Chapter Text
Alice is usually alright with summer. Typically it means that the sun is out at the beginning and end of her shift, which leaves her feeling significantly safer on her commute. Not that she is worried of course! Reading spooky stories all night has absolutely no impact on one's feelings about making the trip through Manchester in the dark. Summer also meant she could pull out her collection of Hawaiian shirts and brightly colored and chaotically designed short sleeve button ups that always infuriated Gwen in a very entertaining way (Technically they are button up shirts. It cannot possibly be what the dress code meant, but there was nothing Gwen could ever prove was against OIAR policy).
That January, Alice had found a particularly wonderfully horrendous one covered in very poorly CGId cats with party hats in space that she planned to wear unbuttoned over a tank top. She had texted a photo to Sam when she had picked it up at the thrift. He had reasonably advised her against winding up Gwen, but knew when he couldn’t win that fight with and didn’t push it. He could be very reasonable at knowing when he was in a losing fight sometimes, but apparently not about the Magnus Institute. No, he just couldn’t seem to walk away and leave it well enough alone. Even when Alice had told him repeatedly to stop looking into it he just had to go digging! And now he was gone and Alice was alo-
Alice is quickly acquiring a disdain for summer. It has n̸o̵t̵h̶i̶n̸g̷ to do with the fact that Colin is gone and she has no one to trash talk her exes with. Sam's… disappearance and relationship with Celia is also u̴ǹ̷̬̀r̸e̴lat̷e̴d̵. In fact, Gwen not being in the office with her as much was a positive! (Alice doesn't miss her, that’s ridiculous. She l̵̪͈͂õ̷̡v̷ê̵̞ś̵̰ not having anyone to joke at or with. She’s the queen of doing great on her own, thank you very much!) And there’s No Way this irritation has to do with Luke being on tour and not responding. No, she's f̵̯͆i̸͠n̷̢̛e̴̽, any feelings she is having are because it’s sų̸̄m̶̙͝me̷̛ͅr̴̲̔.
For the first time in recorded history, it reached over 35C three months consecutively, at least that’s what the reporter from the BCC said when Alice was doomscrolling on Instagram and listening to music while Augustus read an old report from some alchemy guy. He was going off about some weird science shenanigan his friend from uni pulled and how it was ‘against the Lord.’
While Alice is not particularly interested in what some stuffy old guy from the 17th century has to say, the noise cancelling feature on her headphones had given out a week ago and she couldn’t turn up Material Girl loud enough to completely tune him out. When even Madonna at full volume and an impending sense of doom from the internet can’t shut the office sounds out, Alice finally admits to herself she can’t put off getting new headphones.
…
Okay, maybe she can put it off a little bit. Just until the weekend! She had a meeting with some guy named Michael after work today and a trip to Curry’s to pick up a new pair would have to wait.
Ignoring problems, especially at this job, had gotten her pretty far. Her headphones had not been an exception to this. When the band had broken, she had used duct tape to fix it, no problemo (the duct tape was a hot pink, so even better!) Sure, they didn't sit on her head quite right anymore but they still work! When the bluetooth stopped connecting she just used the wired connection instead. Well to be more accurate, the bluetooth didn’t stop working, but Freddy simply couldn’t leave her gooorgeous self alone and automatically connected whenever she entered the office. Which was a little strange because the computers there shouldn’t even have Bluetooth capability, but that certainly didn’t stop them.
She had needed to replace the wire a few times though. Three times now, she had either left them on her desk during the day or even 15 minutes to take a break and returned to find the outer casing had been fully chewed off, leaving the wiring exposed. Her initial plans to use the duct tape to fix it were rudely interrupted by Norris spontaneously reading off an old reddit thread about an electrical mishap. Mostly the problem in that one was some kind of virus moving from a computer to a human brain. The monologue about brains being electrical systems was fine and all but the volume seemed to increase when user t_winters had explained how the wires she was using had been repaired improperly with non insulating tape, resulting in a small spark (and her subsequent ‘infection,’ if you could call it that, you can guess how it went down from there).
If Alice didn’t know any better, she’d say that Norris’s mechanical voice seemed almost… panicked? Urgent? A little exasperated? Luckily Alice did know better. Personifying Freddy as a bit with her coworkers was one thing, but she knew very well when to turn a blind eye to a particular aspect of her job. This was one of those times. Norris did seem to return to his regular monotone voice when Alice sighed, stuffed the duct tape into her bag, and started looking up where to buy a replacement wire.
After some very clever investigation (she lined up her teeth to the bite marks on the wire to see if they matched), the pattern seemed to match that of a human's. Before, she teased others in the office about it or spun some story about the ‘day shift’ (which does not exist). But with Celia out tak̸̙͋ĭ̶̱ng̴̞̍ č̵̗͉͎̹̍̕ar̸̔e̷̎ o̴f̶ Ja̷̽̐͝c̴͝k̴̋͜ (that kid seemed to get sick an awful lot? It was probably normal, Alice didn’t know much about kids anyway) there wasn’t anyone there to joke with this time if it happened again (which was, again, totally f̴͓̀i̴̋n̶̲͑e̶̟̎). It probably wasn’t going to happen again though, surely...
Her plans for a weekend trip to replace her tech quickly fell apart when, after stepping away during a talker (Chester was reading a formal complaint submitted by a tube driver about the temperatures on the London underground), she found the wire that connected her headphones to her phone was fully destroyed. With a sound of frustration, she pushed away from her desk, hard, kicking at the stupid pc underneath it. She’d worked at this job for years now! Why did everything have to be breaking now?!
Despite the force behind her kick, all it did was send her spinning in her rolly chair with her foot now aching, leaving the PC unharmed. It did make a loud enough noise to be heard through thin council funded walls.
“Alice, how many times do we have to have this conversation?” Gwen said as she popped her head out of her office.
“As your manager I need you to pay more respect to OIAR equipment. Even with everything that is going on, it is still absolutely unacceptable to-” Gwen stopped. She would have expected Alice to have interrupted her by now but Gwen could never accurately predict her next move. But that wasn’t what stopped her. Something about the monitor was… wrong? She could put her finger on it, but she had climbed the corporate ladder long enough to know exactly what that screen should look like, and something wasn’t quiiite right.
Alice continued to spin in her chair, taking a deep sigh and popping her knuckles. She knows she’s not supposed to and that it's rubbish for your joints. Sam always noticed, he never liked it when she did that. But what does it matter what he thinks? He’s who knows where now and left her to- Gwen had stopped. Gwen had stopped?? Alice had anticipated at least another two minutes of chastising.
“Unacceptable to what? Miss Management?” Nagging Gwen was something Alice did know how to do and in this brief break where no progress could be made on finding Sam and no externals were trying to kill anyone (at least that she knew about), Alice planned to use that skill to its utmost.
“Has your monitor been… like that all night?” her voice wasn't held with quite as much authority as before. Alice followed her gaze, everything looked fine, well, fine for a monumentally ancient, probably haunted pc.
“I think so? It hasn’t done anything particularly bizarre tonight… yet. Freddy will crash if you look at him wrong, I’m sure that if anything were actually wrong it wouldn’t be working.”
Not convinced, Gwen's brow furrowed deeper as she approached the screen. The only thing that was immediately clear to Gwen was that her glasses prescription desperately needed to be changed. It was almost easier to see the screen clearly from across the room. She made a mental note to schedule an appointment when she had time. (Author's note: the mental note was not effective whatsoever and she forgot almost immediately) The light from the turquoise wallpaper reflected off of the square frames of Gwen’s glasses as she squinted over them, 2 inches away from the screen.
Was the wallpaper turquoise? Alice could never definitely put a name to the color. It certainly wasn't just green or blue, but it was too dark for turquoise and too blue for teal. There was an older kid in her class, the weird ‘gifted’ class with the tests, who always had something or another to say about hues, shades, and their names. Alice would bet money he ended up doing art later in life. Once Gwen was satisfied that her pc was normal (well, as normal as it ever gets in this office), she’d have to look him up to see where he ended up. That is, if she can remember his name.
Recalling that period of her life when she wanted to was always a little difficult for Alice. But she was sure it had been fine and nothing had happened, she’d remember if something had been wrong, right? R̶̜̊ig̸̜̃h̸͐t? Sam remembered his gifted testing being bad, she would have too if it had been… like that. pȓ̴͚o̷̝̓bab̴͍̍ly̴.
“Gerry!” When Alice finally put her finger on the name and accidentally said it out loud, she was pretty quiet, but it was still enough to make Gwen jump.
“Wha- Who? Is this a new voice in the computer?” She responded as she continued to search the screen (Gwen’s face as she tried to read the screen looked exactly like the ‘Winnie the Poo looking at a piece of paper' meme; this did not escape Alice’s notice).
“Hm? Oh! Nope, just our lovely trio as always!” Propping up her elbows against the desk and placing her chin in her hands, her eyes darted away from Gwen’s and to the screen, avoiding eye contact. “It’s nothing. Just somebody I knew from school is all” She dismissed, with a degree of casualness she hoped would be overlooked.
Pausing her reading, the gears turning in Gwen’s head were almost audible. What was most important right then? To fight (probably unsuccessfully) against Alice’s denial that this “Gerry” character was no-one? Figure out what’s changed about FR3-D1? Continue to argue with other civil servants from other departments to find OIAR records? Not to mention how behind they were on caseload, and the infrastructure updates needed to keep the office running during the summer. It’s not exactly easy to think when the air is thick and sticky, even during the night shift.
Gwen was mentally spiraling a bit, so Alice began to read over the screen as well. The faster Gwen was satisfied it was business as usual, the faster Alice could get to finding a new set of headphones. She had made up her mind that the OIAR would be paying for them, seeing it was the reason for their destruction. Convincing Gwen might be a pill but Alice was willing to fight that battle, even if it meant sending a passive aggressive email full of corporate jargon to the minister if she had to. Everything seemed normal on an initial skim of the homescreen: my computer, outlook express, network neighborhood, all normal so far, inbox, recycling bin, my briefca- wait, wait. Huh?
“Gwen, I think I found what you were looking for” Amusement spread across her face as she pointed a painted finger to the recycling bin icon.
“Seems even Freddy agrees it's a bit of a dumpster fire around here these days.”
The small pixilated fire continued to flicker and burn in the wastebasket icon.
“But that’s not-” Gwen stammered, pushing her glasses up onto her head in defeat.
“Yup!”
“No- but that’s not possible because-”
“Gwendolyn, I feel if Freddy has proven anything for the years I’ve worked here, it’s that he could not care less what’s possible.” She kicked her boots up onto the desk, almost falling back as her chair tipped a little too far, but regaining balance before it fell.
Gwen rubbed her temples and sighed in frustration. Blinking hard a few times as a sort of reset, she pushed up from Alice’s workstation
“Well… it seems not to be impairing any functions. Please for the love of what little sanity I have left, do. not. click. it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, m’lady!” Alice says as she salutes exaggeratedly.
The office was hotter than it should be at this time of night, Gwen noticed. It was particularly warmer around Alice’s workspace and computer. She walked to a nearby closet and pulled out a standing fan, dragging it over to the desk.
“There, that should mitigate any… effects.. from this particular bug, until it resolves itself” Gwen said as she placed her hands on her hips, a little proud of her solution.
"Right! Well, while I have you, I need to ‘put in a request for equipment’ to be able to ‘continue operations in an efficient and effective manner.’” She continues to recite the script from the employee manual (that she only read for this exact kind of situation where she could use it sarcastically) and begins her endeavor for company funded headphones.