Pushing The Boundaries

20251124

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

On an otherwise comfortably dull day in the grants administration department Professor Williams stormed in and slammed down a GR27-B in front of Clarence, prompting an owlish blink.
“What idiot keeps changing ‘extraterrestrial’ to ‘extraplanar’??” Williams demanded, his glare sweeping across the entire team.
“Me.” Clarence said placidly. “That’s the term.”
“No it isn’t!!” Williams shuffled through the sheets and shoved one against Clarence’s face. “Did you even read the damned proposal???”
“No.” Clarence’s tone was unchanged, albeit now muffled. “My job isn’t to read the proposals. My job is to file the form so it gets to the person whose job’s to read it.”
“Well, read it!” Williams snapped. “Then it will all make sense.”
“I can’t.”
There was a long, irritated silence. Then Williams released the sheet, allowing it to drop off of Clarence’s face onto the desk.
“Thank you.” Clarence adjusted his spectacles and picked up the form, his brow furrowing as he scrutinised the hereto unregarded section 4.
By now the rest of the team were waiting with great interest. The last time someone insisted they needed a new category for their project it’d resulted in a three-month schism in the history department which was resolved via alchemical duel. A schism in the extraplanar department would be far more dramatic.
Finally Clarence looked up, his expression gently baffled. “You want a grant to… fire someone at the moon?”
“To fire myself at the moon.”
“I see.” Clarence sat back and gazed at the ceiling, absently tugging off his spectacles and sucking on one arm as he tried to fit this absurd request into the established filing system.
“Transport, then.” Maude suggested.
“No, no.” Clarence shook his head. “Not for a, hm, first-generation concept like this. Engineering, perhaps?”
“Naturally engineering will be involved.” Williams said haughtily. “But, as I clearly stated in my brief, the goal is exploring the moon.”
“Well, it’s certainly not a geography project.” Clarence popped his spectacles back on to peer at the form once more.
“That’s why I filed it under astronomy.”
“Astronomy is not given to firing things into space. It’s about observing-”
“And that’s what’s holding it back!” Williams pounded a fist on the desk, just missing Clarence’s “#2 Uncle” mug. “If we want to understand the cosmos we need to get hands on!”
Clarence rescued his tea and took a sip while Jeremy said “Pretty sure all celestial bodies which affect magic have already been-”
“SMALL MINDED THINKING!!”
That prompted the bemused stares naturally found when people whose existence revolved around quietly maintaining systems were confronted with shaker-uppers.
Williams, realising this wasn’t the audience he wanted, threw up his hands with a disgusted sigh. Then (in a thankfully quieter voice) said “I believe there are secrets which can only be cracked by observing the cosmos from space. To that end, exploring the moon.”
“Mmm.” Clarence was still frowning down at the form.
“It can’t be that much harder to keep someone alive in space than it is in the Fey Wilds or the merfolk realms. And exploring those is old hat.”
“I wouldn’t say exploring the Fey Wilds is old hat.” Maude said mildly. “I mean, with it constantly shifting there’s always-”
“Which makes expeditions to it pointless!”
Maude’s expression made it clear she felt Mr ‘firing people at the moon’ had no room to declare anyone’s project ‘pointless’. But she gracefully held her tongue.
“Mm. I think what you have here is a cross-department request.” Clarence declared, having decided this was far beyond the level of nonsense he was being paid to deal with. He shuffled the form into a stack (effortlessly getting the pages in the right order without looking) and turned to ask “Kay, could you - ah, thanks.”
Clarence put the blank GR29 on top of the GR27-B and pushed the whole thing over to Williams, who looked entirely unimpressed. “You’ll need to book a meeting with each relevant department head. I recommend trying engineer and extraplanar-”
“I told you, I want to explore our plane!!!”
“Yes, you did.” Clarence popped off his spectacles to wipe away spittle drops with a neatly pressed hankie. “However. They are the department which organises, hm, expeditions. Perhaps they will find this ‘extraterrestrial’ concept, hm, intriguing.”
“Ugh! Fine!” Williams snatched up the forms and cast a glower around the room. “Just you wait and see, fools! The adventure of a lifetime is beckoning! I shall go down in history!!”
“How lovely.” Clarence intoned, his face not twitching. “Have a nice day.”
Williams huffed and stormed out, and the room fell into a comfortable hush.
“…Good luck getting astronomy to sponsor you firing things at the moon.” Maude sniffed and turned back to her work. “Can you imagine how werewolves would react?”
“Another reason to put it under the extraplanar department.” Clarence said reasonably. “They have close ties with the diplomatic corps.”
“And the most crackpots.” Kay rolled their eyes at the door. “Even then, I can’t see them getting on board with that nonsense.”
Clarence shrugged, with the serene confidence of the problem no longer being his, and picked up the next waiting form.
All fields filled… Everything seemed correct… Hm… hm… Linguistics, demonology.
Envelope, label, stamp, done. The file slipped into its proper place in the system. As it should.
Tsk. ‘Extraterrestrial’. Some people simply had to be special.

Prompt was “The world is normal, too normal. Your character wants something new, something that might be a bit crazy. What do they do?”