Chapter 24: The Record That Should Exist

The Class Two came first, as he had decided it would.

A municipal infrastructure broadcast from an outer-colony relay station, reporting completed grid expansion to three residential sectors in the Pordath system. The field testimony logged from a district water coordinator placed the completed sectors at one out of three, with partial routing to a second. Kael ran the cross-reference, checked the broadcast transmission date against the field testimony collection date, verified that the testimony postdated the broadcast by eleven days and was therefore a valid comparison set. He classified it Class Two. He entered the notation. He submitted.

The Class One followed. A crop yield figure from a mid-rim agricultural collective that diverged from the field average by a margin consistent with standard rounding protocol. He classified it Class One, which meant: within acceptable parametric variance, no further action. He submitted.