All right, and what happens when he walks back into the Archive?

Not quite as strong as before, but still distinctly there!

oooooooooookay this is completely terrifying. 

He is going to go back to his studio now and compulsively keep an eye open for anything weird or paranormal. 

If there’s anything weird, he doesn’t notice it. 

Okay, so. On one hand, he wants to keep a notebook of his observations. On the other hand, he doesn't trust anything written down. 

Is there a list of known artefacts in the binder?

Not in any completeness, no. There are descriptions of a couple artefacts (a rusted chair that results in several days of hallucinations if you sleep in it, an empty journal that erases any memory of the things you write in it) and mentions of ones that exist that there is no information on (an old calliope organ, a broken mirror) but they’re scattered throughout the binder as offhand notes.

He... wants to keep records. He does not want to write anything down on paper. He does not want to go back to the Archives today.

He opens a Google Doc and types out:

TO DO:

1. Check for electronics in the Archives. Determine probable safety of note-taking method.

Then he describes as completely as he can his experiments on the statements and his sensation of being watched. 

How can he check whether something changed his notes? Something could alter his notes but they could also control his mind. He adds under TO DO:

2. Attempt to figure out method to determine whether notes have been altered.

and then reads all his notes into his phone to be on the safe side.

Does anything paranormal happen during this process?

Nope.

SPECULATIONS BEFORE READING TRAINING GUIDE:

I don't trust printed material. You're not supposed to touch books named after someone called Jurgen Leiter. We're supposed to digitize the Archive, even things that won't digitize normally, instead of filing them so they can be referenced. I'm not a librarian but this is weird. 

I feel watched, particularly by Elias. Suspect that perhaps the quantity of printed paranormal-related material in the Archives is dangerous. Suspect possession (?) of Elias. 

I don't trust my fellow employees. I expect all of them may be possessed.  

Why did they hire a psychologist instead of a librarian??????? This may be important. 

He rereads the "I feel watched" sentence, googles the symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning, and then adds to the to do list:

3. Purchase carbon monoxide detector and test the Archives. 

After some thought he adds:

4. Invite all coworkers to lunch away from the Archives. Note strange feelings if any.
5. Purchase introduction to library science textbook. Take notes of anything particularly surprising or that I would not have done. 

Then he opens the training manual. 

Safety instructions! Lots and lots of safety instructions. Painfully basic safety instructions. Some of it is mundane (no lifting more than 50 lbs on your own) but a lot of it is not (if you see a book, put on gloves and use tweezers to open it to see if the inside cover has Leitner’s name on it before doing anything else).  

................

He pulls out Anki and turns all the unexpected safety instructions into an Anki deck. Then he thinks about it for a minute and puts all the expected safety instructions in the Anki deck too. If it turns out a demon is summoned every time you lift more than fifty pounds in the Archives, Lev is not going to be the one eaten by it. 

Most of it is fairly normal, if a bit centered around the job: touch artifacts as little as possible, use at least one layer of gloves when you do (unless they are likely to slip from gloves); don’t put artifacts at risk of touching each other; if anything breaks or has effects other than the expected ones, tell Elias immediately; don’t change the temperature without permission; don’t conduct experiments without permission; no food or drink in storage areas, including water; if there is tape on the floor surrounding an artifact, it is representing the minimum safe distance, and the Institute is not liable for any problems that may result from crossing it; if an artifact is missing, or if there is an artifact that is not in the inventory list, report it immediately. Artifacts on the Do Not Access list are stored in Storage Room 207, which is not to be opened without specific permission. If you open it anyway the Institute is not liable for any problems that result. If you give anyone access to items on the Do Not Access list, you may be liable. Do not take items out of storage without permission for any reason; if you have permission, you must fill out a form upon taking it and then another upon returning it. 

Is there a specific kind of glove mentioned? Do the glove instructions seem to be aiming more towards "don't allow skin to come into contact with the artefact" or towards germ quarantine procedures?

Latex and clean cotton are recommended; the instructions seem aimed towards minimizing skin-artefact contact. (There is also a section in the binder on germ quarantine procedures, in the event that some of the artefacts from the Do Not Access list are exposed to a person.)

.....Lev stands up and, touching as few things as possible, walks to the store, purchases a pack of latex gloves, and puts a pair of them on in the store. When he gets home, he orders twenty pairs of cotton gloves from Amazon, then thinks about it and adds another ten into his order. Then he emails Elias:

Are people who work with artefacts PPE-trained? If not, you should probably enroll them into a course. Ideally one aimed at medical professionals, I think the other ones are laxer. 

They are, yes. I will make sure that future hires are enrolled in courses aimed at medical professionals. Are you worried about any particular artefacts, or is this a general commitment to paranoia when the things we work with are so potentially dangerous? I’d be happy to go over our current containment procedures, but I do applaud the thought process that led to you asking; Gertrude was much the same. 

Lev types out, but does not send, "well, you hired a psychologist and then didn't tell me that magic existed so forgive me if I am a little bit concerned about the thoroughness of your training procedures."

Mostly paranoia; it is difficult to be worried about specific artefacts when I don't know anything about what any of them do. 

Does the training manual contain anything that is not safety guidelines?

Lots of instructions on paperwork for any experiments. Emphasis on the importance of taking lots and lots of notes (ideally in multiple formats; many things can corrupt digital data but not analog, or video but not audio, or similar). 

Well, that's good to know. 

NOTES ON SAFETY BOOK:

well this is totally useless for... conveying to people what is known about what we're studying... seriously this organization is incredibly incompetent and I don't trust anyone here as far as I can throw them

Physical contact with/distance from artefacts appears to be important. This implies magic cares about space. Artefacts also seem to care about temperature. 

(Totally irrelevant: interaction of artefacts with general relativity? Space is not a real thing. Might want to brush up on physics.)

Does magic care about human concepts? Or physics things? 

I feel like I'm being extremely paranoid, given how I have never interacted with a paranormal thing before in my life, but I expect that if I'm interacting with magic more then powerful magical things might interact with me. 

PERSONAL SAFETY PRECAUTIONS:

I have invested in gloves and might want to look into only wearing long pants and a jacket. 

He adds "learn physics" to the to-do list. Then he goes out and buys an analog tape recorder and a video camera, reads all his notes into a tape recorder, videotapes himself taking the notes, and copies out the notes by hand into a notebook. Then he pays careful attention to any weird feelings he has. 

No weird feelings; everything records normally.

He flops dramatically onto his bed. 

He... wants to talk to someone. Not someone. He wants to talk to Asher. He wants to talk to Asher more badly than he's wanted to talk to anyone. 

...He thinks about this for a second.

"Asher," he says, "if you're there, can you give me a weird prickly feeling of some sort?"

Still nothing. 

.................Lev has seen a horror film and knows that if Asher had responded this would probably result in Lev being eaten. This is not as comforting as it should be. 

He lies down onto the bed, grabs his pillow, curls into a ball around it, pretends very very intensely that Asher is holding him, and starts crying. 

He can do that as long as he wants!

If he stays there long enough and is paying close attention, he’ll eventually notice a brief resurgence of the being-watched feeling. It’s fainter this time, and it disappears after just a moment. (Could be anxiety, or wishful thinking, or just a weird thing that brains do; could be the same thing he felt in the Archives. It’s hard to tell.)

He... should write that up in his notebook.

He doesn't.

Lev hugs his pillow tightly and closes his eyes and presses his face into it and pretends that it's Asher.

He's been acting like he's going to keep working at the Archives. He shouldn't. If he were smart, he would quit right now. This is not his area of expertise. He doesn't really care about the paranormal; he's not a physicist. He cares about people, he loves people, he wants to understand people, he does not want to spend his career studying paranormal artifacts.

This is not, it seems, a kind and gentle paranormal. This is a paranormal that will kill him if he is not careful. If he were smart, he would quit. He doesn't know anyone who died of anything paranormal; the paranormal seems to be quite dangerous; his risk is going to very clearly increased by working at the Magnus Archives. 

He got this job so he wouldn't have to eat ramen anymore; if he keeps working at the Archives he is far more likely to die of the paranormal than he would to die of scurvy if he quit. 

And Lev can't get over his bad feeling about this place. No one told him it was a potentially life-threatening gig. He cannot expect to be informed of information that would keep him alive. He cannot expect to be told. 

He doesn't trust his coworkers. Shouldn't. He has no one to talk to except his notebook. No one to sanity-check. He will be alone, even more alone than he's been ever since Asher died.  

He wants to talk to Asher. Even more than a hug he wants an outside view. He wants to yell at Asher that he's an idiot, completely wrong, Lev has no idea how he could be enough of a moron to come to that conclusion and then he wants Asher to be right and then he wants to cuddle him and then they can have a decision that isn't just Lev figuring out how to do it on his own.

He doesn't think well by himself. 

There are nonhumans. He knows this from the statements he's transcribed. Some of the beings in the statements aren't humans. And-- they might not be people-- but they might be people. They might be alien people. Fundamentally different minds, working from completely different premises. Every person is a unique irreplaceable world, that's why he's a psychologist, but they all work on the same underlying physics. The paranormal minds could work... any way. They didn't even need to evolve, there are no constraints that he knows about on how they could be. Beautiful complicated intricate alien worlds...

If he quits, he will only ever be able to study human beings.

He'll work and he'll study and he'll learn and maybe someday he'll be able to see the world through alien eyes. 

He stands up, creates a journal spreadsheet, notes down his feeling of being watched and when and where and what triggered it; and next morning he goes to work.