Games Like Rules for Thee

YOU ARE DEAD. THE DEPARTMENT DOES NOT CONSIDER THIS THE RELEVANT FACT.

The relevant fact is staffing.

Your admission has been deferred pending completion of temporary service. A binder has been issued. A window has been assigned.

The queue outside it has never been empty and did not form for you.

Report to the desk.

THE FILE STATES WHAT OCCURRED. THE APPLICANT STATES WHY.

Everyone arrives with a verified record.

Everyone also arrives with a reason the record does not tell the whole story.

You may ask. You may not ask everything.

Then bring down the stamp.

ASCEND. HOLD. DESCEND. REFER UPSTAIRS.

Simple. Official. Frequently catastrophic.

THE BINDER IS AUTHORITATIVE. THE BINDER IS ALSO WRONG.

Standing orders arrive while you work. Addenda correct instructions you have already followed. Rules are struck out after they have already cost somebody.

Management records whether you followed procedure.

The Kingdom records whom you allowed inside.

These are not the same measure. They will not agree.

Follow the binder without judgment and the Department may approve of your work. The Kingdom may not survive it.

EVERY STAMP CHANGES THE KINGDOM.

Your decisions do not disappear when the applicant leaves your window.

Reports arrive describing what has changed. Not as numbers, but as small disturbances in a place that should have been perfect.

Admit too freely and perfection begins to curdle.

There is a queue inside. There has never been a queue inside.

Refuse too freely and the reports grow shorter.

A place was set at the table this evening and not taken.

There is no morality meter explaining what you have done. There is only the Kingdom you created.

HOLD IS NOT MERCY.

Some souls are assigned service and sent away. Later, they may return carrying a record of what they did with the time you gave them.

You will judge them again.

They will remember who sent them there.

NOT EVERY APPLICANT IS A SOUL.

Some are lying. Some are wearing another person's name. Some should never have reached your window at all.

Their paperwork is usually excellent.

That is the difficulty. The rules examine paperwork, and the paperwork passes.

Staff catch them, or nobody does.

YOUR OWN FILE IS STILL OPEN.

Every rule you follow, every exception you make, and every soul you judge becomes part of your own record.

Complete your service and face a final review assembled from everything you allowed through the gate.

The Department thanks you for your service and reminds you that it has not yet been assessed.