bleak

Bleak Week/0 - Monday.md

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+## $I$
+Overnight, a frigid wind had moved in silently from the ocean to the south.
+It descended from a height above, was channelled toward the east, and passed over a series of jagged glassy peaks that lay perfectly aligned along an axis to the north.
+The oppressive dry of the antarctic wind had suffocated the morning dew into a thin layer of crystal ice that capped each of the peaks but for one.
+The sharpest of them was slick with deep red blood, clinging on to liquidity as the wind, bolstered by a cold blue August sky overhead, eroded away its residual warmth. 
+Walking westward, soft silent footsteps gave way to the rising sound of glass cracking resonantly underfoot. 
+
+Visible through the shattered pane: the deep green grass of the courtyard, interspersed by thick  weeds resembling spinach and furry tufts of moss that had been torn up by blackbirds in search of worms in the early morning light. 
+Beyond: an ailing lemon tree, parasitised by wasps and leaking fragrant sap from its limbs, yet heavy with fruit in protest of its condition.
+The scene of green foliage and citric yellow backed by the wintry blue sky cut against the red puncture wound and shimmering whites of the broken glass,  it was accidental in its composition, and absolute in its devastation.
+
+An alarm was ringing. The source of the noise reported the time as 8:49am. For four minutes he must have stood transfixed by the damage, oblivious to the harsh square wave shaped beeps and vibrations of the device. 
+More noises filtered into consciousness as a return to awareness began. 
+A generator was humming dimly. Then, a popping sound. Another, louder and somewhat closer, then the first again. Soon the sounds were rapidly alternating, although devoid of rhythm and with no fixed cadence. 
+
+Nail guns. Construction had resumed on the lot next door. An unfamiliar shadow was being cast on the faded courtyard bench seat by the back door. Stepping through the door to investigate, the usual sensation of the morning sun flashing from right to left across his face, weak as it was this time of year, was absent. Scaffolding now towered overhead, obscuring the light, clanking when it was mounted and creaking while it was being traversed.
+
+The frame of the building had risen to a second storey and four wide voids in the timber work made clear where windows were to be set for the rooms of the upper floor.
+One of the tradesmen paused as they reached the top of the scaffolding and turned to look down at him standing on the courtyard pavement. 
+The sun had risen slightly and was now partially eclipsed by the tradesman, who was visible only as a dark expressionless silhouette. He waved. The shape made no motion in return. Abruptly it resumed climbing the structure, seemingly without having turned away.
+
+A third nail gun began firing.
+
+---
+## $II$
+
+Returning inside there was no relief from the chill. The wind no longer needed the cover of darkness and had begun to gather in strength. It was pushing its way inside past the now exposed faded and yellowing vertical blinds of the kitchen window. They were bunched to one end, of poor quality, and designed so that a pitifully small piece of deteriorating plastic was all that attached them to the rail above.  The lines that formerly held the bottoms of the blinds in array had lost their anchors and become a tangled mess, constantly wet with an increasing number of barnacles the farther they draped down into the kitchen sink.
+The same brand of blinds covered every piece of glass in the house. In the bedroom, three of them had been tied back onto the railing with kitchen twine. Morning streamed in as a potted vine plant forced its tendrils through the gaps between the untethered blinds.
+
+A different series of beeps signalled five minutes until nine, and the day's first meeting: the morning report. Yesterday he had slept until midday, and consequently gone to bed without eating anything that could be considered a dinner. He had planned to eat a significant breakfast upon returning home but there was now no time.
+
+The scene in the kitchen would have to wait. He grabbed a piece of under ripe fruit from the bowl atop the counter and went to his desk to attend the report. 
+His workstation had cost his organisation an absurd amount of money and was state of the art, however, inexplicably, it would cycle its power precisely three times before accepting input or showing any indication that it was working at all.
+After the first cycle he began pressing buttons at random on the keyboard:  
+
+`esc` `esc` `esc` `l` `a` `l` `a` `l` `a` `lemom`
+
+until the login terminal greeted him with the time at the top right of the display: `8:58am`
+
+It took two attempts - better than the average of 2.45 - to correctly enter the randomly generated password that had been assigned to his workstation: 
+
+```
+Y,Sy-W$Cx;s%p]~9FL!r`:(
+```
+
+A failed attempt meant a five second wait until trying again.
+
+> [!WARNING]
+> Mandatory Software Update Required
+> ...
+> Restarting now.
+
+After another three cycles he logged in once again, this time on the third try, and prepared to join the report.
+
+>[!INFO]
+>The Morning Report has already commenced. 
+>A notification of your request to enter has been sent to the already present attendees.
+
+He sighed and waited for somebody to accept the request.
+
+The camera light blinked on one second before a cacophony of voices erupted from his headset. He tore it off, his ears ringing as he scrambled to find the volume controls. The volume had been raised listening to music in the early hours of the morning whilst preparing the requisite details that were required to be delivered first thing.
+
+> Ah, the afternoon shift has arrived.
+
+a tinny voice quipped from the dangling headset as it swung rapidly back and forth. In its fall it had somehow become taughtly tangled between various pieces of desk and chair, without out a doubt damaged in such a way as to appear completely functional for weeks, if not months, then cutting out momentarily for the first time, almost imperceptibly, only on one side after a slight turning of the head, carrying on innocently for another week without interruption and then rapidly worsening, some key section of cable hastilty fastened with tape at an oblique angle in an attempt to last out the time until its replacement arrives, before finally failing catastrophically at some critical moment.
+
+> nice of you to join, had yourself a little sleep in?
+
+chided a second. the sound of a child throwing a tantrum in the same room as a button sized microphone beckoned as he continued lowering the volume, the headset onto his head, and the microphone to his lips.
+
+> I've been at the facility...
+
+All manner of domestic noise carried on in the background until the attendees gradually became aware of each other's presence. Had he been logged into his workstation when the clock struck 9am he would have seamlessly, and quite without any notification or input, been coralled into the report just the same.
+
+The attendees numbered between 6 and 10 on any given day. Those present were constantly being rotated in and out. Cameras of questionable quality or cleanliness, as well as outright missing faces, made it difficult to form any kind of attachment with the names. He often resorted to associating a general feeling and sense of the person with the colour of the small panel bearing their name on the list of people connected. Yet no sooner would he come to recognise a sugary female voice eminating in time with the glowing of a dark green panel then it would be absent the next day and replaced by three elderly and bespectacled strangers.
+
+In actual fact though, almost everybody on the call seemed to know one another if not personally then at least as a professional acquaintance of some time; the report usually consisted of gossip and rumours being exchanged until **the manager** would come online and interrupt the conversation to make some announcement.
+
+> good morning all, i'm pleased to announce the business has presented us with a tremendous new opportunity to start off our week:
+> in addition to some generalised high level downward economic pressures across the sector, a recent media cycle promoting negative sentiment for units of varying sizes has lead to an updated downgraded prediction of quarterly sales targets as well as an accelerated slowdown of advertising resource earning potential being the results of an increased reduction in tolerance for inconsistency of size between individual units within a packet.
+> what are some viable strategic tactics the routine could initiate to maintain present production rates whilst uplifting a drop in variance of unit shape and volume?
+
+**the routine** was the name given to the sophisticated monitoring software maintaining stasis within the faciltiy.
+written entirely by hand, it had brought to completion 182 yields in the 14 years since it entered production, one every 28 days; and in fact the previous night had been pitch black, with the moon's unilluminated side facing the earth making it completely invisble. it was a new moon and it marked the halfway point of the current harvest.
+
+what was being asked was of course impossible.
+the routine did not accept parameters, there was nothing to be done.
+while the yield would be produced to a specific weight predicted several cycles earlier, the number of units would be completely random as would their size.
+
+under no circumstances however, would it be acceptable to relate this information during the report.
+many "opportunities" such as these presented themselves, usually coinciding with a calamity of a more direct kind at the facility itself and today was no exception.
+
+> ohh i hate it when they're too big
+> or too long!
+> no, not long, too big! too wide!
+> but also too small is very annoying
+
+the elderly attendees, seemingly already the victims of an effort to psychologically manipulate the population into demanding changes in their assigned units, thereby depriving its manufacturer of any opportunity to improve their quality or quantity, blathered on unaware that they were contributing to the struggles of their own employer.
+
+packets had always, as a matter of efficiency, contained a mixture of different sized units but in following the precedent of its greater whole, maintained a specific weight.
+
+what was actually being asked for was a palatable alternative, something that could nominally address the issue though it may have no actual consequence, like sorting the harvest after collection to ensure that packets would contain units of roughly the same size.
+
+make no difference
+get a random packet
+will be big or small
+
+
+-- it will be 4 units --
+        of exactly the same size