11 a.m., or thereabouts.

Memory fades, like a photograph left to bleach in the sun, if not tended. Keepsakes stowed, mementos kept, documentation… documented. A garden of experiences, a bookshop receipt planted here, a pair of glasses become voodoo sympathetic magic totem planted there, a traumatic experience of wrestling to the ground an endonomic entity taken up residence in the mind of one of the Laundry’s most powerful Auditors in an attempt to prevent it from summoning a tentacular beast from beyond the stars burned into the southwest corner of the garden over there, hither and yon. Those memories, the tended ones, they don’t fade, nor do the weeds and the scorched earth of the trauma, those grow up from beneath the topsoil, choking the life from the moments you want to keep, stealing their nutrients and feeding themselves, perpetuating themselves to the detriment of the rest of the garden.

I received a reprimand- no, that’s not right. An admonition, we’ll call it, as a reprimand would require official documentation. The doctor in supervision of our… mandatory holiday admonished me for not writing yesterday. She also advised that in reflecting on my experiences, I focus more on my feelings than on the narrative itself. The events are already documented in Laundry reports, filed in triplicate, delivered to the proper departments, reviewed, audited and interviewed for their accuracy. The human element is what’s missing. The verification of our sanity, our functionality, whether our garden implements are still sufficient to till the earth. The mind-earth. That’s a terrible metaphor, but I’ll let it stand; I’ve no desire to improve the artifice, merely to fulfill the requirements of the assignment so I can return to my recreation, recreation I am required to indulge in so I can be verified for my fitness to return to duty. According to CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN, time is of the essence, and while we’re playing foosball and drinking margaritas, the clock is ticking and there is so much work left to be done.

At this juncture, I’m apt to remember that in an organization large enough, you’ll never have the full picture. I spoke of myself previously as a cog, a tiny cog in an immense machine, and from the perspective of that cog, the task to perceive, much less evaluate, the function of the machine as a whole is an impossible one.

We were tasked with unearthing who was responsible for the sale of the Red Queen to the Black Chamber. As a memento, planted in my mind garden so as to not let my memory become too withered, the Red Queen is a list of active Laundry agents, akin to the NOC list from the first “Mission: Impossible” film. The Black Chamber is the American equivalent of The Laundry.

This was vastly different from Assets Recovery. Finding a missing laptop, even if said laptop has gone missing in an attempt to indict a superior and outposition them in organizational politics is orders of magnitude less than securing an intelligence leak that potentially puts all active agents of the organization at risk. Am I on Red Queen? Are Mr. Knowles, Mr. Dagger, Mr. Jack and Mr. Burns? My assumption would be no, as we were in Assets Recovery and not field agents when the list was sold, but I wouldn’t lay wagers on that assumption. What steps are taken to recover the list? Is there recovery? Do we engage the Americans in diplomatic- no, never mind, I know the answer to that one. The Black Chamber isn’t likely to engage in negotiation, however diplomatic. Does the Laundry change the vital information for every individual listed in Red Queen?

These questions are above my pay grade. I’d like to trust that the organization has such issues under control, but after finding how prone the organization is to inter and intra office politics… color me skeptical.

We’re fighting ourselves, we’re fighting the Black Chamber, we’re fighting the Russians, as I’ll get to shortly… and meanwhile there’s a CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN imminent… a BLUE HADES at the bottom of the ocean. A LONG GREY PILOT deep in the Earth. A GENOA FRACTAL I don’t know how to describe.

I just giggled to myself knowing that if the reader doesn’t have security clearance, all those phrases are incomprehensible to you. A mash of characters blurred beyond legibility. I apologize… but if the reader DOES have security clearance (as the good doctor undoubtedly does?), there’s potentially an eyebrow raised at the nature of my insight. Perhaps I should be less honest in disclosing my… feelings… but then I wouldn’t be in proper service to the company, nor a proper Englishman, now would I?

The Laundry had identified three suspects, and given us the dossier on how they were interrelated. We were introduced to a machine in Research and Development, asked to provide personal totems to the technicians for the purpose of attuning our consciousnesses to those of the three suspects. After the technicians had explained what the machine did, one of our team, Mr. Jack, I believe, asked for clarification on its function.

“It makes us dreamwalkers,” I simplified. “We’ll be able to visit the dreams of our subjects.”

The technicians seemed surprised that I understood what the machine did.

I wasn’t sure whether to be pleased with myself for my comprehension. I’m in Informational Technology, with aspirations to Computational Demonology (a discovery I made on our last outing and which I’ll journal about in a later session). Understanding the magical functions of technology is what I do.

The three subjects all had a relationship to an extraction mission from a small village in Russia. The subject of the extraction had been assassinated by unknown party or parties before leaving the train station out of the village. This is one of my unresolved questions — who was the assassin? Does it matter at this point?

The facts, which aren’t supposed to be the focus of my journal, are that the assassinated party, one Filip Sopov, survived his assassination and piggybacked in his extractor’s consciousness out of Russia. This is one of the reasons the identity of the assassin nags at me. Suppose it was a Laundry assassin, and they knew Sopov was capable of projecting his consciousness into a host? That would seem to imply they’d also know said consciousness was capable of selling Red Queen to the Black Chamber, and therefore our investigation was busy work with the chief intention of using us as guinea pigs to test the dreamwalker machine. If I didn’t know what I know about the Laundry’s politics, I’d say that’s a ridiculous conclusion, that the assassin was likely Russian and that Sopov sold Red Queen without the Laundry’s knowledge he still existed… but given what I know, both scenarios are definitely possible, and I’d say the odds are 60/40 for each, with the majority falling on Sopov’s presence inside his extractor being unknown to The Laundry.

Sopov skipped to a researcher, which is where he sold the list. Then he migrated to an Auditor, which is where we uncovered him.

I was one of the team who dreamwalked to the researcher’s mind, Mr. Paul Brown. His dreams revolved around his graduate work at Miskatonic University, and an experience he had had underground, outside of town. Those facts are all present in my report, as are the facts of Mr. Oliver Jack’s visit to Ms. Annabel Gladstone’s dreams, she being the aforementioned extractor. I’m to focus on my feelings about the experience.

I was fascinated by the technology and excited to try it out. My hand was in the air faster than the techs could ask for volunteers. If the visits to Brown and Gladstone’s dreams hadn’t been simultaneous, I would have volunteered for both.

Once in Mr. Brown’s dream… I can’t speak to anything other than the wonder of it. I didn’t initially believe I could be injured in Mr. Brown’s dream, and thus when the citizenry of Arkham, Massachusetts became a mob and engaged in pursuit, I wasn’t truly in fear for my life, but when I was awakened by the violent crash of a board across my face and woke up bruising… well, I can’t say the wonder was any less, but there was a healthy dose of surprise and a minor amount of pain balancing it out. I went back to sleep as quickly as I could, now with a greater appreciation of the physical danger.

Mr. Dagger and I made our way to a bookshop, which, although in Arkham in Brown’s dream, turned out to be in Central London, and the location from which Sopov, through Brown, had posted the Red Queen to the Black Chamber via the American Embassy in London (the similarity to the NOC List is likely why I briefly posited that we might attempt a Mission: Impossible style incursion to the assembly to retrieve the list. I’m not sure I was serious, but the idea was quickly and rightly abandoned). The bookshop transported us to the graveyard where Brown had done much of the field work for his Miskatonic degrees, via the underground passage that issued from a tomb therein.

Mr. Dagger and I rescued Mr. Brown from the approaching creatures, creatures I’d hazard to guess were of a canine variety, but of which I never got a clear look, despite receiving a minor wound from one.

At least I don’t remember a clear look. That’s a memory that failed to take root in its assigned plot in the garden, or one which I specifically chose not to water or supply adequate sunlight to.

We could not visit the Auditor that first night. My hypothesis was that she was not sleeping. This hypothesis turned out to be correct.

The picture that will arise here is that I frequently have an intuition about the scenario which turns out to be correct, but which I am unwilling to share with the team. This has some veracity to it, but the full picture is a little wider. I float a lot of ideas; my hypotheses are numerous, and I often do what I would consider jabbering over the possibilities. When there are entities older than the stars threatening to encroach on our reality and destroy everything we know in life, very little seems beyond the realm of possibility.

But whereas my teammates seem to be more seasoned to the culture of The Laundry, I often feel like the junior member of the team. I don’t know as much as they do, or I didn’t. Recent recommendations for advancement have changed my perspective a bit on what I know and what I don’t. Perhaps I lack confidence in myself, or in my judgment. Perhaps I’m in a place where I’m still not sure what’s true, what’s real, and I’m still getting my feet under me with regards to the world around me; after all, it was merely weeks ago that I was almost dragged into the Thames by the Black Pearl Piper.

I should confess that when Mr. Cabot presented us with three suspects to investigate, my immediate inclination was to read the dossier in full, which I did, with a highlighter, even though Mr. Cabot seemed rushed in his procedure. On reading the full dossier, I came to the conclusion that Filip Sopov knew a lot more than we had been made aware of, but which The Laundry undoubtedly knew, as he was a desirable subject for extraction. I noted that he had been thwarted in attempting to summon an extradimensional being in the 1990s, and that decades of sorcery had caused substantial damage to his brain… and somehow had a hunch that damage wasn’t as severe as we were led to believe. My immediate hunch was that Sopov was the culprit, rather than the three suspects, and that he had somehow survived his assassination… which was why I wanted to see the corpse.

But I doubted my instincts and had difficulty advocating for my true suspicions to the more veteran group around me, instead choosing to couch my theory within the vehicle of multiple theories put forth and investigated. I bumbled, unsure of myself.

I’ve had experiences since that have put me on a different, more confident path. At the time, I would have said that if I don’t get more confident in myself, that self-doubt will get someone killed someday, perhaps at a crucial moment… but given the things I’ve seen, the things I’ve done since… I’m closer to overcoming that self-doubt than when we were answering to Cabot.

Mr. Jack and I visited the morgue as an aside to his… tailing, his interest in… Ms. Gladstone.

I’ve never seen a corpse before, especially one missing the top of its head.

And the brain.

Sopov definitely wasn’t still in his body.

Why did we bring the body from Russia? Did someone know the corpse still had value to us?

Questions beget more questions.

I am a cog in the machine.

A tiny cog that helps turn larger cogs that make the machine function.

I make the machine function. We make the machine function, but we don’t know what the function of the machine is. We can’t see enough of the big picture to perceive the function of the machine.

The machine’s function is hopefully as big as CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN. I’ve got to trust that someone up there sees the whole picture, because I don’t. I’m a tiny cog.

I was excited to visit the Auditor’s dreams. There was something thrilling about being in the field and dosing the Auditor’s food to ensure a good night’s sleep, even though the bottle of wine consumed over dinner would have done the trick. The second wouldn’t even have been necessary.

Mr. Jack and I tailed the Auditor home, partially out of a concern for safety, given that the Auditor had consumed most of a bottle of wine. The Auditor is a fierce combatant, undoubtedly, but there’s nothing wrong with a little company loyalty to the safety of a coworker, even if said coworker is more adept at combat magic than almost everyone else you’ve ever met.

Mr. Dagger, Mr. Knowles and Mr. Burns were back at our… compound? Residence? Domicile? What word is appropriate for the house the company has funded for you, where you reside as a field team? I’ve not spoken of the house yet. Perhaps I’ll do that the next time I journal.

The Auditor was about to go to sleep. Mr. Jack and I were outside the Auditor’s house. The others were back at our team quarters. We were all about to dreamwalk into the Auditor’s slumber.

I’m going to gather myself before I attempt to reflect on that encounter. I need more strength than I currently have.

I am only a tiny cog, and right now that tiny cog is going to play some foosball.