vitality of its work.
I don't have a nice, concise, rah-rah speech for you all. Really, this is classic Containment Division - half of you are IT guys sitting in Site, and the other half are installing a new fiber-optics cable across the Marianas Trench, or something like that. Personally, I'm in the latter crowd.
Classic Containment, too, that nobody tends to know or care that we exist. I've met more than a few who think the IT guys in their Sites belong to the Maintenance Union. The Union! Well, you'll learn about our friendly rivalry with the Union schlocks. We run their polls, you know, I can't believe that up-jumped janitor Bates is going to get re-elected…
I digress. You'll learn about the crushing boredom, too, the kind that makes me ramble off on Union politics. But make no mistake; when the chips fall, and there's an emergency, we work harder than anyone, keeping the lines open. At any cost. Communication is utterly vital for the more important folks; our Authority is a blind beast without it, stretched out between continents and surrounded by enemies. Look at the messages that flash through your lines, the parts that aren't completely redacted, and you'll know how important this is. Remember that.
- Department Head ███████
Département des Ressources humaines
Authority personnel are the finest in their respective fields; hardened soldiers, brilliant scientists, even the most elite janitors. The sources for these men and women are as varied as the Authority itself, from personal recommendations to bureaucratic filters for notable personnel. Human Resources collates and acts on all this information, working with the other Divisions to keep the Authority staffed.
Bottom of the intro page, great - "Paperwork Containment" is 90% masochism, anyway. The best employees in the world are still waiting out there.
Get back to work.
- Department Head Scheffner
