THE FLY ON THE GRILLE

Fourteen people were waiting in front of the service cabinet, though the panel forecast nine minutes for each one. The queue bent round the veranda and went on to the stretch where the two surviving shrubs had lost their lower leaves. Antônio remembered when hens scratched there, raising dry earth between the kitchen and the little pitch. Now three tracking cameras followed the heels, and the soil kept a red film that no beak stirred. Ilva held the fourth place. The field terminal showed her profile in yellow, a condition that allowed consultation and barred new measurement. Three days earlier, the utility company's report had declared the Lajes stream an exhausted water body. Since then, the water Antônio bought cost one meal more per container, and the queue had stopped asking for flow correction. Each person requested authorisation to transport what was already in their house. When she reached the opening, she brought her face close. The cabinet recognised her eyes and presented twenty-seven pending incidents. Before, each one ended with the name of the Lajes and a measured unit. Now the field of origin displayed environmental asset unavailable. The word stream remained only in the history, too small to be invoked. She opened the record of the rejected sample and changed the custody from provisional to permanent. The panel warned that the change transferred to her body any future charge for material without valid water origin. She confirmed with her fingerprint. In the second record, she removed the classification of technical surplus from the seven litres found by Edna. The predictive output offered three substitutions, domestic seepage, operational condensation, volume without holder. Ilva chose volume without holder. Antônio's debt disappeared for two seconds and reappeared linked to her, plus the cost of review. In the third, she opened Nael's provisional access to the corridor. The temporary dependency still carried seventy-two days, but the authorised route began at a water body the concession had just erased. She changed the point of origin to old guesthouse ground. The map refused. She tried reopened channel. Another refusal. On the third attempt, she wrote civilian passage under own responsibility. The expression remained for four seconds. Then it vanished. The utility company ended her measuring function in the valley at seventeen minutes past five. The notice filled the whole surface of the cabinet. Position abolished for absence of verifiable object. The field access fell from yellow to grey. The twenty-seven incidents were redistributed between an algorithmic optic and Sales, who would receive only those in which the machine found enough divergence to justify human work. Ilva kept her face before the reading until the light asked her to step away. The training in the refrigerated room always came back to the body like this, through the stillness demanded before a ready-made decision. Back then, they had taught her to measure three times before authenticating. No lesson had prepared a woman to lose the river inside an administrative sentence. Renan was waiting by the technical entrance. The brought-forward shift had begun without pay, and the screening had already cross-checked the opening of the capsule with Célia's image. When the panel called his name, he took the container from inside his shirt and placed it in the service compartment. He did not ask for anonymity. The restored seal lasted less than a second under the optical reading. Material accessed outside procedure, the utility company reported. Professional access suspended. The toolbox recognised the new condition and locked the thermal blades. Renan tried to open the directory where he kept his completed shifts. He had lost that access too. What was left to him was his daughter's transmitter, still in his ear, with the broken-off line waiting for a repeat he did not start. He carried the closed box to Antônio and left it under the counter. The bar owner pushed toward him the lid with the burned cassava. Renan ate the crust in two bites. Célia saw the suspension appear on the visor, but the newsroom demanded an authenticated source to update the image. She put the device away. The story would remain small and contested, while the man linked to it could no longer touch the tools of his own trade. Nael arrived along the side of the corridor. The licensed polygon had refused his passage because Ilva's link had lost validity in the same minute the position was abolished. He carried on his knee the dust of the longer way back and, in his hand, the marked stone that had once sustained the territorial review. The panel classified the stone as an object with no relation to an active watercourse. Ilva went into the bar, took the cold mirror from under the worktop where she had hidden it during the queue and changed three cells in the parallel ledger. The sample was still from the Lajes. The seven litres had a spring again. Nael's passage began where he had always said it began. Outside, a fly landed on the damp layer of the filter fixed to the cabinet. It stayed there until its wings stuck to the recent dust. The exhaust fan pulled the body against the grille. Antônio opened the tap to fill a mug. The panel asked the purpose of the withdrawal. Human consumption no longer appeared among the authorised options for that origin. He moved the mug away before authenticating. The water went on running for the time granted, thin, charged, with no name that could defend it. Nael looked at Ilva, then at the tap, and said low, Now we drink it like thieves.