A Modest Adjustment

Hollen was informed of the adjustment via a message stamped in red across his breakfast ration.

“YOUR STATUS IS UNDER REVIEW. REPORT TO CLARIFICATION.”

He read it twice before folding the note into a neat square and placing it under his plate. Outside, the sky buzzed with its usual gray static, broken only by the silhouette of surveillance balloons drifting like lazy jellyfish.

His walk to the Ministry took exactly eleven minutes. He passed no one, though he felt observed in the vague way a man senses gravity. The building itself was no different from the others—faceless concrete, no signage, just a single scanner at the entrance and a door that opened without noise.

Inside: linoleum, fluorescents, silence.

The receptionist—if she could be called that—wore a blank badge and asked no questions. She gestured, and he followed. The corridors grew narrower as they went. The lights flickered less out of malfunction than ritual.

Eventually, they stopped before a door marked Room 0. She didn’t speak. She didn’t need to.

Room 0 had no windows, only vents that sighed intermittently, as if the building itself was trying to forget what it had inhaled.

A woman sat across the table, hands folded atop a black dossier. She wore no insignia, only a badge that read “Interpreter.”

“Citizen Hollen,” she said. “This is not a trial.”

“Then what is it?”

“A recalibration.”

She opened the folder. Inside were photographs of him—eating at his desk, riding the elevator, unlocking his apartment. He hadn’t known he was being watched, which in retrospect was absurd.

“Your recent behavior indicates… an inefficiency of spirit,” she said.

“I filed every form. I passed inspection. I—”

“Yes. Your technical compliance is noted. But the Directive requires more than obedience. It requires alignment.”

She slid a small mirror across the table.

“Please state your function.”

“My… function?”

“Your essential value. Your contribution.”

Hollen stared at his reflection. It didn’t look wrong, just… detachable.

“I process redundancies.”

“And now, you are one.”

She made a mark in her dossier.

“You may appeal, of course. There is a queue. Current average processing time is sixty-three years.”

“And in the meantime?”

“You will be placed in Reserve Status.”

“Is that… exile?”

“Exile suggests boundaries. There are no boundaries. Only gradients.”

The lights dimmed. A door opened behind the Interpreter’s chair—a different door than the one he came through. A gentle hum emanated from within. It smelled faintly of static and dust.

“Please proceed.”

He turned to ask a final question, but the Interpreter was already gone. The table, the chair, the mirror—gone.

Only the corridor remained, narrowing with each step.

Reserve Status had no cells, no guards, no visible restrictions.

Instead, he awoke in a building that resembled a low-grade hotel or a retirement facility in the style of an old brochure—faded carpets, beige plastic furniture, a cafeteria that served unseasoned food on soft trays.

Everyone wore identical gray garments, each stitched with a number instead of a name. His was 0003311.

No one spoke of the outside. No one asked why they were here. Some claimed they had arrived decades ago. Others didn’t remember arriving at all.

The days were filled with Tasks. The schedule changed without notice, delivered each morning by a polite digital voice:

“Today’s Task: Rearrange the library by emotional resonance.”

“Today’s Task: Record your childhood dreams. In reverse order.”

“Today’s Task: Contribute to the Communal Atmosphere via Improvised Anthem.”

Noncompliance was never punished. It was simply noted. When enough notes accumulated, residents were relocated. Where to, no one knew.

Hollen tried to remain invisible. He followed the rules. He arranged the books. He sang the anthem. But the system was not fooled.

He began receiving Corrections—slips of thin paper left under his door:

“Your tone suggests unresolved doubt. Please internalize the Directive.”

“Optimism must be authentic. Practice before mirrors.”

“You are forgetting how to forget.”

One night, unable to sleep, he wandered to the end of the corridor. A wall-length window looked out onto a fog-lit plain. Shapes moved at the edge of perception—tall, slow-moving silhouettes with reflective, featureless masks.

In the morning, the window had become a mural of flowers.

On the 77th day—if days were still real—he received a new Task:

“Today’s Task: Describe your usefulness in the past tense.”

On the 78th day, he woke to silence.

No chime. No Task. No voice.

The other residents were gone. The library was empty. The cafeteria lights flickered over untouched food. The mural had peeled again. The silhouettes were closer.

At the end of the corridor, the elevator stood open, its doors etched with a phrase:

“SUBMIT TO REINTEGRATION.”

He entered.

The descent had no movement, only the sensation of waiting to arrive.

When the doors opened, he was in a vast white chamber. In the center sat a chair. Beside it stood the Interpreter—or someone wearing her face.

“Welcome back, Citizen Hollen.”

“Where am I?”

“In the core. Where the system makes sense of its parts.”

“Am I… being judged?”

“Judgment implies a choice. You were always going to be here. The Directive does not need justification. It only needs consensus.”

She gestured to the chair. He sat.

A screen descended. His face appeared on it—expressionless, slightly wrong.

“Please describe yourself,” she said.

“I was a processor. I followed protocol. I worked—”

“Describe yourself.”

“I am… Anton Hollen.”

“That is your designation. Not your description.”

The image warped—eyes out of sync, lips delayed, voice half a beat behind.

“You are not Anton Hollen. You are a pattern of compliance woven into a hollow vessel.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You were never meant to.”

The Interpreter touched the screen. It blinked once, then displayed a single line of text:

Status: Absorbed.

The chair reclined. A visor lowered toward his face.

“You are now useful again,” she whispered.

And for the first time since entering Reserve Status, Hollen felt something like peace.

Not relief. Not freedom.

Just the quiet stillness of being no longer required to choose.

Subject: Hollen, Anton
Classification: Resolved
Disposition: Reintegrated
Utility Index: Reassigned (ambient output)
Remarks: Suitable for modeling behavioral thresholds in pre-critical populations.

“Some units resist abstraction.
Others become it.”

In the years following the Directive’s full implementation, a minor revision was issued to clarify the role of ambiguity in population control:

“It is not necessary that citizens believe.
Only that they cannot be certain.”

A memorial was constructed in Zone N: a single corridor that bends endlessly to the left. Visitors are instructed to walk its length in silence. There is no plaque, no guide, no exit.

Some report hearing a voice at the far end.
Most return unchanged.
A few do not return at all.

Their absence is considered a sign of alignment.