About Pending Review
21 days at the desk. 21 nights at home. Your household is under Review.
NOTICE OF ASSIGNMENT
Your application has been processed. You have been placed at a desk.
The desk is not yours. The chair is not yours. The stamp is issued to the position, not to you, and will be recovered when the position is reassigned.
Report at eight. Do not be late.
THE WORK
They arrive as files.
A name, an identity number, a region, a stated income, an amount requested, and a photograph. That is all you will ever have of them. You will not meet them, you will not hear them explain, and you will not find out what happened after you decided.
Somewhere in that paperwork is the truth, and somewhere in it, usually, is not.
You are not asked whether they deserve it. You are asked whether the paperwork holds.
Check the name against the record. Check the number, digit by digit. Check what they earn against what they are asking for. Check the deed, if there is a deed. Then drag the stamp down.
The next file is already on the desk.
THE RULES CHANGE
There is a new notice every morning.
New checks to run. Regions that were approvable last week and are not approvable today. A watchlist that appears one morning and is longer the next. Nobody explains why, because nobody explains anything, and the notice does not care whether you read it.
What was competence yesterday is negligence today. Every mistake is counted, and every day ends with a quota.
THE EVENINGS
At night you go home to a bill you cannot fully pay.
Rent. Food. Your mother's care, in the room down the hall. Tick what you can pay. The rest waits, and what waits grows.
There is piecework at the table for a little more money, if you have the hours. There are envelopes from people who know where you live. Some of them pay well.
THE REVIEW
On the first day, the Bureau tells you your household is under Review.
Every file you stamp goes in your record. So does every line of the bill you leave unpaid. The people you stamped write statements about you. Your neighbours report what they see, because that is what a good household does.
In 21 days, the Board decides what your household is.
FAIR WARNING
This is a hard game. Doing your job perfectly will not always be enough, and the honest way is not the safe way.
TWO WAYS TO WORK
Story: 21 days, six endings, and eight ways to lose everything before the end.
Endless: the desk without the story. The rules keep changing, and your salary is your score on the Steam leaderboard.
Your review is pending.