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A somewhat minor Imperial Saint; he was, in life, Adept Ubald of the Administratum.

Ubald was born to be an Adept. Literally, in fact, as both sides of his family consisted entirely of Administratum Scribes who had never set foot outside the Government Citadel once in their lives, and he was expected to carry on their legacy of being exceptionally unexceptional. Instead, they got the closest thing possible to a bureaucratic maverick. Even by the standards of the Administratum, Ubald was compulsive, pedantic, and anal-retentive. His intuitive grasp of governmental protocol and bureaucratic procedure was such that nothing could measure up to his standards, and he was constantly finding faults and inefficiencies with everyone and everything. Thus, nobody looked very hard when he mysteriously vanished.

Nearly a century later, the entire Sector was on the verge of destruction. Imperial High Command had predicted that this region of space would soon be invaded by a massive Ork Warband from a neighboring sector, and nowhere could the necessary amounts of money, materials and manpower needed to defend the Imperial Worlds be found.

As the Lords of the Sector sat and despaired, the long-lost (and thought dead) Adept Ubald stepped through the door and said he knew how the Sector could be saved.

His disappearance, it turned out, had been due to his being transferred to a department that hadn't existed for centuries. Outraged that such a screw-up had occurred, Ubald had deliberately gone underground in order to dedicate his life to mapping out the organization of the Sector Administratum in it's entirety.

For the last several decades, he had been tracing the twisted paths of Imperial Bureaucracy; following individual forms as they were passed from Adept to Adept, shadowing Archivists as they shuffled ancient ledgers around, and discovering things that had been lost for millennia.
For example, it turned out that fully half of the Sector's money had been sealed in a vault and forgotten, explaining the long-term financial crisis that had bankrupted entire planets.

A Manufactorum on a Hive World had been sent the same work order for the last 400 years, and was still dutifully churning out las-weapon components, but since the notification that the work order was complete and ready for pickup had been stuffed into a drawer and forgotten, the warehouse that had been designated for their storage had long since filled to capacity, thus for the last few centuries the menials in charge of storage had been dumping the additional deliveries directly into the City's Sewage Processing System.

Speaking of Hive Worlds, another one had been gathering conscripts for the Imperial Guard without pickup for so long most of the soldiers had died of old age.

Two entire departments of the Administratum had long since stopped performing any actual function, and were instead dedicated solely to invalidating the other's 'Request for Explanation for the Rejection of Previous Request' forms for being outdated.

And many others.

Having revealed to all present the resources necessary to defend the Sector from imminent invasion, Ubald dropped dead on the spot from old age, whereupon the Sector Archbishop immediately beatified him.

Two entire departments of the Administratum had long since stopped performing any actual function, and were instead dedicated solely to invalidating the other's 'Request for Explanation for the Rejection of Previous Request' forms for being outdated.

I had to run to the restroom so that I could laugh without attracting the attention of my coworkers when I read this line. This was beautiful, a true surrealist absurdity!

chaos0xomega wrote:

Two entire departments of the Administratum had long since stopped performing any actual function, and were instead dedicated solely to invalidating the other's 'Request for Explanation for the Rejection of Previous Request' forms for being outdated.

I had to run to the restroom so that I could laugh without attracting the attention of my coworkers when I read this line. This was beautiful, a true surrealist absurdity!

That's just perfect, got it down to a tee

It's funny because it's true ...

A gem of a piece - really enjoyed that. Somewhat reminiscent of the late, great Douglas Adams!

I thought the same re. Mr. Adams

 Necroagogo wrote:
It's funny because it's true ...

A gem of a piece - really enjoyed that. Somewhat reminiscent of the late, great Douglas Adams!

That is quite possibly the greatest complement I have ever received.
Nothing else I create will measure up to this moment.
You have completely and utterly ruined me as a writer.

 Lord-Captain Cepinari wrote:
Outraged that such a screw-up had occurred

I really enjoyed this story, but that line was amazing!