"And the state of the archive was just... absurdly bad. There were statements on the floor. Nothing was organized. It's not possible to look in it for anything."

“I... didn’t really get the idea that the Archives were exactly a priority.”

"That's weird too. Research feeds into the Archive, right? I'm not sure I totally understand how the Institute is organized but a lot of what you do is produce statements that get filed in the Archive, right?"

“...Yeah?”

"So why do you have a whole department for writing statements that everyone then totally ignores?"

“I mean, they do get researched before they get filed, too? But I think I see your point.”

"The stuff we've been doing is... basic stuff. It's synthesizing data. You guys should have been doing it for the past fifty years. And Elias is like 'well, we don't know much because the paranormal is really confusing' but that's not how other academic fields work! Psychology is incredibly confusing so there are a whole bunch of competing theories and different ways of explaining the data. We don't just... collect data and then ignore it!"

“I dunno. Maybe other places that research this stuff are more competent and so they don’t, uh, hire a psychologist as a librarian? —That came out mean, I promise I didn’t mean it like that.”

"I know you don't mean it like that, my head is on your chest and your hand's in my hair. --Who just... ignores the archive for forty years while the archivist is very clearly not doing her job?"

“I mean. Elias, apparently.”

"Elias is really absurdly bad at his job. He didn't train you... he didn't check up on the Archivist... he didn't make sure anyone was analyzing the data the Institute was collecting..."

Lev presses his head into Martin's hand.

Yeah Martin has no idea what to do here and is just going to pet Lev’s hair and give a low noncommittal hum about it.

"Hm." 

“What?”

"...so if someone is really absurdly bad at pursuing their goals, like, it is hard to imagine how a single person could be that bad at pursuing their goals, literally have you ever read a management textbook, what's the thing you conclude?"

“I... don’t... know...? That they should get a management textbook, probably?”

"That they're actually doing a very competent job of pursuing their goal and it's a different goal than the one you thought it was."

“Oh. Oh.

...Thaaaaat. Is probably not good news.”

"And we don't know what his goal is! But... I don't think it's unreasonable to guess that it's in some way related to the Watching Thing and the fact that the Institute is built on a prison built by an extremely paranormal architect. --That's another thing that looks incompetent."

“...Smirke, right? The guy Tim’s always going on about? But—yeah, this makes sense. I mean. As much sense as any of this makes, anyway. ...I wonder what would happen if you just, like. Asked him. Like you were planning on asking the Watching Thing. Still probably a bad idea, but.”

"..............uh I'd have a good explanation for why I don't want to do that but actually I'm just terrified of authority figures. I once avoided my dissertation adviser for six months."

That earns a smile and a bit of a helpless giggle. “....Really? I heard you chewed out Elias your first day here for some of this stuff. Um, I know office gossip is unreliable and everything, just—it wasn’t the reason I was expecting, is all.”

"Look, being terrified of authority figures does not mean I don't chew them out, it just means I have a panic attack afterward."

That earns another helpless giggle. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be laughing. Um. Maybe we could tell Sasha, or Tim, hope that one of them... maybe doesn’t have anxiety? Or we could figure out a different plan and this could be, like, our fallback.”

"I like making you laugh!"