>>5907
Now onto the setting itself. I'm going to be honest: I do not like the Conversion Bureau very much. Most stories that I've seen are one side dominating the other in a ridiculous fashion and the grimdarkness is usually done to the point of overriding the characters personalities.

>he's traveling along the bare edge of the magic bubble / "the barrier" in search of maintaining his autonomy, and nothing else.
This is probably one of the strongest stories that can be done with the CB played completely straight without dialing back the grimdarkness at all.

There is one detail that I can glean from this that I do like with your CB fic. You don't have the shield/bubble just converting/destorying everything human right away and indoctrination is not fully complete with newfoals (at least some) even with some personality alterations. So with this you have a more interesting setting with magic slowly destorying human technology. I liked the detail of the guards showing up and the streetlights exploding and I presume you could do more with the concept. Like have Fred struggle with trying to use the crumbling remains of human computers for a task that and he could destroy them with his mere presence.