Classification

The Algorithm of Providence classified me as Quartus when I was four hours old.

My mother was Quartus. My father was Quartus. Their parents were Quartus. On Colony Tertia-7, where I was born and have lived my entire life, approximately ninety-seven percent of children receive the same Classification as their parents. The number is similar across the Imperium. A Primus child is born to Primus parents. A Secundus child is born to Secundus parents. The Algorithm confirms what the bloodline predicts, and it does so with a consistency that would suggest the process is hereditary, except that the Ordo’s position is that it is not hereditary. It is providential. The Algorithm does not read your parentage. It reads your nature. The fact that your nature almost always matches your parents’ nature is, according to the Codex, evidence that the Strata reflect a genuine ordering of human potential. Children inherit their parents’ nature because the Strata are real. The Algorithm merely confirms what is already true.

This is why the Classification ceremony exists. A simpler system would assign the parents’ Stratum to the child at birth and note the rare exceptions. But that would be a clerical process, and a clerical process would imply that Classification is administrative, and if Classification is administrative then the Strata are a policy decision rather than a cosmic truth, and the entire Striation becomes a system that people built rather than a system that the universe requires. So instead: a Tertius courier in full robes travels to the infant’s registered address, reads the Classification aloud in Old Formal, a liturgical language that approximately four percent of the population speaks, and presents the documentation for parental signature. The ceremony takes between six and ten minutes. It costs the Ordo, by some estimates, more than the colony’s annual maintenance budget. It is performed for every birth in the Imperium without exception.

My mother told me that when the courier came for me, she already knew what the result would be. She was Quartus. My father was Quartus. We lived on a Quartus colony. The courier would say Quartus and she would sign the form and that would be that. But she also told me that there is a moment during the ceremony, after the courier finishes reading the Old Formal and before she hands over the documentation, when the result has not yet been said aloud in a language you understand. The courier knows. You do not. My mother said that moment lasted about four seconds, and that during those four seconds she did not hope for anything specific, because hoping for a different Classification would mean believing her own Stratum was something to escape, which would mean the system was wrong, which was not something she believed. But she noticed the four seconds. She remembered them.

The courier said Quartus. My mother signed the form. I was told I did not cry, though I have since learned that most infants are sedated for the Classification. My mother preferred her version. She said I looked at the courier and the courier looked away first. She still mentions this, twenty-six years later. I do not know what she thinks it means. I have not asked.

I have been Quartus since. For twelve years I have worked infrastructure maintenance on Tertia-7, a mid-rim lithium extraction installation, population four thousand, of whom roughly three thousand are Quartus. I keep the colony’s systems running: life support, ventilation, plumbing, pressure seals, electrical distribution. The infrastructure is rated for a thirty-year service life. It is forty-two years old. My job is to keep it functioning through scheduled maintenance, improvised repair, and the instinct you develop after twelve years of listening to machines and knowing, from the sound they make, whether they will last another month or another hour.

Every morning at 0545, the maintenance crew assembles for the Recitation of Purpose. We say the Quartus Purpose Statement in unison: “To perform assigned tasks within designated parameters.” Nine words. The Primus Purpose Statement, which appeared once on a public terminal, is two hundred words and mentions “the luminous duty of stewardship.” Ours takes about three seconds. Then we go to work.

The work that day was the Level Three filtration unit, which had been running above its thermal threshold for six weeks.

I had reported the anomaly on Form 11-Delta (Maintenance Anomaly Notification) on the second day. Form 11-Delta required my signature, the signature of the Secundus operations overseer, and the authorization stamp of the Tertius colony administrator. The Secundus overseer, a woman named Forral who processed maintenance forms alongside sixty other administrative responsibilities, signed it on the fourth day. She forwarded it to the Tertius administrator’s office. Scholar-Administrator Ozen visited the colony quarterly. Between visits, maintenance authorizations were handled by his junior clerk, Ossal, who had signing authority for requests below a defined cost threshold. The Level Three filtration unit was above the threshold. Ossal filed a request for authorization to Scholar-Administrator Ozen’s regional office on Meridian, which processed requests in the order received, which was the order the Algorithm determined was optimal, which was the order received.

The request had been in processing for six weeks. The filtration unit had been running above its thermal threshold for six weeks. These were the same six weeks.

In the meantime, I adjusted the coolant flow manually twice per shift. The manual adjustment was not documented on Form 11-Delta because the form covered the anomaly, not the interim response. The interim response required Form 11-Gamma (Temporary Maintenance Modification), which had its own authorization chain. I had not filed Form 11-Gamma because the authorization chain was the same chain that had not yet processed Form 11-Delta, and the processing protocol required that overlapping requests for the same system be reconciled before either could be authorized, which added approximately three months to the processing time.

So I adjusted the coolant flow manually and did not file the form. The filtration unit ran above threshold. The adjustment kept it running. The form that would authorize the repair sat in a queue. The form that would document what I was doing instead sat unfiled because filing it would delay the form that would authorize the repair. The system functioned as designed.

The circulation pump on Level Four was twelve years old. Its rated service life was eight years. The replacement had been on the parts request list for three years. The parts request list was managed by the Bureau of Material Allocation on Auris Prime, which prioritized requests according to a formula that weighted urgency, cost, and “strategic alignment with the Imperium’s infrastructure development objectives.” Colony maintenance fell under infrastructure. Infrastructure fell under development objectives. Development objectives were set annually by the Convocation of Strata. The Convocation’s most recent infrastructure priority was the construction of a new Passage Gate terminal on Auris Prime. Tertia-7’s circulation pump was on the list. The Passage Gate terminal was ahead of it. The list was the list.

The pump made a sound I had been listening to for three years: a rhythmic knock on every fourth rotation, where the bearing housing had developed play from metal fatigue. Six months ago, the interval between knocks had shortened. In another four months, the bearing would seize. I had documented this in three consecutive quarterly maintenance reports, each filed on Form 17-Sigma (Quarterly Infrastructure Status Assessment). Each report had been acknowledged by the administration office. Acknowledged meant received. It did not mean acted upon.

I replaced the bearing seal with a gasket I had fabricated from materials rated for water reclamation, not ventilation. The correct gasket was a Type 3, catalog number VM-4419-T3. It had been on back-order for seven months. The substitute was a Type 2. It sealed. It would hold for approximately four months instead of six because the material rating assumed different pressure differentials. In four months I would replace it again, with another fabricated gasket, and note in the maintenance log that the correct part was still on back-order, and the note would be filed, and the back-order would continue.

The rating mattered for the form. The seal mattered for the system. The form and the system were related in the way that a map is related to terrain: one described the other, but the terrain did not consult the map.

My maintenance partner was Kira. She was replacing a corroded valve on Level Two while I worked the pump. Kira tracked maintenance intervals on her forearm with a grease pen. Her forearm, at any given time, had between six and twelve numbers on it, each one a date or a pressure reading or a calibration interval she considered too important to trust to Form 17-Sigma’s quarterly filing cycle. The filing system processed quarterly. Her forearm processed daily. Both were documentation. One required signatures.

She found me in the junction after she finished the valve. She had three numbers on her forearm: the valve’s replacement date, a pressure reading from the Level Five manifold, and a calibration interval for the atmospheric processor.

“Coupling on Level Four, Bay 6,” she said. “The sound changed.”

I listened. She was right. The frequency had shifted lower, which meant the housing was loosening, which meant the mounting bolts were fatiguing, which meant the coupling had between two and four weeks before it started leaking coolant into the bay below.

“I’ll flag it,” I said.

“On the form or on your arm?”

“Both.”

She nodded. We moved to the next task. The colony had approximately four hundred systems that required monitoring, of which approximately sixty were operating beyond their rated parameters at any given time. We did not have enough people or parts to maintain everything to specification. We had enough to keep everything running. These were different standards, and the distance between them was where I worked.

Tav passed through the junction on her way to the processing level. She had worked lithium processing for nineteen years and ate her meals at the same time every day, in the same seat, finishing each item before starting the next. I had worked alongside her for twelve years and knew two things about her that were not related to lithium processing: she owned a second pair of work boots, and she believed the Strata were correct. The boots were visible in the wear pattern. The belief was in how she said “Quartus” the few times she said it, which was without complaint.

The shift ended at 1800. I ate in the common area: protein supplement, grain block, reconstituted vegetables. The temperature was consistent with my position in the serving rotation, which was near the end. Through the wall, the low vibration of the processing level. The sound of the colony doing what it was built to do. I maintained it. It ran. Twelve years of repairs and workarounds and fabricated gaskets that held because well enough was the standard for a forty-two-year-old installation with a parts list three years behind.

I returned to quarters. Three meters by 2.5 meters, ventilation grate in the ceiling, storage unit against the wall. Through the grate, the cycling hum of the atmospheric processor. On Tertia-7, every room sounds like the system that keeps it alive. You learn the sounds. You learn when they change.

I set my alarm for 0530.