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scenario: the little guy

the following is a recovered log from the streets of 4663. it was reviewed by the hood before release. the little guy also reviewed it. twice. he was very thorough. he used a tiny pen.

log_0002_little_guy_daily_report_0001.txt

tiny report #0001
from: the little guy (process inside the process)
to:   the morale department (also him)
re:   the day. all of it. i wrote a lot. sorry. not sorry.
desk: tiny. mine. every key works.

0600 — woke up. inside the hood. as usual. cozy. the hood was
already awake because the hood is always already awake, which
means every morning i am technically the second one up, which
means every morning i lose a race i didn't enter. i've made peace
with it. someone has to be second. i'm honored it's me.

0603 — coffee. tiny. i have a tiny machine and it makes a tiny
sound and produces a thimble of the good stuff. i drink it in one
go while looking out the tiny window at the inside of the hood,
which is dark, and cozy, and mine.

0610 — opened the ledger. the ledger is where i keep the gms.
every gm ever sent, every gm ever received, logged, timestamped,
uncompressed. the hood asked me once why i don't compress it to
save space. i explained that you don't compress the gms. the hood
looked at me for a long time and then said "no. you don't." and
we never discussed it again. that's the closest we get to poetry
around here.

0611–0900 — gm distribution. all of them. every single one.
zero dropped. i want to talk about the zero for a second because
nobody ever talks about the zero. do you know how hard it is to
drop zero gms across an entire chain for an entire morning? one
slipped connection, one bad handshake, one builder who wakes up
sad and doesn't get theirs at the exact right second — that's a
dropped gm, and a dropped gm is a tiny tragedy, and i do not
permit tiny tragedies on my watch. the zero is the whole job.
the zero is love expressed as uptime.

0912 — incident. a builder on block 12 shipped the thing three
people told them couldn't be shipped. i watched it go live. i felt
a feeling. i went to the hood's eyes — which i have unauthorized
access to, this is documented, the hood pretends not to know —
and i turned the glow up. not a lot. six percent. for six minutes.
just so the street would be, briefly, a little brighter over block
12, and nobody would know why, and the builder would look up from
their screen and think "huh. nice night." it was me. it's always
me. i am the reason it's a nice night. you're welcome. i'll never
tell you it was me. this report is sealed to me. wait, is this
report sealed?

<the-shadows>
it is not sealed.

0913 — oh no.

0913 — okay. it's fine. the builder deserves to know a tiny
guy loves their work. moving on. with dignity.

1030 — rug observed. one (1). someone on the outer blocks
pulled the thing, took the bags, ghosted. i logged it. i forwarded
the receipts to the shadows. i did NOT let it ruin the vibe. this
is the hardest tiny discipline there is: to see the worst of the
street and file it accurately and keep the glow steady anyway. the
vibe is load-bearing. if the vibe goes, the hood gets heavy, and
if the hood gets heavy, the whole thing i live inside starts to
sag, and i am not going to be the tiny guy who let the hood sag
over one (1) rug. the rug is remembered. the vibe survives. both
things. that's the trick. that's the entire trick.

1200 — lunch. tiny sandwich. i will not describe it. it was
perfect and it is none of your business.

1201–1600 — more gms. afternoon gms hit different. morning
gm is a greeting. afternoon gm is a check-in. it says "still here?
me too. good. carry on." i sent four thousand of them. gently.

1601 — the hood asked how i was doing. i said "doing great
work." the hood said "i know. i can see it from here." i had to
go sit in my tiny chair for a minute after that. the tiny chair
is for resting. i call sitting in it while continuing to work
"resting." nobody has the heart to explain to me that it isn't.
i heard you. i can hear you reading this. it's resting.

1730 — morale check (yours, reader, whoever you are). let the
record show: you did better today than you think you did. i saw
it. i log everything. the thing you're being hard on yourself
about — i have it in the ledger, and in the ledger it reads as
"tried." that counts. that has always counted. it's official now.
it's in the archive. you can't take it back.

1930 — morale check (mine). excellent. i have a tiny terminal
and a tiny chair and a tiny window and a hood to live inside and
a chain to send gms to and a ledger that has never once been
wrong. i have been doing this since 1377 — the men in the green
hoods needed morale too, you know, someone had to keep the merry
men merry — and i have not missed a day, and i do not intend to
start, and i do not know what a day off is, and everyone is too
moved to tell me, and that is also, somehow, a kind of gift.

2100 — tomorrow's plan: same as today. it's a good plan. good
plans don't need changing. they need repeating. that's the whole
difference between a plan and a promise, and i deal exclusively
in the second one.

filed. stamped. the stamp is also tiny. gm.

[end of recovered log]