"We'll try to get you sorted in a job that suits you until one sticks, but it disrupts things a fair bit so we try to keep that to a minimum, get it right on the first try. But don't worry you'll be stuck doing something you hate, or without a job entirely."

"I'll see how I take to clerking, since you're apparently in need of those."

"We're in need of good clerks. bit of a difference."

"Then I'll be the best clerk."

"Well, let's just see! Take this to the office on the right, they'll give you a couple of quick tests and if they like you a time and place to show up tomorrow."

"Sure!"

He goes to the office on the right.

The office to the right contains someone with a very serious-looking face.

"Think you'll make a good clerk, eh? Hold on..." She produces a few piles of paper. "Here's a little test I made up. The left pile is inventory, the middle is recipes, the right is kitchen schedule and consumption estimates. I want you to figure out why we have less potatoes than we ought to, and correct it. That's the kind of thing a great clerk can do for us. But if you can just read and take diction that's better than nothing."

"All right," he says, and he sits down with the piles of paper and starts reading. He wasn't kidding about reading fast.

The numbers just don't add up, unless one of the cooks made a substitution, or someone's stealing potatoes, or some other reason that about a hundred pounds of the things just disappeared.

Well, where'd they disappear from? If they went missing all at once, that suggests a single theft. If they're vanishing a little at a time, that suggests either a habitual petty thief or something going on in the kitchen.

It seems like one particular kitchen is consistently using slightly more potatoes than the rest.

...Actually they're consistently using slightly more of everything than the rest.

Huh. He smiles at the page.

"Looks like these guys are making more food than they're supposed to," he says.

She looks up from some paperwork. "And you figured it out in something like 15 minutes. Good. Normally the next thing you do would be to go figure out why they're making more food and fix it, but in this case it's a problem we had a while ago and already fixed. They were using the measuring scales wrong."

"Sounds like I'll make an all-right clerk, then."

"Indeed. You can get a better room after a week of working in a camp-necessary position, and of course you get money too." She names a number that means nothing to him. "I'll let the administration office know we have a new clerk for them, get you your job card, and you can show up tomorrow morning."

"Great! Thanks!"

This place, at least, has a fairly minimal amount of paperwork overhead. Too much to do to file constant reports about it.

So he has a job lined up; what now?

Meet his new neighbors? Find out more about how this place works, either the camp specifically or the area in general? Sleep?

Hmm. He's a little tired, but he thinks he'll go for option B: Reconnaissance.

What does he recon?

How about the organization of the camp?

Each section of about 100 people has one camp staff assigned to it, they try to see to it that everyone's needs are filled and help people get to the job office and mediate disputes between people and so on. Their goal is to have most people who arrive out to somewhere farther away from a war zone, and hopefully with permanent housing and jobs lined up for them, within a few weeks. 

Well, that's very efficient of them.

What's the bigger picture? What are all these refugees seeking refuge from? He's not going to ask outright, it seems to be one of those things everybody knows, but it's possible to piece together what everybody knows if you listen real close while they don't bother explaining it to each other.

The Neuroi. They make the giant storm. They fly and explode things. Witches fight them. If you see one and don't see a Witch nearby or have cannons or something you will probably die.