Carol put her hands across the back of her neck and leaned back.
"Oh right, that? Well the WCO's basic mission statement and all is to keep "Conformality" stable. Same level it's always been, same safe stakes that keep all of humanity pacified but otherwise comfortable and going. Basically we keep the peace, make sure civilization is alright you know?"
She looked at John's face and took a deep breath.
"Hmm, what else? Let me explain a little in detail. 'Conformality' is a simple, yet intricate concept. On the most basic level it means conformity and formality. The way which people conform to what is appropriate and expected of them. It can mean other things as well however, such as how humans 'should' react to both things that upset them, like change and new experiences, and how they shouldn't react to some scary things like an excess of conformity, that is to say a lack of variety or experience in life that makes things 'normal.' Does that sound a little strange to you? Too much normalcy isn't really normal. It's actually expected that people would notice when things seem so okay and in line with expectations that they even seem, out of place. I'm not going to go too much into it but, all humans have a kind of life force, a mana count and other superduper things and their consciousness affects reality. They project this energy into their actions and promote change, or resist it. At the same time the energy they receive is proportional to the change or lack of it appropriated to them."
Sipping a drink, the girl sighed. "But, that's a bunch of boring technical stuff, Conformality and WCO philosophy is a lot more complicated than that, that's just the sparknotes version of it. Let's get to the fun stuff, the threats. As I told you there are other dimension, dimensions where magical beings, monsters, and magic exists out in the open. Than there's places like U-verse, the "Uther Vese" where these kind of things exist. By things I mean, entities. Beings and threats that are better understood like infestation than real sentient, or even animalistic beings. Like computer viruses or glitches, you know? Bugs too."
Carol reached under the table and pulled out a huge tomb. She opened it to one of the early pages and a magical hologram of a butterfly looking creatures flew out briefly.
"Remember when I told you that human energy and consciousness is intertwined? Well like mosquitoes, tapeworms, leeches, viruses and really any parasite, naturally these 'things' use humans for their own ends. They try to manipulate the flow of levels of Conformality favorably towards themselves so they can thrive and reproduce. Since energy and mana are proportional to Conformality, they attack reality at an intrinsic level, changing humans and their minds in ways that they can continue to exist. Make them into themselves, make them servants, breeders, brooders, workers, tools and objects for their benefit while extracting and feeding off their energy. Humans and sentient life tend to make pretty good Duracell Batteries, did you know that? Anyway, the level of threat exhibited by these entities is categorized by their capabilities, from 1 to 5, or E to A in some regions."
She turned the pages, flowing out different charts and statistics.
"Level 1 threats are local and very common. Sometimes they can modify people or places, but that's it. One taking the form of say, a Hat that makes other people wear it, and maybe want to make more hats is a meager threat. They're not very powerful at all."
She poked a few of the holograms as if they were a computer screen, adjusting the data.
"Level 2 and 3 threats are different. They can make others into themselves or other things, and have a more diverse range of forms and abilities, both animate and inanimate. I kid you not, one of these takes the form of a vegan supermarket. You can laugh but I had to go in and shut it down to stop it from making people into yoga obsessed, health-crazed hippie nutcased zombos. It tried to switch locations and change itself into a candy store after but I put it down. There are lot's of weird ones like this. For example, Fashion Drones, Pixies, Genies, Sock Predators and the like. 3 may sound 'Average' but it's actually on the dangerous side, which get's us to the next level, 4s."
Her pinkie flicked the hologram ahead.
"4's are difficult to classify. They're harder to stop because these entities are less malicious and forceful as they are muddling and abstract. They are more like, "Phenomenon" threats rather than ones you can just go and shoot. Most of them don't even take any physical form. For example, we had one that merged with this guy that became a different person every night. He knew it would happen but would only remember each previous life AFTER he'd jumped into the next one, throwing him into a loop. When we finally caught him- well her at the time, we'd found she was an immortal that'd been over 3000 different humans throughout history, many famous. They didn't know why it was, they just were. They're weird like that, and can manifest in words, ideas, and things that the WCO cannot really combat easily. We once had a case of one in the form of a Text Message that changed people and manipulated their minds with reality, and it spread to our servers. The techies at human resources keeping track of the stability of reality really had a field day with that one. 5's or A classes are also abstractions like this, but also "alive" and usually the worst kinds. They are, a whole other kind of unholy bullshit."
The page flipped further by itself and a large catalog of sights flashed out.
"5's are truly abstract in an absurd sense and by far the biggest threats to reality. If a Class 1 is an error message, 2-4 are viruses and glitches, than think of 5 like a full on blue screen of death, computer crasher. Complete system failures. Critical hardware failure. Or reality meddlers in this case. They're embedded in entire populations, span well beyond earth or human society. They're so dangerous and unmanageable that the WCO honestly, can not deal with them. We cannot remove, or do anything to the source, since their affinity for being embedded in the throes of reality, the source of all things, surpasses ours. They defy even our most fundamental theology and any understanding of known Quantum Physics. With their control over time and space, they can and have tried to change the course of human history, and our crudest time traveling methods have been powerless to stop them. It's like trying to stop a storm or tornado, impossible. I should've mentioned earlier that each Class has the common ability to beget threats classes below them, and 5's are no different. The only thing we can do is Damage Control to hinder their own effects. It's really a sour situation for us, knowing we can never win against this kind of thing."
Carol scooted up her seat and stretched. She closed the tomb and pulled out a smaller handbook. "Well, that's enough of that. Basically weird things doing weird stuff. We end the weird, before it ends you. Now than, do you want get into the fun stuff?"
She gave a playful look at John.
"The bestiary."
