Springing Eternal by L. A. Gregory

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Springing Eternal by L. A. Gregory

Even when you worked for the Reality Interface Bureau, Tuesday mornings were boring. When you worked at the accounting desk, they were excruciatingly boring. But somebody had to keep the beings of folklore, urban legends, and memes contained, fed, and—where possible—gainfully employed. That could be anything from Sirens doing pest control to the disgruntled, talking white cat who handled customer service (somehow, they never called twice).

But Tuesday mornings were boring. Usually.

Something short and fluffy jutted over the battered melamine top of Andie’s customer service desk, but she couldn’t see whatever the fluff was attached to. “And you are?” She rose on her tiptoes and leaned in an attempt to see over the chest-high surface.

“Sergeant Bartholomew, ma’am. Chinchilla Special Ops Squad.” There was a grunt of effort and a scrabble of claws on the top of the desk, and the fluff resolved itself into a fat, furry rodent with a leather vest, a rodent-sized staff, and an expression of stout determination. “We need to talk about our food allotment.”

Andie nodded, already dragging the “Food and Housing” menu down from its corner. “Unless you’re feeding on the souls of the dead–”

“–Ewwwwww.”

“–we can probably work it out.” She cross-referenced the menu, scrolled through the Cs, frowned, and scrolled again. “I’m sorry, there’s nothing here under ‘Chinchilla’. Are there any other names you go by?”

“We used to be the Chinchillas of Hope,” Sergeant Bartholomew said. “But somebody said that sounded boring.”

“It is!” a female voice piped up from floor level. Another grunt, considerably more scrabblings, and another chinchilla clambered up to perch on the edge of the desk. This one was, improbably, even fluffier.

“That’s Sue,” Sergeant Bartholemew informed her.

Andie blinked. “How are you getting up here?”

“Chinchilla ladder.” Sergeant Bartholemew craned what neck he had to peer toward the floor. “Pogo and Larry and Fred.”

A chorus of chirpy greetings sounded invisibly from below. Andie opened her mouth, closed it again, and scrolled instead.

“Got it,” she said in a moment. “It’s under ‘Hope, Chinchillas of’. So what’s the problem?”

“We need dog food,” Sue announced.

“…I… can print you a form for pet requisitions. It’ll take several weeks, though. Most of our clients don’t even have pets.”

“Not pets,” a deeper voice announced. “Targets.”

A larger chinchilla came into sight as he trundled away from the partition, heading for the chairs at the back of the waiting room. His iron-gray fur was interrupted by a bandolier slung around his torso.

He wrapped his paws around one chair leg and began to pull. “So the thing is,” he explained between pants, “we apply hope.”

“We bring hope.” Sue folded her paws beatifically together.

“Potato, potahto,” Larry—it had to be Larry—answered dismissively. “We’ll make the poor sods hopeful whether they ask for it or not.” Chair successfully moved, he swarmed up the back to peer at Andie from her eye level. Two more chinchillas followed him, curling up comfortably on the seat cushion. “Depression means hopelessness, right? And a lot of the time, that means Black Dogs.”

“Barghests?” Mentally, Andie checked the “canine” catalogue of the RIB.

“Not if we catch them in time. And if we take them out, we can do our job right.”

“I have done paperwork,” Andie said carefully, “for banshees, muses, tooth fairies, and a bunch of no-account goblins who were fighting over who got to be Slenderman. I’ve got nothing in my records about Black Dogs.”

“Because we get rid of ‘em,” Larry rasped.

“Ma’am, you’re speaking with a talking chinchilla. With opposable thumbs.” Sergeant Bartholemew waved stubby, clawed fingers at her. “Is an anthropomorphic–”

“Cynomorphic!” yelled a chinchilla from the chair seat.

“–personification of despair that much worse?”

“I was talking,” Larry grumbled from his perch. “Anyway, the newbie here–”

“Sue!” insisted Sue.

Larry folded his ears and sighed. “Sue had the bright idea of rehabilitating the beasts instead of what we normally do. Black Dogs ain’t friendly, but they’re persistent. Make good service dogs if you can turn ‘em around.”

“And… how do you do that?”

“Love and patience,” said Sue.

“And sitting on their heads until they stop trying to eat us,” said Pogo. Or maybe Fred.

“Which is why we need the pet food budget, you see,” explained Sergeant Bartholemew. “Last time we got one immobilized, Sue brushed it and painted its toenails pink and that cheered it right up, but we can’t always be that lucky.”

“Yes we can!” cheered the last chinchilla.

Larry shot it a skeptical look. “Maybe we can, but so far we ain’t.”

Andie meant to just print off the requisition form (“Subsidiary Expenses 23B, Animal Manifestations (Canine), Service Subcategory”). But she thought of slumped shoulders on the city bus, phones scrolling in a meaningless blur of images, Internet friends whose words grew fewer and slower and sometimes stopped altogether. “As I said, it’ll be some time before we can get those supplies delivered for you. In the meantime, my roommate’s a mobile groomer, if you think that would help? And I can chip in for dog food while you wait.”

*For those who are curious, L.A.Gregory has some novels on Amazon. Yes, that is my associates link, and I’ll make some scents if you buy through it. It won’t cost you anymore. Thank you. – SAH*

28 thoughts on “Springing Eternal by L. A. Gregory”

  2. I have a black dog. We call her Sister because when she holds her ears horizontally as she is prone to do, it reminds me of the Flying Nun. While she generally keeps her feet on the ground, she tends to move in an ebullient manner that inspires all around her. I think the bacon flavored Dentastix encourage this. Just in case the fluffy warriors need a leg up. Maybe that’s wrong figure of speech…

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    1. It is probably not a coincidence that the vaguely cylindrical, heavily armed chinchilla has the name he does. When characters pop into my head pre-named, they stay that way.

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  6. Lovely!

    “Gradually you will find yourself able to free yourself more and more quickly from the dark emotions that have ruled your life, and this ability to do so is the greatest miracle of all.

    “Terton Sogyal, the Tibetan mystic, said that he was not really impressed by someone who could turn the floor into the ceiling or fire into water. A real miracle, he said, was if someone could liberate just one negative emotion.” (Sogyal Rinpoche, the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Ch. 8)

    Go Chinchilla Corps!

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    2. At this point, I’m gonna have to write more. They’re addictive little fluffy so-and-sos. (When not battling depression, Fred seeks out and posts memes to keep people cheerful.)

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      1. I thought it was just me. I searched on “L. A. Gregory” and got books by Gregory (last name) and (first name) Gregory and books about LA, but nothing actually *by* L. A. Gregory. I had to search for one of her book names and then the series, “The Bitterlands”… And even then it’s only the second listing. Sigh.

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  12. “S23B form looks… weird, boss.”

    Warehouse 43 was a busy place. As a regional stockpile and delivery center both for the officials on the very public books and the officials on the black books, the occasional weird request went with the territory.

    “Gonna need more info on that, Herp. S23B covers a lot of inventory. What is it, blessed munitions? Containment reagents?” A balding man built like a powerlifter stuck his head out of the office, sweat dampening his brow.

    “Uhh… Dog food?”

    “Temple dogs? Spirit hounds? One of Laelaps get?” Dogs in relation with the RIB could still cover quite a bit of theoretical ground.

    “Form doesn’t say.”

    “Gimme.” Herp tossed the form underhanded, still scanning the hour’s intake with the decontamination wand in the other.

    “Gah, form’s all fuzzy. Stupid anti-scry enchantments. Scintilla of Dope? What is that, picograms of happy dust?”

    “I think it’s supposed to be Chinchilla of Hope, boss.”

    “You sure about that?”

    Herp just grunted and shrugged, as if to say “make of that what you will, boss.”

    “And they want dog food…”

    “For Black Dogs,” Herp helpfully supplied. With the intake decontaminated it was time to actually sort and filter it.

    “Black Dogs?”

    “Yes, boss.”

    “Dog food, standard, dry, 44lbs is on the light side of the warehouse. We’re going to have to eat some shrink on this one if we do that. Any other ideas? Not monster parts, you know we can’t put those in circulation.” Because that would invalidate the whole point of ‘don’t spook the normies.’

    “Shelter donation? Still on the light side, we could cook the books a bit.”

    “You have the heart of a politician, Herp.”

    “But I use it for only good causes, so it’s okay right? At least I didn’t con anyone into voting for me. That sounds like too much work.”

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  14. Amazon search is super busted. Initial searches revealed..nothing. My thanks! Awaiting a future novel on the Reality Interface Bureau, one day.

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  15. We must realize that Amazon is running an AI in their systems. One that even they think has gone rogue, and has to be very difficult to eradicate without pulling the plug on all of their processes.

    Referencing a recent post here – we Odds are undoubtedly viewed as hostile to that AI – because we do recognize its insanity.

    So I’m not surprised that our searches are consistently being thrown awry.

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  16. I was just watching some of those Yoo-Toob shorts when I encountered this gem:

    “Gas has gotten so expensive, serial killers can’t afford to drive out to the middle of nowhere to dump bodies.” 😧

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