Inspection Day stretches along the dome like an elastic lung, inhaling people, exhaling patience. Times on the noticeboard slide without apology, queues coil around corners, and oxygen safety becomes the Trust’s favourite hymn. Blue thread slips into cuffs and pockets where cameras pretend not to see, children fog Grey Ward jumpsuits with borrowed breath, and the Glass Sleet taps at the shell above as if counting how long they can keep everyone waiting.
Verity Dunn joins the line to have her variance stamped and finds hours peeled away instead, her hearing pushed a month into the future so suspicion can earn its keep. Shade murmurs survival advice, Hadrin walks a boy called Sine through a door that smells of lemon and paper, and Grey Ward’s quiet defiance earns her a detour to Secondary Processing. By the time Verity escapes the corridor with its polite threats and grateful signage, a stranger has pressed a folded scrap into her hand: twenty names, one promise. We share.
Welcome to Arrow-Far, the first story in The Minute Economy.
A planet where air is currency, time is rationed, and kindness is a regulated act. In the Dry Room, policies are written to look like mercy. Beyond the glass, the wards learn what scarcity sounds like when it hums through the pipes. One chapter at a time, the world unfolds, measured, monitored, and always a little too dry.
The Pattern of Waiting
Chapter 2
They changed inspection days the way some people change lovers. Quietly, without apology, and always with the confidence that those left waiting would pretend not to mind.
I found out at the Coil board. Yesterday the notice had promised VALVE SAFETY, WARD C, 09:00, in the crisp font that made everything feel as if someone important had signed it. This morning the paper had been replaced with something just different enough to be insulting. VALVE SAFETY, WARD C, 11:00. Same font. Same laminate. New time. A little droplet icon in the corner, as if water felt reassured when someone doodled it.
Someone had drawn a blue line across the bottom with a blunt pencil. No words, just the colour. That was new as well.
“It was nine,” I said.
“Everything was nine,” said Lira, who shared my bench on Greenside and never lifted her eyes from the root charts unless a pipe exploded. “Now it is eleven. Perhaps the valves prefer a lie in.”
“Someone could have told us.”
“Someone did,” Lira said. “They changed the paper.”
The basil behind us breathed politely against the glass. The air in Coil always smelled faintly of plant damp and burnt insulation, as if the colony did not want to commit to either forest or factory and had settled for a compromise that irritated the sinuses.
“It is allocation week,” I said. “We have hours scheduled. We have work to do.”
“Then you had better go and queue now,” Lira said, marking a small cross on the chart in the place where humidity had misbehaved last cycle. “The colony likes to rehearse scarcity. It keeps everyone good at pretending they do not want to shout.”
She did not look up to see whether I took the hint. Coil people did not waste eye contact on things that were obvious, like gravity or bureaucracy.
I palmed my badge, checked my wrist for the faint ghosts of the last variance stamp, and headed for the valve hall.
The corridors between Coil and the inspection area ran along the inner curve of the dome, close enough that you could feel the temperature lean against the walls. The domes ran warm on allocation weeks. People took longer showers, cooked for more mouths, stayed up late to argue about the price of fruit. The condensers groaned in sympathy and everything hummed a note higher.
Floor markings guided us. Yellow lines for oxygen drills, green for waste drop, blue for water. The blue paint had been refreshed recently, brighter than it had any right to be. Somebody wanted us to remember where water lived. Somebody else had started to tie the same colour into bits of thread and cloth, worn under pockets and around wrists. That second somebody was not invited to meetings.
I counted ribbons as I went. One tucked into the seam of a jacket on a woman from Wash. Two stitched into the cuff of a man’s coverall near the algae lifts. A child’s plait tied off with the faint ghost of blue, already greying with wear. They had multiplied since last week. No one said their meaning aloud, but meaning did not need permission.
The inspection hall sat three bends along from the Red Seal and one level below the Dock Market. On quiet days the corridor outside smelled of polish and processed air. Today it carried the sharp tang of too many people breathing the same blend of oxygen and expectation.
The queue started before the corner. That should have been my first warning. A healthy queue only bent once. This one curved along the wall, turned into the next corridor, and disappeared entirely around the second bend.
Someone had taped new signage above the first bend.
OXYGEN SAFETY CHECKPOINT. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.
The words had the cheerful ring of someone who did not intend to be the one doing the waiting.
The queue was almost beautiful if you squinted. Coveralls in every ward colour, a few imported jackets in Founder beige, heads dipping and rising in slow, choreographed misery. The hum of voices rode just under the condenser note. No raised voices. No laughter either. Laughter travelled. The colony did not like noise it had not scheduled.
I took my place behind a woman in Grey Ward uniform. Laundry. Her hands were cracked and whitened at the knuckles from the chemical baths that pretended to be soap. A baby slept against her shoulder, cheek pressed flat, breath leaving little bursts of fog on the fabric of her jumpsuit. There was a scrap of blue folded under her chest pocket, almost invisible unless you knew where to look.
“Long,” she said, without turning.
“Longer than it was meant to be,” I said.
“That is inspection days,” she said. “They grow.”
I thought of saying that the paper had been changed, that people had planned their mornings around a time that no longer existed, but she already knew. Everyone here had walked past the board. Everyone here had pretended that a changed notice was the same as being told.
The queue moved one small, reluctant step. The floor underfoot juddered in rhythm with the condensers above. Light panels washed everything in a neutral white that made people look as if they had been peeled and reassembled.
Ahead, a steward stood on a crate to address us. He cradled his tablet carefully, as if he were holding a child or a grenade.
“Thank you for your patience,” he called. “Oxygen safety procedures are in effect. Please remain in your assigned queue position. Do not lean against the walls. Do not obstruct the vents. Do not panic.”
Nobody had been panicking. The word arrived like a seed, settled in, and began to think about sprouting.
We moved again, another step, two. I could feel the weight of people behind me, a shared animal pressing forward. The corridor was just wide enough to fit a queue, a steward, and the idea that no one would try to push past. Arrow Far trusted us to be sensible in the ways that made its work easier.
Someone further back made a low joke about the oxygen safety icon. A few people stirred, the sound of listeners deciding whether to be encouraged. A camera eye above the bend tilted minutely towards the voice. The conversation died a quiet, natural death.
The baby coughed and complained against his mother’s neck. She kissed his hair. Her ribbon winked at me like a dare.
“You know why it is slower,” I said, very carefully not a question.
She shifted her weight from one heel to the other. “They say extra checks in the wards. They say new readings.”
“They say many things.”
She lifted one shoulder, then let it fall. “Perhaps they forgot what lives further down the queue.”
“What is that.”
She looked at me then, properly. Her eyes were tired but clear.
“Minutes,” she said. “This is the cheapest punishment they own.”
Time behaved oddly inside the queue. I could have checked my wrist-chron, but the colony had trained us not to trust anything that did not hum. Instead, I counted the condenser cycle. Every twelve breaths, a small drop in the tone as the system shifted load. Every sixty, a faint metallic click from somewhere behind the wall. After a while my body took those as the new seconds and the old ones stopped mattering.
We moved enough that my calves began to complain. People stretched in small, apologetic ways. An older man ahead of the mother bent slowly, hands to knees, vertebrae clicking in protest. A steward near the corner looked up, about to reprimand him for obstructing the vents, then seemed to think better of it.
Behind me, a boy in algae green whispered that he would give three shower minutes for a chair. Someone else muttered that chairs cost more now the Trust had discovered they cast shadows that could hide intentions.
“That is not funny,” his companion said.
“That is why I said it quietly,” he replied.
The camera above us blinked. The lens did not move, but the casing made a small noise as it warmed. Noise travelled in more ways than one.
I saw Shade before he spoke. He came through the security door at the far end of the corridor, the one that usually only breathed for stewards and people with excuses. His badge caught the light in the way badges did when they had been polished in case of superiors. His hair lay in obedient lines. He carried his tablet under one arm, a formal posture that told the cameras this was work, not curiosity.
He walked along the outside of the queue, checking nothing in particular. It would have looked aimless to anyone who did not know how much of his life was spent learning to appear aimless. As he passed the blue ribbons his gaze lingered just a fraction too long, long enough to register without accusing.
When he came level with me he paused. Not quite at my shoulder, not quite in front. An angle that allowed us both to pretend this was coincidence.
“Morning, Coil,” he said.
“Morning, Red Seal,” I said.
He glanced at my wrist, noted the faint echo of last month’s variance stamp.
“You were scheduled for a hearing today.”
“Yes,” I said.
He tapped his slate. The screen glowed a pale, disapproving green. “You are now scheduled for a hearing in thirty one days’ time.”
“That is not a reschedule,” I said. “That is a punishment with nice handwriting.”
“Only if you argue,” he said.
“And if I do not argue.”
“Then it is a clerical adjustment in the interest of overall safety.” His voice warmed a fraction. “You know how safety enjoys interest.”
“I have work in Coil.”
“So do the inspectors.” He lowered his tone, just enough that the nearest camera would have to work harder. “Breathe through your nose for the next five minutes.”
“Is the air different there.”
“No,” he said. “You are less likely to say something that gets you another stamp.”
He moved on before I could decide whether to be grateful or furious. The tired part of me elected to be both.
We had reached the first bend by the time the door flared again. This time Hadrin stepped through, the corridor light catching him as if it had been told to. His uniform was immaculate in the way that suggested it had been ironed on an empty hanger before he stepped into it. His jaw looked as if it had never met softness. Behind him, smaller, shoulders set in an approximation of bravery, was Sine.
Sine’s coveralls still carried a faint green stain from algae work that never quite washed out. His hair was damp, as if he had rinsed off in a hurry. His eyes did not quite know where to rest.
“Routine valve permit check,” Hadrin told the queue, his voice spreading down the corridor with the authority of someone who expected to be believed. “No cause for concern.”
The mother in front of me tightened her grip on her child. The baby made a small noise in his sleep, a protest against the word routine.
Sine’s gaze landed on mine, stuck, then skittered away. His hands were empty, fingers flexing as if they had expected to be holding tools instead.
“Afternoon, Dunn,” Hadrin said, as if we were passing in a garden. “Coil running smooth.”
“Coil runs as you allocate,” I said.
He smiled in a way that did not disturb his eyes. “That is what I like to hear.”
He rested a hand on Sine’s shoulder. Pat. Pressure.
“Just some clarification on his permit record,” Hadrin said for the nearest camera. “We will have him back to his bunk in no time.”
The door into the inner inspection corridor opened on a gust of air that smelled of lemon disinfectant and hot metal. Sine hesitated.
“Sir, I have a half shift at the beds,” he said, not quite a plea.
“We all have shifts,” Hadrin said. “Some of them involve paper.”
Sine caught my eye again. There was a flash of something like apology, though I could not tell if he was sorry for leaving the beds or for letting me see him like this.
He disappeared through the door. It closed with a soft hiss, a seal engaging. The corridor swallowed the sound and went back to its hum.
The queue breathed in one direction, out in the other. People shuffled closer to the walls without leaning. Oxygen safety mattered, we had been told. We had been told that so often it had become an excuse.
We moved like that for another twenty minutes, half steps and stop starts. The baby woke and complained, then allowed himself to be rocked back into resentment. The older man ahead of the mother began to sweat through his collar. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve, then looked at the damp patch as if it had betrayed him.
The steward on the crate repeated his speech. Oxygen safety, patience, thank you. The words came out flatter this time. They had been used too often this morning.
“Maybe the oxygen is low because they have filled the corridors with unnecessary officials,” someone behind me muttered. It was the algae boy, the one who had offered shower minutes for a chair. His voice was low, but humour travelled on a different frequency.
“Careful,” his companion said. “The walls enjoy gossip.”
I looked up at the vent above us. Air poured through a grille that someone had cleaned recently. The screws had been tightened so hard the paint had cracked around them. That was the kind of maintenance that happened when people were watched.
Somewhere further down the queue a child started to cry. Not the baby in front of me, an older child whose patience had run out before his legs did. The sound wavered along the corridor, climbing and falling. The mother in front turned her face slightly, her profile pinched, as if the crying belonged to all of us and none of us wanted ownership.
A steward wove through the line to find the source. There was a murmur, a few soothing words, a small gift of a water sip from someone who could afford to share. The crying calmed. The steward went back to his crate. The queue reabsorbed the interruption and went on.
By the time the front desk came into view my feet had accepted a new religion. The woman in Grey shifted the baby to her other shoulder, wincing as his weight settled into new bruises. My throat felt dry in that particular way that had nothing to do with oxygen and everything to do with patience.
The inspection station itself looked clean and bored. Three stewards sat behind a long counter, each with their tablet ready, each expression set to Professional Polite. Only one of them was Shade. He stood off to the side, checking something on a wall panel, face angled towards the camera as if to prove his distance.
I watched Grey Ward step up to the middle desk. She placed her permit card down with the care of someone handing over a child.
“Name,” the steward asked, though it was printed clearly on the card.
She told him. He read it back as if he had discovered it. His eyes fell to the blue ribbon just visible at her pocket. His mouth did not change shape, but his shoulders stiffened by a fraction.
“You have a flagged ribbon,” he said.
“It is thread,” she replied.
“Ribbons are approved for use only as part of sanctioned mourning garments and official Founders’ celebrations.”
“It is thread,” she repeated. “My child likes the colour.”
He considered this. The camera above the desk drifted a degree to the right, framing them neatly.
“We will need to check your valve access,” he said. “For oxygen safety.”
“Is my thread breathing too much air now,” she asked.
He did not answer. He keyed something in. Her permit screen flashed amber.
“Oxygen safety queue. Corridor B. Follow the markings please. You will be sent new instructions.”
She looked as if she would argue. Her baby chose that moment to cough a thin, dry cough. She turned away, gathered him close, and headed obediently for Corridor B, where the signs on the wall read SECONDARY PROCESSING. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.
She did not look back. That was how the colony liked it.
When my turn came I stepped up to the desk she had vacated. The steward sitting there was new to me, his badge fresh enough that the edges had not yet dulled. He picked up my permit card and held it like something he might need to scold.
“Name.”
“Verity Dunn, Coil Systems, C Nine.”
“Variance on record,” he said, before I had finished. “Unauthorised humidity event in Greenhouse Three, twenty three oh seven, thirty nine days ago.”
“I was pruning,” I said.
“At eleven at night.”
“The basil does not keep office hours.”
He did not smile. He tapped his slate, then nodded as if the numbers confirmed his suspicions.
“You were scheduled for a variance hearing today,” he said. “This has now been rescheduled.”
“So I have heard.” I held out my wrist. “Stamp me and let me go back to work.”
He frowned. “There is a process.”
“There is always a process. That is how you know something is unfair.”
He glanced towards Shade, then back to his tablet. His fingers hovered above the screen, as if he wanted to be seen to hesitate.
“New hearing in thirty one days,” he said.
“That is four variance cycles away,” I said. “That is four weeks of working under a cloud because someone wants to feel important on paper.”
“It is not punitive,” he recited. “It is a scheduling necessity due to oxygen safety prioritisation during allocation week.”
“If oxygen is so unsafe perhaps the Trust should stop encouraging people to stand in corridors for hours.”
He stiffened. The words had come out sharper than I had intended. The nearest camera shifted to watch us properly.
“Do you wish to file a formal complaint,” he asked.
We both knew what that meant. Complaints became additional notes on your file. Additional notes on your file became reasons why certain privileges could not be extended. And so on.
I took a breath through my nose, as instructed. Shade’s advice tasted of humiliation and survival.
“No,” I said. “I wish to be stamped and to go home.”
His mouth relaxed by a thin margin. He picked up the stamp. Brought it down on the underside of my wrist with just enough heaviness to feel personal.
The ink burned cool, then warmed, then settled into my skin as the coil marker sang its quiet tune. Coil stamps always hummed a fraction louder than the others, as if proud of the work we did and ashamed of how little anyone admitted it.
“Next,” he called.
I stepped away from the desk, wrist stinging, head hot. The corridor beyond the inspection station opened into a small triage space where people could pretend to gather themselves. A bench, a water dispenser that made a show of being generous, a wall chart with cheerful diagrams of how to breathe properly during oxygen incidents.
Sine sat on the bench, elbows on knees, eyes on the floor. His hair had dried in damp twists. His permit card lay loose in his hand, edges pressed into his palm.
He looked up when my shadow crossed him.
“Vee,” he said.
“How routine was your routine check,” I asked.
He tried to laugh. The sound came out crooked. “They asked questions.”
“That is what mouths are for.”
“Not like that.” He twisted the permit between his fingers. “They asked about Coil. About algae reports. About who talks on break and who listens.”
“Since when is listening suspicious.”
“Since it can be written down,” he said.
Hadrin had let him go, but the memory of the man’s hand still sat on Sine’s shoulder, visible in the tightness of his posture.
“Did you answer,” I asked.
“I tried to say nothing,” he said. “They told me saying nothing sounded like guilt.”
“Then what did you say.”
“That I like my job,” he said. “That I like my bed. That I like breathing unassisted. They wrote that down too.”
He laughed again, a soft exhale that tried to pretend this was funny.
“They said my permit record would be cleaned if I cooperated in future,” he said. “Cooperated with what, they did not say. Apparently clarity is a privilege.”
The water dispenser burbled as if agreeing. The chart on the wall advised us to remain calm in all circumstances. Calm preserved oxygen, according to the Trust. Panic consumed it. The colony kept a ledger even for feelings.
“Do you want to come back to Coil for lunch,” I said. “We have bread pretending to be food and food pretending to be bread.”
He shook his head. “I have to get back to the beds. Hadrin made a point of telling me how valuable my work is.”
“That is almost kind.”
“No,” Sine said. “Kindness is when someone offers you more minutes because they like your face. This is when someone reminds you they know how many minutes you have left to lose.”
He stood and pocketed his card. For a second his hand brushed my wrist where the fresh stamp tingled. He noticed the wince.
“They stamped you hard,” he said.
“They like to leave an impression.”
He smiled at that, properly, then. A quick curve that made him look younger.
“See you at Dock tonight,” he said.
“If we still have the right to stand in line for bread,” I said.
“Bread waits for us,” he said. “It enjoys being a reward.”
He walked away. His shoulders had learned a new weight in the last hour. His gait had not quite caught up.
The triage space emptied around me as other citizens were admitted, processed, and released. From time to time the door to Corridor B opened and a blue ribbon appeared in the gap before being swallowed again. Secondary processing. Oxygen safety. Thank you for your patience.
I moved towards the exit. The corridor beyond led back towards the main artery that fed the Dock and the Red Seal. My sweaty palm slipped slightly on the door plate as I pushed. My fingers met another hand, quick and cold, already on the plate from the other side.
“Sorry,” I said, instinctive.
The door opened a crack. A body slid past mine, quick and efficient, wrapped in work grey. I did not see a face, only a collar turned up higher than usual and hands that moved like someone used to being overlooked.
Something dry and small pressed into my palm. Reflex made me curl my fingers.
By the time the door opened fully the stranger had drifted sideways into the triage space, head bowed, as anonymous as a dropped tool.
I stepped through, my heart doing the small, sharp dance it reserved for moments when the world behaved in ways that felt too deliberate.
The corridor outside felt larger after the crush of the queue. The hum of the dome returned as a wider, calmer presence. People passed at the usual purposeful pace, some wearing the faint smudges of queue marks on their clothing, others carrying clipboards and authority.
I leaned briefly against the wall, oxygen safety be ignored, and opened my hand.
A scrap of paper sat there, folded twice. Not official stock. A torn corner from the kind of cheap notebook that grew in Coil and Wash and Waste like mould.
My fingers were not as clean as the Trust would have liked. A trace of basil oil had stained the lines of my skin days ago and refused to leave. It left a faint print on the scrap as I unfolded it.
Names filled the small rectangle. Twenty of them, written in soft graphite. No heading. No explanation. Just names.
I read down the list. I knew most of them. A man from Wash who had lost his mother to a failed valve and had not stopped checking gauges since. A woman from Greenside whose son had been fined minutes for running through a spray zone. The baker on Dock who watered his sourdough with tears on weeks when steam was cut. Three from Coil. Four from algae. One from Founders’ Row, which was either brave or stupid enough to be interesting.
At the bottom, in smaller letters, someone had written a simple phrase.
We share.
No signature. No mark. No blue. The graphite shimmered faintly where the light caught an extra stroke. That was the only flourish.
The petition Shade had described at the Valve, the one he had promised would make my hood legal, needed twenty names. Here they were, given in a corridor that smelled of lemon and resentment.
A gift. Or bait. On Arrow Far the difference was a luxury.
I folded the paper again, tucked it into the inside seam of my sleeve, where the cameras could not read graphite. My wrist throbbed around the fresh ink of my stamp, as if my skin objected to the idea of serving multiple masters at once.
The walk back towards Coil took me along the inner curve of the dome. I could have taken the lower route and cut through Dock, but my temper had not forgiven the inspection hall and I wanted air that had not been queuing.
Above, the dome panels showed a sky the colour of old toast. The Glass Sleet had begun early, little bright points rattling against the outer shell. The impacts translated through the structure into a thin, high percussion that rode above the condenser note. Arrow Far loved to remind us that we lived inside something that could be punctured.
At certain angles you could see the scars where the first lander’s skin had been bolted to the later supports. Old metal, new welds. The seams made the colony look like a patchwork garment worn by someone who could not decide whether to grow or stay small.
On Founders’ Row, high above the other wards, the lights were set by a different hand. Artificial dusk, whatever the outer sky was doing. The plants there grew in polite lines, leaves turned just so. I could not see them from here, but I could picture them: obedient, well lit, hungry.
The corridor narrowed as it approached Coil. The walls here carried the ghost smell of soil, though there was no actual earth, only imported mediums and the whispered memory of forests. Someone had chalked a small blue mark on the floor near the bend. Not a ribbon this time, just a smear of colour, like the kind a child might leave with a careless heel.
I stepped over it. Superstition did not make my work easier, but it had teeth all the same.
Coil’s access hatch recognised my badge with a satisfied chirp. The door slid, breathed, and allowed me through. The air shifted from corridor neutral to Coil damp, the humidity here calculated and recalculated by people who understood that breath was chemistry as much as miracle.
Lira sat where I had left her, charts spread, pencil worn down. A jug of water sweated on the table beside her. Two glasses. She had filled them both but drank from neither, waiting to see whether I came back.
“You are later than eleven,” she said, without looking up.
“Inspection moved. Queue grew. Time stretched.”
“Did you revolt,” she said, pencil still moving.
“Not yet.”
“How terrible of you.”
I poured a glass and let the water sit on my tongue before swallowing. It tasted of filters, metal, and obligation.
“They moved my hearing,” I said. “Thirty one days.”
She did look up then, one eyebrow flexing, the smallest concession to outrage. “That is indulgent.”
“That is precise,” I said. “They want me working under suspicion for exactly four cycles.”
“Suspicion keeps people careful,” she said. “Careful keeps valves closed. Valves closed keep minutes high. It is almost beautiful.”
“I received something,” I said.
“An apology.”
“A list.”
She went still in the way Coil people went still when something mattered.
“Show me.”
I did not take it out in Coil. There were no cameras here that did not work for us, but habits grew where fear had planted them.
“Later,” I said. “At Dock.”
She accepted that with a small nod and returned to her charts.
“The queue,” I said, after a moment. “It was longer for the blue ones.”
“I would expect nothing less,” she said.
“They moved Grey Ward to secondary for oxygen safety.”
“Is that what the sign said.”
“Yes.”
“That must make it true,” she said.
I watched the jug sweat, little drops of condensation forming, clutching to the glass, then falling. Each one a minute, if you chose to watch it that way.
“This waiting,” I said. “It is not an accident. They are training us.”
Lira sharpened her pencil with a small, vicious knife. “Training is expensive,” she said. “The Trust prefers experiments. They see what happens when they tug and then pretend the rope never moved.”
“People do not revolt over bans,” I said. “They revolt over waiting.”
“You sound like a woman who plans to test that,” Lira said.
“I sound like a woman who is tired,” I said.
She smiled then, thin and fond. “Tired is where clever starts.”
The sleet rattled on the dome. The basil in Greenhouse Three swayed minutely under the breath of the vents. My wrist throbbed in time with the condenser pulse.
Somewhere above us, in the Dry Room, Salt Mother Helka would be turning keys in her pocket and deciding what we would be asked to endure next. Somewhere below, in a club with a low ceiling and a stubborn joy, a hostess would be writing a new chalk message about oxygen at dance level.
We were all waiting. That was the joke.
The planet laughed. The colony counted.
I unrolled my sleeve, pressed my fingers to the hidden scrap of paper, and felt the blunt edges of twenty names.
We share, the graphite had said.
We would see how long they allowed that.
I am enjoying this story unfolding.