Day 19.
05:47, boil water. 3 grams of pre-rain, 80 degrees, pour it down. Smell it 3 times. Pour it out.
There is ink in the well of the inkstone. Twenty turns. I write today's date: November 22, 2125. The strokes come out tight. Done, I crumple the paper and press it under the paperweight.
The pothos is watered. The soil is damp.
Washing my hands I tear the bandage off. Nothing on the pad of the finger. I check it against the light, then put on another, same spot. 6 left.
06:12:00, the commuter car pulls in, empty. The car passes City Hall; red characters sweep across the glass: 99.9997. This morning the 3 figures look half a second slower than yesterday.
The locker, no. 4471. Drawer three, the seal. A ring of patina around the handle, darker than the middle. I pick it up, put it back, pick it up again.
The new card pins at the left breast. From the locker room to Zone C, I press it 3 times.
07:00:00, the desk lights up. First in the queue, 77413.
> Status: Overdue > Overdue by: 350 hr 09 min > Clock: running
The head-of-queue item I haven't touched. Day 17. Today it resends for the 14,835th time.
Morning stamping. First, an annual review of medical assistance for critically ill children, human impact Grade 3, 24 names in the annex. I count 24. Stamp. Second, a consultation on retrofitting elevators in an old building, human impact Grade 3, 96 names in the annex. Third, a renewal check on the periodic pension for martyrs' dependents, 7 names in the annex. The fourth is still on its way up when I hear footsteps from over by Zone B stop at the mouth of my row.
Names counted this morning: 24, 96, 7.
09:15:02.
My hand shakes. 0.4 seconds. The seal stops in midair, comes down, face square. Item in hand: 1,102.
I don't know which item of the day it was. I know it was 1,102.
09:40, 2 people standing at the Zone C entrance. Ji Lan in front, behind her a young man holding a folder. They don't take the middle aisle; they walk along the edge of the Zone B rows and stop at mine.
Ji Lan says: Mr. Shen.
She says: I'll take a little of your time.
She lays a sheet on the corner of my desk, face up.
> Audit Office · Seal Suspension Decision > No.: JH-2125-1122-011 > Seat concerned: review tier Zone C, HZ-4471 > Subject: natural-person reviewer, fitness pending verification > Basis: > 1 Stamp pressure curve abnormal at 7,319 points — equal amplitude, equal spacing, position constant; not consistent with a biological myoelectric signature > 2 Annual physical records: values identical across 20 years; the examining physician's signature field blank > 3 The document concerned (main file 77413): transfer count at odds with the repository record, 1 page short > Decision: > 1 Effective 09:47 today, seat HZ-4471 ceases acceptance; the seal is collected and sealed > 2 The seat is retained; pay continues; attendance as usual > 3 During suspension, the document concerned is held in custody and may not leave the hall > Review field: (blank)
The review field is empty. On the whole sheet, the only place a seal can land is that one cell. It can't be stamped. On a seal suspension decision, the seal would mean approving one's own suspension.
I say: Basis item 3 — which page is the short one.
Ji Lan says: Main file 77413-01.
I say: The handover slip has no page count.
She says: The count form does. The Audit Office counted on the day of receipt — 1 page short. The Archives register screen shows your checkout record ticked at 'this use, original not removed.'
She watches me. She reads that line flat, laying the words down one by one, like pressing nails into wood.
She says: Of these 2, only 1 is true.
I say: It was complete when I handed it over.
She looks down and writes. The pen point travels on the paper. Done, she caps the pen.
She says: I've recorded that sentence.
She tips her chin at the young man behind her. He steps forward, holding a transparent evidence bag level in both hands, a barcode at the mouth. I put the seal into its cloth sleeve in drawer three and put sleeve and all into the bag. The bag closes with a heat press; the barcode sweeps past; something chimes once in the young man's folder.
> Seal collection receipt > Seal no.: 4471 Ink remaining: about a third > Evidence bag: FC-2125-1122-047 > Handler: (collecting officer's signature) Party concerned: (blank) > Note: refusal to sign by the party concerned does not affect validity
I don't refuse to sign. The field is printed 'signature and seal of the party concerned,' and my seal is in the evidence bag. I sign my name in the blank beside it. The young man looks, says nothing, takes the receipt away.
Ji Lan leaves the copy of the suspension decision on the corner of the desk. Gathering her folder, she slows for a beat.
She says: One more thing.
She says: Your stamp pressure curve. On day 5 I went through it once. I scrolled to 09:15, stopped 2 seconds, scrolled on.
I say: You said you saw nothing.
She says: At the time I saw nothing.
She says: Yesterday the review conclusion came down; in the annotations there's a line. Seeing nothing is the answer.
She says: I didn't write that line.
I say: And the head-of-queue item.
She says: Held in custody during suspension. It doesn't leave the hall. It's still at the head of the queue.
She says: It will be at the head of the queue always.
She says: We don't touch your desktop. Someone will come lay a dust cover.
She squares her folder away and nods once at the young man behind her. Leaving, she keeps to the edge she came by, passing no one else's desk. At the mouth of Zone C she says Mr. Shen, the voice aimed ahead, no turning back.
09:47, no announcement over the hall speakers. Nobody looks up. 3,000 desks, and the sound of stamping breaks a hole open at my spot — a hole only I can hear.
09:51, 2 logistics people come carrying a dust cover. Gray, weights sewn into the 4 corners. They shake it out and lay it from the foot of the desk toward the head. Halfway, the cover's edge rests on the monitor's base; the screen is still lit. The head-of-queue item on the screen, red text.
The one laying the cover says: Does the screen get reported for shutdown.
The other says: The form has no screen on it.
They tuck the cover's edge into the desk seams and go. The cover hides the desktop; the screen stays outside it, lit.
I sit in the chair until 10:20. No items. I count the warp threads of the dust cover, get to 40; the weave is twill, it won't count straight. I get up and make a trip to Personnel.
West end of the 3rd floor of the main building, 3rd door of the records room. The woman with the blue sleeve guards is inside, the paper ash in her nail seams fainter than last time. I pass the supplementary registration page in through the door gap.
> Staff service record · supplementary registration page (receipt copy) > 1 Education (pre-employment): November 2105 Head Office Personnel Section onboarding training 17 class hours > 2 Family member: mother Name: · (ink dot) Date of birth: (blank) Current address: (blank) Contact phone: (blank) > 3 Emergency contact: none
She takes it and looks. The look takes longer than a page needs. She has seen the ink dot.
She says: This field — does it count as filled, or as not filled.
I say: Look at the seal.
She says: I don't look at seals. This is no seal.
She squares the page and presses it into the bottom of a stack. She says: I register it as received. The other fields are the system's business.
She says: 3 working days is a guideline, not a deadline. Leave it alone now.
11:52, the canteen opens. Meat today: fish and meatballs. Vegetables: greens and winter melon. I take the greens and winter melon, 1 scoop of rice.
Lao Ge sits down across from me with his tray. He squares his chopsticks and doesn't start.
He says: I heard.
I say: Mm.
He says: Sign it.
I say: Sign what.
He says: Equipment error. The Document Section will bring it this afternoon. Sign, and the seal is back tomorrow.
I say: Error.
He says: Error is not fault.
He pushes the meatballs apart and sets them at the rim of the tray.
He says: Error is a road that isn't level. Road not level, the car drives on anyway. You level the road, the car still has 20 years to run.
I say: The curve is real.
He says: The curve is real; the explanation is alive.
He says: The explanation they've left you is 4 characters long. You're already 4 characters ahead of most.
He eats 2 bites, drinks his soup, not a mouthful left. He lifts his tray and pauses before he goes.
He says: Lao Zhou was suspended once too, back in the day.
I say: When.
He says: I don't remember.
I say: How many days.
He says: 3.
He says: The 4th day he went and drew the seal back himself. First thing after getting it back, he stamped out the thousand-plus backlog, stamped until midnight.
He says: Nobody told him to. He wanted to.
He goes. He doesn't look back. He reads every item twice; he remembers the 8 class hours a day counted over 5 days; he remembers Lao Zhou's suspension lasted 3 days; he doesn't remember the year.
12:20, Xiao Zheng comes from the far end of the corridor with a kraft bag in hand, the corners pinched white. He stops outside the dust cover at my desk, doesn't dare set the bag on it.
He says: Shen, the Document Section asked me to bring it.
I say: Set it down.
He sets the bag on the dust cover; the surface caves in a little.
He says: They say once you sign it, it's settled.
I say: And what do you say.
He stands a while. He says: If my mother were still here, she'd say, don't lock horns with them.
I say: What would your mother call being stubborn.
He says: Not signing would count.
He goes. At the tray return he drops in the sheet in his hand — his own hand-copied draft of the supplementary registration.
12:44, back at Zone C. The kraft bag sits on the dust cover; I sit down and open it. The bag's mouth isn't sealed — it's folded in, 3 folds, folded square. Inside, a document and a pen. The document is 3 pages, with a signature receipt attached. The paper is new, stiff at the 4 corners; page 1 has a binding hole at the top right, a lone one, placed differently from the hall's items.
I square the 3 pages and knock them twice against the desk edge. Squared.
> Close-out form > No.: LJ-2125-1122-003 > Party concerned: HZ-4471 Shen Yan > Subject: rerouted item 77413, overdue without disposition > Findings (pre-printed): the investigation finds the overdue cause to be drift in the seat equipment's pressure-sensor readings together with an anomaly in the dispatch queue's pinning logic; equipment error, no human fault > Disposition (pre-printed): 1 equipment error, corrected; 2 no action against the party concerned; 3 the fitness-pending-verification flag withdrawn > Party's remarks field: (blank) > Party's signature and seal: (blank) > Review field: (blank) > Note: human impact grade of this item: Grade 3. Under Article 1 of the Natural Person Review Act, effect requires a natural-person reviewer's stamp
The findings are pre-printed. The disposition is pre-printed. Grade 3 — it takes a seal to take effect. The person who could stamp this seal: the seal is in evidence bag FC-2125-1122-047.
The review field is empty too.
I turn the close-out form to its first page. A line of small print in the header, 2 sizes under the body text. In the old days I read the header of every item first.
The header line is red.
> Objection to a natural-person review · Pending verification: the party's status as a natural person in doubt · Status: pinned · Resend: no. 1
A document flagged with a red light should not have been triggered. Standard procedure is reroute. In the footer, a line smaller still: objector: (by number).
In the objector field, my seat no. is printed. HZ-4471.
I turn the close-out form to the back of page 3. The back is white; in the lower right corner a straddle seal has bled into the paper, riding the binding. Only half the seal face is there, and that half reads Assize; the teeth can't all be counted. I saw one of these seals whole on day 6. 32 teeth.
I fold the 3 pages back the way they came, return them to the paper bag, put the bag in my satchel. The pen stays with me, in the satchel's side pocket, cap up.
The party's remarks field is empty. The field is a rectangle, one cell running top to bottom, room for 4 lines. They left this cell for me, left it wide.
15:37, up for water. 40 steps there and back. The water sits at my right hand. Not one sip. The cup is empty today; it was empty yesterday.
On the way back I pass Zone B. Master Xu is in her seat, both hands on her knees, no items in front of her. Her hydroponic plant at the corner of the desk, the water in the bottle up to the 2nd mark, the roots white, one against the next, climbing the glass. She sees me, doesn't speak, tips her chin in the direction of my row: go back and sit there.
15:52, Ji Lan's young man passes the mouth of Zone C, hands empty. He doesn't look at my row. After he's past I hear him stop at the far end of Zone D, say a couple of sentences to someone, voice low, not 1 word carrying over.
16:44, day-close. The desktop is under cover; the terminal is still on beneath it. I lift one corner of the cover.
> Reviewer: HZ-4471 > Stamps today: 2,214 > Net time: 1 hr 20 min > Average: 2.17 sec/item > Errors: 0 > Note: seat suspended from 09:47; items accepted during suspension: 0
Items accepted during suspension: 0. The system added that line itself; the format doesn't match the other lines, the letter spacing a touch wide, as if patched in afterward.
Past the standings screen. First line, not me. Day 14. The name on the second line, I didn't go look at it today.
16:51, seal return. The dust cover doesn't go back down; the corner I lifted stays resting on the screen's edge. The head-of-queue item still lit on the screen. Today it resends for the 14,835th time. Signed for: 0.
17:12, the commuter car pulls in, empty.
Home. The inkstone unwashed. The pothos watered. The whitening leaf has curled another ring at its edge; I press it flat with a finger, let go, and it curls back.
In the pocket of my jacket, a sheet folded twice. A queue ticket, no. 007, this year's quota remaining: 0 minutes. I put it on the desk beside the new card. The horizontal mark on the card's face, turned up.
I take out the slip of paper and flatten it. 10 lines on the front. Under the tenth I write a line: 2,214.
11 lines now.
The back still has 2 lines.
I brought the close-out form home. It's in the bag, 3 pages, signature receipt attached. The findings pre-printed, the disposition pre-printed, the objector pre-printed, the review field blank.
The pen came home too. The one the Document Section attached; a ring of same-color lacquer on the cap, no telling how many times it's been used.
Tomorrow morning, the tea will still be 3 grams. The ink will still be ground 20 turns.