“-and in other news,” the crystal-clear voice on the telenel says, “yet another mass grave has been discovered on the western continent of Basugio. Early reports suggest as many as 600 savages may have been buried in this particular grave. When combined with the others we’ve discovered with the help of collaborators, the running total for this region of the world becomes 25,000 deaths. When added to the total for all nine planets, we have 3.2 million civilians killed and buried by the many ethnic conflicts that marked the bloody inter-war period. Estimates for interwar deaths due to starvation and disease are still ongoing. However, even without those, the mandate for the Peldak Protectorate’s continued presence in the sector should be clear for all-“
Cyryl slaps himself hard across the cheek, then clenches his jaw.
“Focus..!” He whispers to himself as he hunches over his desk and reads the cargo manifests. “Stop listening to the news… just… read.”
Tymon enters the doorway of the cubicle, “that’s the fourth time you’ve slapped yourself today. How are you-?”
“Shut up!”
With a chuckle, Tymon goes back to his work. He has the same problem with focusing when there’s noise, but Tymon took the initiative and brought thick earmuffs which cancel most of the sound. He has a spare set for Cyryl, but he keeps being told to shut up before he has a chance to offer it to his junior.
Cyryl pours over each line of the cargo manifests, picking out his four resources.
“Wait… shit… did I look at this manifest already?” He scrambles over the papers, “aww, dammit, I forgot to mark the ones I finished!” He bites the bottom segment of his thumb, “or, no. Is this a mark, or is this a coffee stain? Was I drinking coffee?”
When a train arrives at Heaven’s Reach, it will stop at various predetermined stations, and the relevant cargo will be offloaded. It might stop at one station to offload fresh meat for nearby restaurants, then stop at another station to offload clothes or household appliances for a commercial district. If that train stops at the station connected to the warehouse upstairs, then a copy of the entire cargo manifest will be offloaded as well.
That shipping manifest will be sent to the Bureau’s Department of Document Reproduction and Retention. The manifest will be copied further, then sent to the relevant departments, such as the Department of Developing Critical Transportation Infrastructure. The DDCTI will receive 30 copies of every train that delivers resources to them, one copy for each cubicle, and every bureaucrat will have to look through the same information to take out the relevant data. Not only does Cyryl receive manifests that don’t include his four strategic resources, but he receives manifests for trains that offloaded cargo for other departments in the bureau, and have nothing to do with the DDCTI.
There are a dozen ways this system could be streamlined, but there’s no incentive to do so.
The workers in the bureau are conscripts, sent to push papers for years as part of repaying their debt to society. In the eyes of anyone capable of reforming the system, the system should be hard on the conscripts.
“Alright!” Cyryl quietly yells to himself, “that should be all the asphalt from this train, added up to the total.” He pushes away from his desk and runs over to the cubicle labeled ‘rebar.’ He then begins to run through the exact same cargo manifests that he just looked through to find asphalt, but now he’s searching for shipments of rebar.
Tymon has the same process, moving to each cubicle and reading the same manifest a dozen times, once for each resource. He could sit down in one spot and take out all of his assigned resources at once, though he prefers the small bit of activity that comes from switching cubicles. Small he may be, he’s still a peldak who has trouble sitting still, so running from cubicle to cubicle is like a reward for all his hard work. Cyryl’s only doing it because he’s copying Tymon.
Cyryl leans back in his chair and covers his face with his hands. “There’s gotta be a better way to do this.”
“-the 17th legion-“ the telenel mentions his former legion, and Cyryl’s ears perk. He listens for a moment, but quickly bites his cheek and shakes his head.
“No, no, no. That doesn’t matter, focus on this.” He gets up from his chair and paces around the room, muttering to himself. “What’s the issue? Well, I can’t focus. Why can’t I focus? There’s a lot of work, and the work is boring. So… to fix that, I have to either do less work, or make it less boring.” He shakes his head, “no, the amount of work doesn’t matter. I hated this job when I only had one resource, and the only way to lessen the workload would be to tell Tymon I was wrong, which isn’t going to happen. The only option is I need to make it less boring.”
He grabs the train manifest, then sets it on the ground. Putting his hands on either side of the carpet, so the paper is between them, he kicks his legs out so he’s in a push up position. When he goes down, his nose nearly touches the paper, and he reads a line. When he pushes up, he exhales. Down, new line, up, exhale. On and on for every line until he comes to a shipment of rebar. While balancing on his left hand, he grabs a pencil and notepad from his desk, writes the number down, then continues.
“Th-there we go! This isn’t so bad, I guess. I’m getting the pent-up energy out of my body, and I’m getting work done. This works.”
Cyryl repeats this process for the next six hours. Sometimes he does pushups, other times he switches to squats, or a dozen other exercises involving repetitive tasks. It also serves as a good distraction from the news reports.
After a week of this, Tymon calls Cyryl over at the beginning of the shift.
“Stop working out in your cubicle.”
“Wha-? Why?”
“Because your math sucks again, and you keep making typos.” Tymon takes out a notepad, “I made a list last night, when I was going over your many errors. Basic math errors, switching numbers, decimal points in the wrong spot, and you’re getting port names wrong. It might not seem important, but Port Argham is different from Port Arhgam; they’re on completely different planets.” Tymon lowers his notepad, “I gave you a bit of leeway, since I thought you’d improve over time, but it just got worse. If I need to check your work to this degree, just give me the resources back, and I’m throwing the telenel out.”
Cyryl clenches his teeth. “Fine.”
The following week is full of accurate numbers and correct spelling, but also mental anguish and suicidal ideations.
“Alright, Klem, let me talk through my thought process, right?” Cyryl says as he’s leaning against Klem’s wall. “So, we’re all getting the same cargo manifests, right?”
“Yeah.”
“And they all have the same numbers and cargo, right?”
“Yeah, we’re given copies.”
“So…” Cyryl taps his foot on the ground to jumpstart is thinking, “what if we work together? We look through the same list, take out our combined five resources, and then do the math together!”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because it’d be easier for both of us.”
“But if you have four, and I have one… splitting that between us would mean,” he turns to his desk and taps the numbers into his large metal calculator. “If we share it, that’d mean I’m doing 2.5 resources. Which is more work for me.” He turns back to Cyryl, “so why would I?”
Cyryl stares at him for a second, then flashes a smile and a blasts a finger gun, “to help a friend out?”
“Why don’t you help yourself and just give the extra work back to Tymon?”
“I’d sooner jump out that window and land on my neck.”
Klem sighs and slaps Cyryl’s muscular shoulder, “sorry, man.”
“R-right, yeah. Probably a dumb thought anyway.” Cyryl pauses for a second, but then rushes over to Tymon’s current cubicle, “hey! I had a random thought, but I think it might improve efficiency. Thought I’d run it by you, being the director and all. Boss. Sir. So… what if-“
“Having everyone work together doesn’t work.” Tymon flaps his long ears, signaling that he heard what Cyryl said to Klem. “I’ve tried it before, several different times.” He shifts around bits of paper on his desk, looking over requests for materials. “Peldaks can’t work together like that. There’re always accusations of cheating, someone gets punched, and then I have to spend time requisitioning new furniture.”
“…okay but what if-“
“I tried hiring a guard to keep everyone in line, but it’s impossible to find quality candidates. Either they’re too weak and get swarmed by all the convicts, too savage and end up getting arrested for assault, or they’re perfect but soon leave for the military since they’re also perfect for being an officer, and nobody would choose the bureaucracy over the military.”
“How about-“
“Telephones would keep everyone from punching each other out, but they’re too unreliable for the kind of coordination you’re imagining.”
“If we just-“
“A man almost died because I thought putting you convicts in shackles would work. Someone wrapped their chains around his neck and kept squeezing.” Tymon swivels in his chair to look his subordinate in the eyes. “Cyryl, peldaks don’t work well together, you need to just do the work yourself.” He stands, then walks past Cyryl to his next cubicle. “Or throw yourself out the window.”
“Hah-hah,” Cyryl forces a laugh, with his face quickly turning sour after Tymon leaves. “How about I throw you out the window… A body that small, I could probably toss you into the canal.”
While his plan of combining work with others has failed, the idea of extracting all the numbers in one go and not re-reading the manifest four times could be a winner. So, he does just that. He reads each train manifest once, and pulls concrete powder, cement, asphalt, and rebar from a single read.
Not only does he start finishing his work at a record pace, but it gives him the time to listen to the telenel, or even go down to the gym! It’s still not fun, but he can reliably bite the inside of his cheek and bust out the necessary numbers, then add them up.
Sadly, it doesn’t last forever.
After two weeks of this new plan, Tymon is at the back door that leads to the staircase, waiting for Cyryl to enter.
The director flips out an envelope.
“What’s this?” Cyryl asks as he swipes it from Tymon’s hand.
“Complaints. From the warehouses. You’ve been mixing up the numbers and giving them impossible orders.”
“Mixing up the numbers?” Cyryl opens the top and takes out the various papers. They’re the forms that Cyryl has sent to the warehouses, with various bits circled in red ink.
“It took me an hour to figure out what you did wrong this time,” Tymon speaks with a bit more venom in his voice than intended, but he doesn’t care enough to correct his tone. “The math was right, but you kept mixing up numbers. Like here,” he points to a datasheet, “I’m almost certain that this number is actually the total for several shipments of rebar, but you put it in for concrete powder. But again, I really have no idea what you were trying to do. And, of course, you kept making these mistakes and haven’t improved at all.”
“Oh.” Cyryl rubs the stubble on his chin. “Okay, that’s an easy fix. I’ll just rearrange the cubicles so all five of mine are in one giant cubicle, and then, uh… it’ll be easier to keep track of.”
“How would that make it easier to keep track of?”
“Um…” Cyryl taps his foot.
“And you’ll put the cubicles back for the second shift?”
“Tch,” Cyryl clicks his tongue, “yeah, yeah. I get it.”
There’s nothing Cyryl can do to make the job easier. He just has to sit down, shut up, and suffer through his assignment. Granted, his suffering is by design. If he didn’t want to do this job, he shouldn’t have instigated a riot.