Free Ninth City Burning by J. Patrick Black

settlements. Cranely puts the glasses away and starts shuffling around his desk. “What was it we agreed? Four pages?”
    â€œSeven.” Cranely isn’t trying to swindle me. He’s just being polite.
    â€œYes, yes. Seven pages. A fine memory you’ve got. Keep it sharp, that’s my advice.” He gets out an envelope and hands it to me. Inside are seven folded pages. That’s what I mean about old Cranely. He was always going to give me seven pages. He had them all ready.
    I put the envelope into my satchel with about a third of the bread and milk. Spammers will be by later to pick up the rest. Cranely is still chuckling to himself as he unlocks the store to let me out. “You come by anything else like those glasses, you be sure and bring it here.”
    â€œNine pages, right?” I ask.
    Old Cranely just loves that.
    After I leave Cranely’s, I head for the Square, just a few blocks away.The whole place is pretty much empty this time of day, since mostly everyone is at work or asleep, but there are a few bureaucrats going in and out of the Office of the Prefect. It’s like twice the size of any other building in the Square, and all brick and concrete, with these big tall steps. Real impressive stuff. The bureaucrats kind of look at me as I go up the stairs, like I’m the first factory worker they’ve ever seen.
    The Prefect Building has these two huge staircases right inside the doors, but there are never very many people on the upper floors. Everyone is waiting in line to get into this other big room, where there are even more lines to wait in. That’s why you don’t see many workers here. We only get one day free every ten, and no one wants to spend it in some dumb line. But for a lot of bureaucrats, that’s pretty much their job. Spammers worked awhile at the meat farms, and he said the bureaucrats here look just like pigs at the troughs. That’s not so far off, I guess. You can see them all lined up on benches, waiting to talk to someone more important than they are. Talking to someone more important is basically like their food.
    I wait in one line to fill out a grievance form, then wait in another line to hand it in. The guy at the window reads it and kind of smiles at me as he gives me my number, 732-00-5. Instead of going to wait on the benches, though, I duck into the hall. It’s pretty quiet out there, and I just pace around a bit, listening to my footsteps.
    After a while the door opens, and Camareen comes out. “Calling number 732-00-5,” she says, then she kisses me.
    Camareen and me have been going together for about two years. She’s the prettiest girl in the world. I know not everyone would think that. I mean, she’s not busty like the girl in Mersh’s poster, but I don’t care. And anyway, the poster girl isn’t real. That’s one thing I don’t get about Mersh. There are real girls all over the place, and he’s obsessed with this girl on a poster. I don’t know. Maybe I wouldn’t feel that way if I didn’t get to see Camareen all the time. She’s got these green eyes that look like the ocean on a sunny day, like when you open your eyes underwater and there’s sun shining down and you can’t stop looking, even though it stings.
    â€œHi, Camareen.”
    â€œAnd what exactly is
this
?” Camareen holds up my grievance form. She’s a junior clerk for the Assistant Sub-Prefect of Production, and I filled out the boxes so the form would go right to her. It’s pale green, the form, a very different green from her eyes, sort of like nauseated-looking. At thebottom, where you’re supposed to explain your grievance, it says, “Camareen works too much.”
    â€œI have some real problems with the way things are run around here,” I say.
    â€œI’m taking my ten-minute break now, how’s that?”
    â€œIt’s a start.” I wait for her