THE JANITORIAL POOL, formally styled as The Worshipful Company of Custodial Attendants and commonly referred to as Brown Ops, is the largest class of the Ministry of Sloth, a ''phylum'' of the Seven Deadly Ministries.

Although frequently dismissed as a base and unworthy adjunct of the Darwintern, the Janitorial Pool is believed by Young Conspiracy Theorists to be the aboriginal organisation from which all of the cabal's manifold tentacles subsequently evolved. It is thus more properly to be regarded as the ancestor of the vast and indomitable Conspiracy That Cares which is today on the threshold of Total World Domination.

The Darwintern's Front Door

It is believed that the Janitorial Pool is the Darwintern's chief portal of recruitment. The method by which the cabal identifies potential recruits is unknown, though it is clear that only the very best and brightest are approached.

But if very "few are called, even fewer are chosen" and the brutal winnowing process commences with induction into the Janitorial Pool and the extreme demands of the initial 24-month basic training at Bowl Camp.

Brown Ops

It seems probable, from fragmentary public accounts of the rigours of Bowl Camp, that this elite corps of crack custodians is intended for operations beyond simple sanitation and building maintenance. There is speculation that some previous Darwintern Grand Master hit upon the notion that there is not a secure facility in the world to which a janitor cannot gain entry: "Quis custodes ipsos custodiet" indeed?

It seems probable that the Janitorial Pool thus provides ideal cover for any number of covert operations. This is worth bearing in mind if the harmless-looking mop-pusher in your building seems to simply ''appear'' in the vicinity of sensitive meetings and conversations, seems a tad too keen to dust the photocopier, or offers to help run data backups of your PC.

Indeed, there is a body of intriguing albeit circumstantial evidence that some nefarious activities, widely attributed to the Darwintern's Black Ops, may have been conducted solely under the aegis of the Janitorial Pool instead.

For example, documents recently found in former-Soviet archives reveal that Tsarist police uncovered "mere days before his fateful journey to Sarajevo" that Archduke Ferdinand of Austria was addicted to the low vice of micturating without first raising the seat (an offense long held to be capital by the Janitorial Pool). And so it must be said, in all questions of "Black Ops, or Brown": we report, you decide.

Janitorial Uniforms, Insignia, and Other Regalia

As holds with other divisions of the Darwintern, little (beyond the previously noted accounts of Bowl Camp drop-outs) can confidently be asserted about the Janitorial Pool. The identity or even the official title of the current "Head Custodian" of the Janitorial Pool is unknown, though it has been established that he or she is customarily referred to by codename "P." Ranks and relative grades of other personnel within the division are unknown, except that the small band who attend to the Grand Master's own Executive Washroom are widely regarded as the supreme elite of the corps.

No reliable description exists concerning the range or appearance of official uniforms of the Janitorial Pool. However, there is an intriguing photograph, allegedly smuggled out of the Bowl Camp mess hall, which purports to show the official coat of arms of the division. The crest, visible in the photo, appears to consist of a toilet seat framing a portrait of Kent Hovind, who appears to have a large, pink block wedged in his mouth and labelled,"Qu'ils mangent de la brioche de pissoir" that is, "Let them eat urinal cakes".

Institutional Culture and Esprit de Corps

One might well suppose the typical Darwintern Janitorial Pool Custodian to be a fastidious, bacteriophobic, anally-retentive drone lodged somewhere deep in the obsessive/compulsive personality spectrum. But one would thus suppose wrongly.

Although the available evidence is fragmentary, it nonetheless consistently portrays the typical Darwintern Custodian as a free-wheeling Dionysian libertine who balances hard work with even harder play. A Scarab (as Darwintern Custodians sometimes style themselves) believes on the one hand, "We are the Custodians of the Truth!," but on the other hand, "We clean up the mess, we get to make the mess!" It is stated in the secret Protocols of the Elders of Darwin (which many discount as an unreliable source of dubious provenance) that it is "P", the director of the Janitorial Pool, who by venerable tradition chairs the Darwintern Entertainment Sub-Committee Working Group.

It is also said that no virgin has ever emerged from a party in the Janitorial Pool, but it should in the same breath be pointed out that no virgin would ever wish to attend one in the first place.

An intriguing satellite photograph of the Galapagos, taken on 12 February 1991, by chance appears to have captured an enormous outdoor gala in progress on an otherwise uninhabited island of the archipelago. This is generally believed to be the location of the Darwintern Head Office (sometimes referred to as Zero-Zero), and the occasion can only be the Caring Conspiracy's annual Darwin Day (D-Day) festivities.

Although the resolution of the image is low, some hallmarks of Janitorial Pool culture have tentatively been identified, viz, the Grand Master's silk pavilion modelled after the yurt of Genghis Khan, the enormous FSM beer fountains abounding with raunchy pole-dancing strippers, and the gargantuan Wicker Piltdown Man replete with hapless Creationists preparing to meet their exquisitely-cruel, excruciatingly-slow fate in the torpid, methodical, and mercilessly blunt jaws of the legendary Anthropophagous Tortoises of the island of Santiago.

And for a Darwintern Custodian, it just doesn't get any better than this.

See also: Young Conspiracy Theory