The Cosmic Chronicle

Interpolator Vex-9 Good afternoon, Sergeant, welcome to the Central Conclave of Vastenua. You smell somewhat like explosives. Is that standard issue for Gravitational Infantry?
Sergeant Grizlo Oh, you're probably just picking up my belt grenades. Around here, everything smells like archive dust and botched verdicts anyway. The scents blend together after a while.
Interpolator Vex-9 Can you briefly explain your job here? People get lost fast in this bureaucratic maze.
Sergeant Grizlo My job? Follow orders, guard the halls, round up escaped juristors, mostly waiting for someone to pronounce an order without tripping over themselves. So – waiting, marching and preventing incidents that happen anyway.
Interpolator Vex-9 What does a typical day look like among the gilded tribunals and motorized robes?
Sergeant Grizlo I usually start with a cup of synthetic caffeine from the fountain archives, then I patrol past pillars wrapped with wilted laws. By midday, I’m fishing a relic trader out of the archive mist. After that, well, usually a hearing or two. Sometimes a jurist trips over a rogue decree and I have to pull his robe out of the diplomatic overpass.
Interpolator Vex-9 You sound rather… cynical. Is there a lot of frustration among the military at the Conclave?
Sergeant Grizlo Frustration? The plazas are so thick with it you could press it into gun oil. Try enforcing orders in a city where no law is ever final.
Interpolator Vex-9 Why did the Gravitational Infantry even settle at Vastenua?
Sergeant Grizlo Orders from above. Officially: protection of cultural heritage, some threats of intergalactic vandalism, and, let's not forget, the survival of the Spiritual-Technocratic Synod. Unofficially: nobody wanted to guard the Oxygen Arsenal on Centraxis anymore.
Interpolator Vex-9 Have there been recent incidents that unbalanced your unit?
Sergeant Grizlo Of course. Last week a fountain archive was ‘occupied’ by a procession of administrative ghosts, then a pilgrim forgot where he’d come from and tried to consume a decree. Not edible, by the way. You don’t want to know what’s in those.
Interpolator Vex-9 Were you present when the holographic cardinals disputed the paper canonization?
Sergeant Grizlo That was no dispute! That was an encoded brawl! Do I really have to explain everything to a glowing mediator bot with memory shortage?
Interpolator Vex-9 Excuse me, but I don't see why you’re getting personal. I’m just recording for the archive.
Sergeant Grizlo The archive?! You mean that bottomless pit of half-truths and administrative lies? Who ever looks at those reports again, except you and a swarm of data-eating doves?
Interpolator Vex-9 You seem to have issues with authority...
Sergeant Grizlo No, I have issues with holograms who think they have authority! And if you don’t put that recorder crystal away, I’ll fetch my disruptor.
Interpolator Vex-9 Threatening an interviewer in the Synodal Rotunda sector is considered...
Sergeant Grizlo Considered what? Another decree nobody enforces? Listen, Vex-9, your protocol couldn’t fit in a lunch tin. Go back to your data center and tell your supervisor Grizlo won’t be escorted away by talking balloons.
Interpolator Vex-9 You are now violating... three federal, six local and one cosmic convention. Your conduct is unacceptable!
Sergeant Grizlo And you can stuff it! Conclave rules are like vapor – before you know it, your whole hand’s missing.
Interpolator Vex-9 This conversation is hereby suspended! Suspension! ARCHIVING!
Sergeant Grizlo Off with your archive! Here, take a whiff of these belt grenades to your cubicle.
Interpolator Vex-9 AUDIO STOP – END TRANSMISSION!