The Diaper Department

I. Founding and Charter

The Department was established by Belial (or by a subordinate; the founding paperwork lists no signatory, only a brown thumbprint of unidentified origin) in an unrecorded year, but no later than the 4th century BCE, when the first non-anecdotal complaint regarding "the wet" begins to appear in Sumerian seal impressions. The charter, recovered in fragments from the Eighth Circle's lower bulkhead, instructs the Department to "attend the leakage, defer the smell, and never make eye contact with the Charged." This guidance has been interpreted variously but never improved upon.

The original Department occupied a single anteroom and employed two souls, both reportedly conscripted from a 14th-century Florentine clerical pool that had earned their assignment by means now considered unmentionable in polite Department literature. Modern headcount estimates range from 4,200 to "more than have ever lived in Toledo, Ohio."

II. Organizational Structure

The Department is administered by three Deputy Directors, traditionally referred to by their functional titles rather than their pre-mortal names: the Director of Fitting, the Director of Disposal, and the Director of Aroma Management. The latter office has been held continuously since 1782 by the same individual, who has not been seen by any other Department employee but whose presence is widely confirmed by olfactory evidence.

Below the Deputies, each of the Nine Circles is assigned a Regional Supervisor, supported by between 47 and 600 rank-and-file Changers depending on the circle's traffic. Changers are forbidden under any circumstance from speaking to one another, on the theory (Belial, n.d.) that "conversation is what got most of you down here in the first place."

III. Materials Engineering

Garments produced by the Department are not, properly speaking, fabric. They are woven from atmospheric griefcloth, a substrate harvested from the upper Tenth Layer where the breath of the recently bereaved condenses. Griefcloth is naturally absorbent; under stress, it sighs.

Capacity is measured not in litres or pounds but in weeping cubic feet (WCF), a unit defined in the Department's standards manual as "the volume of disappointment that one mid-sized accountant produced in a single afternoon, ca. 1968." The standard Class III containment garment holds 12 WCF. Premium garments, issued only to dukes and certain priests, hold up to 47.

The Department also maintains a small but storied research wing devoted to what its internal memos refer to as second-hunger management — that is, garments adapted for damned souls whose pre-mortal physiology persists, in afterlife forms, into avenues not strictly excretory. The wing's catalog is not available to outside scholars. A leaked page is reproduced (with the relevant illustrations blurred) in fig. 2.

IV. The Linglestown Anomaly

In November 1978, a Changer of the Fourth Circle — identified in Department logs only as Garth — departed his post during a routine fitting and ascended rather than descended. He is reported to have walked out of a manhole on the corner of Main Street and North Mountain Road in Linglestown, Pennsylvania, the same manhole later catalogued in vol. IV of this journal. He has not returned.

Garth currently operates the second-shift register at the Linglestown Sheetz. He answers no questions about his prior employment, but is unfailingly polite, and his made-to-order sandwiches are described by regulars as "spiritually correct." The Department has classified Garth's case as unresolved — possibly retired, and has reassigned his shift to a temporary worker who has, in turn, also disappeared.

V. Notable Incidents

The Department's logs are sparse but include three incidents of historical significance:

• The Eternal Saturday (1304): Production halted for one infernal week because Belial forgot to sign Form 12-B. The resulting backlog produced what mediaeval mystics called "the heaviness in the air" and a corresponding spike in monastic resignations.
• The Brown Hour (1666): A simultaneous failure of all aroma-management systems in the Seventh Circle. The exact duration is disputed; the Department's records read "far longer than necessary." Several damned souls reportedly tried to repent.
• The Pastor's Friend Recall (1981): One product line was recalled after it was discovered to be "too eager." 200,000 units returned to the warehouse, where they continue to sigh quietly. Tours are not permitted.

FIG. 3

Authenticated Department photograph, ca. 1981, depicting a Pastor’s Friend Class III product during the inspection period immediately preceding its recall. The Subject is not believed to have known he was being photographed. The Subject is, in any case, no longer in a position to mind. Note the regulation flesh-tone finish, the curiously serene posture, and the inexplicable presence of a single rose — floral materials are not authorised Department stock and have not been explained.

VI. Conclusions

The Department is real, productive, miserable, and counting. We further conclude that the Department's existence is not, as the casual reader might assume, a punishment for the Charged — it is a punishment for the Changers. The Department's true purpose, in the considered judgment of the authors, is not containment but maintenance of attention: somewhere, in every circle, a soul has been assigned to notice what has happened, and to keep noticing, forever.

The reader is reminded that everything they have done has been quietly counted. The Department keeps excellent records. The Department, indeed, keeps better records than the reader does.