Monorail....monorail...!

I just started writing the scenes inside the "main compound" -- rather, headquarters buildings -- of the cult at the center of A Fox's Wedding. 

And I don't know how it works. I mean, sure, I could scribble a map of the physical building. More or less. But I have so many questions, starting with --

Who is here? What is the purpose of this building? 

Part of the problem is the hybrid nature of the "cult." Transcendence is primarily a business (well, all successful cults are more-or-less businesses), a small to mid-sized company known in-story mostly for the Genki brand of health-conscious cosmetics.

Which means that somewhere in the world are accountants, legal staff, sales, all the stuff that makes it possible to manufacture and ship product. They could be contracting out much of this. They could be locating those offices anywhere -- process development and quality control and all of that should be located at the factories, for instance.

This is a very hierarchal organization with an illusion of being a meritocracy so the headquarters in the hills outside Kyoto is very much the Special place where only the Special people get to work. The highest level execs, and of course the activities that aren't strictly about getting cold cream to market.

And I want it big enough to justify a small security staff. And a monorail. (The monorail is in-story a useless extravagance anyhow...the campus doesn't actually have to be big enough to need one!) It may end up in the end being a side comment by some character; "We wanted a monorail but...."

Anyhow, it is inspired by an actual building:

So I've been in the workforce (as opposed to being in theater) long enough to know just how many bodies, hours, offices and shops it takes to run a company. But they don't need to be in this building --it's not a story about the HR Department. Penny is mostly interacting with the very top people; the charismatic ex Enka singer who is the visible face of the organization, his school chum "Uchuu" who is the theorist who dreamed up the details of their beliefs, the "old man" who doesn't seem to contribute much but who is treated with unusual deference, the drab middle-aged couple who lurk in the shadows and are always within sight of the old man...

And, yes, one reason to have more people running around is so the latter trio don't stand out quite so much as being This Is Important To The Plot.

So I'd like to have some of the other cultists, particularly aspirants to the higher ranks, in there with her. I am in no way going full Moonraker here! But at least I can have a little fun...

(Most of the in-the-cult sequence is when the James Bond basically fails. They know she's a spy, those kinds of tricks aren't working. So it is moving much more in a Chuck 2.0 direction with Penny getting a chance to put her own unique spin on things. And of course...at the end of it, the cult is in general as benign as the people behind the museum pictured above. It is the situation that gets out of hand...)