The Varieties of Administrative Experience

Part Two of A Story Never to Be Told that began with a botched experiment in Advanced Computers&Games which propelled Pim Pergamon to Left World. Trying to reach Star Central, the capital, where the gate back to London is, Pim stumbles into a land called Central Departmental Organisation, a near-perfect bureaucracy ruled by Directorate of Perils and Pitfalls and Ministry of Scares and Scarcities where magic is about to be banned. Pim and his companions must obtain no less than Three Cardinal Documents and fill out the Form of Forms (aka the Form Perilous) before they can hope to leave CDO. Luckily, they are helped by Administratia, Attestatia and Affidavitia, three Administrative Fairies, and Vladimir Vrtsotslabov, professor of theoretical bureaucracy who discovered the Philosopher's Stamp and achieved every alchebureauist's dream - the transmutation of documents!Meanwhile in Right World Edna Edwards, the ACG Chief of Human Resources freshly back from the Institute for Executive Fatigue, wants to find the pacman who was the reason she was committed to the Institute in the first place.