Almost
review queue: permits, residential instrumentation
open: 61. closed today: 38.
outcome screen: ALMOST (v4). returns within 30 days: 94%.
operator: v.k.Vik had built the almost screen in a fortnight, four years ago, and it was still the best thing he had ever made.
It was not a no. A no was a word and a date and a box. The almost was a bar at ninety-four per cent, a warm colour, and a sentence: nearly there, we just need one more thing. Then a list of one thing. People came back for the one thing. They came back for the next one thing. The bar never moved and nobody ever noticed, because the bar was not a measurement, it was a feeling, and the feeling was that they were nearly there.
Ninety-four per cent of people returned within thirty days. Vik had the number on his second screen all day, because a number you stop watching stops being yours. The screen did not wait thirty days to count a file. An almost went in as a return to come, the moment it was sent. Anything closed went in as gone.
"You're doing the face," said Sal, from the next desk.
"What face."
"The one where you think they can't tell."
"They can't tell."
"That's the face."
Sal was twenty-six and ran the other half of the queue and did not believe in the almost. Sal thought a no was kinder. Sal said so about once a week and then processed forty almosts without complaint, because the almost was the screen and the screen was the job.
"A no is a door," Sal said. "An almost is a corridor."
"People like corridors."
"People like doors they can see."
"Ninety-four per cent come back."
"Ninety-four per cent come back because they think they're nearly there."
"Which is a feeling."
"Which is a lie."
"A feeling is not a lie. A feeling is a feeling. Eat your sandwich."
Sal ate the sandwich. The queue ticked. Vik opened the next one.
He knew it was the next one before he read it, because the file had the shape. An applicant in the west wanting a permit to put sensors on the council's poles down his street. Age, district, a code, like all of them. Eleven interactions. The application, then ten almosts, each one answered.
The answers were the thing. They were letters, actual letters, one paragraph each, and every one of them said the same thing in a slightly different order.
Section 9(2) requires a decision within 28 days. An "almost" is not a decision. Please issue one.
Received your request for one more thing. Attached. Section 9(2) still requires a decision. Please issue one.
I note the progress bar reads 94%. I note it read 94% in March. Please issue a decision.
Vik had read all ten. He had read them twice. He kept them open in a tab.
"He's back," said Sal, who had seen the face change.
"He's back."
"What's he asking for this time?"
"Same thing. A decision."
"Give him one."
"He hasn't got the one more thing."
"You made up the one more thing."
"I made up the screen. The things are real."
"The things are whatever the screen says next. You told me that. You were proud."
He had been proud. He was still proud. The almost was the only thing in the building that had been designed, as opposed to inherited, and he had designed it, and it worked on everyone.
It did not work on this man.
That was the part Vik could not put down. Not that the man was angry: he was not angry, there was not one hot word in ten letters. Not that he was right: everyone was right, the Act said what it said. It was that he could tell. He looked at the bar and saw a bar. He read nearly there and read it as a sentence somebody had typed. Ninety-four per cent of people felt something. This one read something, and then wrote back, and the writing back was so plain and so patient that it was, Vik thought, a measurement. The man was taking a reading off the office. And the office was him.
"I want to ring him," Vik said.
"You can't ring him."
"I know I can't ring him."
"You want to ask him how he can tell."
"I want to ask him how he can tell."
"And he'll say, I read it."
"He'll say that."
"And then you'll have rung an applicant, which is a thing, and he'll have said I read it, which is nothing, and you'll be back here doing the face."
Vik looked at the file. There was a phone number on it. There was always a phone number. He had never once dialled one in nineteen years and the building would know if he did, because the building knew everything, that was what it was for.
He did not ring.
He opened the outcome screen instead. The almost was already selected, because the almost was always selected, that was the design. One more thing was already filled in, because the list of one more things did not run out, that was also the design. The warm colour sat there, nearly there, nearly there.
He changed it.
Not to a no. The man had not asked for a no. He had asked for a decision, ten times, in the same voice, and a decision was the one thing the screen was built to never give. Vik scrolled past almost. He scrolled past the no, too, which surprised him. At the bottom of the list, where nobody went, was the old outcome, the one from before the screen, the one that was just a word and a date and a box.
GRANTED. He typed the date. He ticked the box.
"What did you do," said Sal.
"Gave him a decision."
"Which one?"
"The one the Act says he can have."
"Vik."
"It was always the one he could have. The screen just never got to it."
Sal looked at the second screen, where the number lived.
"That's going to be ninety-three point nine now."
"Yeah."
"You've watched that number for four years."
"Yeah."
The reply came in forty minutes, which meant the man had been waiting at the other end for it the way Vik had been waiting at this one.
Received. Decision noted. Thank you.
That was all. Three sentences. No question in it. Vik read it four times looking for the question and it was not there, and he understood that the man had never had one. He had wanted a reading, and he had got it, and now he had a permit to go and take readings off the poles down his street, and he would do that, and he would never think about this office again.
Vik closed the tab.
The queue ticked. Sixty open. The next file had the shape of all of them, an age, a district, a code, a first interaction, and the almost was already selected, warm, nearly there. He looked at it for a while.
"Eat your sandwich," said Sal.
He processed it. Then the one after. The number on the second screen said ninety-three point nine, and stayed there, and by four o'clock, with thirty-one more almosts behind him, it said ninety-four again.
review queue: permits, residential instrumentation
open: 29. closed today: 70.
outcome screen: ALMOST (v4). returns within 30 days: 94%.
outliers: 1. resolved.