Human. Unintentional catalyst. Tea-dependent structural stabiliser.
Dean Hollister grew up in Hertfordshire, where his primary ambitions were limited to keeping the Wi-Fi working and avoiding any conversation involving feelings. A customer-service veteran with a high tolerance for nonsense and a low tolerance for out-of-date milk, he mastered the British art of apologising for things that were not his fault long before the Department ever found him.
Before the events of the book, Dean lived an almost aggressively ordinary life. His most dramatic moment until then involved a supermarket self-checkout machine accusing him of theft. He survived the incident by muttering “sorry” until it stopped blinking.
Unknown to him, Dean possessed an unusual trait: his tea-making habits exerted a mild stabilising force on local continuity. The Department classified this as Unconscious Narrative Housekeeping, a talent previously undocumented in humans. It made him a perfect candidate for accidental involvement in interdimensional bureaucracy.
His life took its decisive turn the morning the orb appeared on his kitchen table and a tortoise performed an unauthorised bobsled run down his stairs. Since then, Dean has been trying very hard to pretend he never became structurally relevant to existence, with limited success.