Laundry Files: History of the Capital Laundry Services

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"The Exclusion Principle is laid down purely for the benefit of the electrons themselves, who might be corrupted (and become dragons or demons) if allowed to associate too freely."
- Alan Mathison Turing (1954)

The Special Operations Executive

In 1941 Alan Turing discovered that the right computations can crack the walls between worlds and so became the greatest wizard of the Twentieth Century.

That same year Winston Churchill ordered the establishment of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to counter the use of "unconventional warfare methods" by the Axis powers and to use such methods in the defence of Britain. The SOE used Turing's research and his calculating machines to gain a vital lead over the Axis powers and created the field of computational demonology as we know it today. Under Churchill's direction they set Europe ablaze with their specially trained thaumaturge-turned-saboteurs who were parachuted behind enemy lines. Amongst their other noteworthy achievements they prevented the victory of the Nazis through using the death camps as fuel for the largest summoning grid the world had ever seen. After the war ended the Nazi occult war machine was looted by the various Allies, and the SOE (being reasonable and well-balanced people) assassinated as many necromancers as they could lay their hands on before being recalled home.

Capital Laundry Services

Officially the SOE was dissolved after the War, being swept up into the Military Intelligence conglomerate. Unofficially the Laundry spent the following decade fighting for survival. Thanks to the influence of certain nameless powers, the handful of remaining staff were shuffled around until they came to rest above a Chinese Laundry in Soho - where the name originated - and were set the task of controlling the spread of the Turing Theorem.

In 1954 due to fears that he was being blackmailed by the Soviets, Laundry agents were responsible for the death of Turing. After his death the Laundry began recruiting scientists and sorcerers as researchers instead of treating them as the enemy. Shortly afterwards the Laundry was brought in from bureaucratic exile and throughout the 60's and 70's the Laundry expanded. The Dee-Turing theorem was being independently discovered across the world, adding new terror to the Cold War. The Laundry's policy on extranormal events changed again, to either (depending on circumstances) 'kill it with fire!' or 'you're drafted!'. A growing number of draftees were inducted into the service, which required more management, more support staff and more offices. In it's heyday the staff numbered in the thousands.

The 80's brought Thatcher, budget cuts, and the realisation that CASE NIGHTMARE GREEN was inevitable and approaching. Much of the Laundry was sold off in private-public partnerships, merged with other branches of government, or simply shut down. Staff numbers shrunk drastically (some mutter, not enough) while departments went into a feeding frenzy of budget appropriation and merging. The Accounts department being one casualty of the austerity massacre.

In the 90's the Internet arrived, bringing torrents of the Necronomicon and online shopping to the masses. The future is coming, far too fast. And now at the turn of the century the Laundry braces for the imminent apocalypse, using all it has gained from eighty years of fighting a war of shadows.

They remain the United Kingdom's occult espionage department.

The first ISO-9001 Certified Occult Agency in the World

ISO9001 is an international standard for business procedures which promote and improve quality. It provides a mechanism for measuring faults in the system for the Service to identify and then workshop solutions for...which requires the creation of committees, cross-referencing across Departments, tiptoeing around clearance levels... and eventually creating a new policy anywhere from 3 months to 3 years after the problem was first identified.

If the original problem was, say, shoggoth-related deaths in Beeston have reached unacceptable levels, the cunning agent keen to reduce the paper in their In Tray may simply propose a re-definining of "unacceptable levels".
And this is the flaw in the ISO9001, it only works where people are motivated to implement the workshopped solutions and improvement takes time. For the unfortunates in the Laundry, middle management doesn't seem interested in the long term.

And so to maintain their status as ISO9001 Compliant, the Laundry pedantically measures faults and workshops solutions. And the faults in the system steadily increase.