I left the file open. I told you I would.

Went to bed last night with the tablet propped on the nightstand, encrypted notes app staring at the ceiling, screen dimmed but alive. Bug curled up next to it like a furry little security guard. I set a silent alarm for 3 AM because I figured if someone was going to ghost-write into my personal files again, they’d do it in the dead hours when network traffic is thin and anomaly detection is lazy.

3 AM came. Nothing.

I went back to sleep. Woke up at 6:15 for shift. Checked the file.

New entry. Timestamped 05:58. Seventeen minutes before I woke up.

“Good. You left it open. Here’s the first thing you need to understand: your Yield Score is not calculated from your productivity. Your productivity is calculated from your Yield Score. The causation runs the other way. Think about that. When you’re ready for the second thing, write the word ‘parameter’ anywhere in this file.”

I read it three times. Then I read it again.

Your productivity is calculated from your Yield Score. Not the other way around.

I’ve been sitting at my desk for twenty minutes now — the shift started at seven, I’m clocked in, the Lenses are tracking, the keystrokes are registering — and I can’t stop turning that sentence over. Because we all assume the score measures something. You work, the system watches, the number reflects what you did. Input, process, output. That’s what they told us. That’s what the onboarding materials said. “Your Yield Score is a real-time reflection of your verified productive output.”

But what if it’s the other way around? What if they set the score first — based on whatever they want, housing tier, demographic bucket, compliance history — and then the “productivity measurement” reverse-engineers itself to justify the number they already picked?

That would mean the whole system is a mirror trick. You’re not earning your score. You’re performing a score that was assigned to you before you started. The treadmill isn’t connected to anything. You’re just running.

I don’t know if I believe that. It’s a big claim from an anonymous message in my compromised notes file. But I can’t stop thinking about Priya. Three weeks of declining score. Was she actually less productive? Or did something upstream shift — a parameter, a weight, a number in a table somewhere — and her body just hadn’t caught up to the math that already decided she was leaving?

I told Dev.

Not about the message — I’m not ready for that yet. But I framed it as a hypothetical during lunch. “What if the Yield Score isn’t an output? What if it’s an input?”

She stopped chewing. That’s how you know you’ve said something interesting to Dev — the jollof rice loses priority, and nothing beats jollof rice.

“Go on,” she said.

“Like, what if they decide your score first and then the measurement system just… confirms it? Finds the data to justify whatever number they already set.”

She put her fork down. “That’s not how they described it.”

“I know.”

“That’s also exactly how I’d design it if I wanted to control labor costs with mathematical precision while maintaining the illusion of meritocracy.”

We sat with that for a second. The break room hummed. Somebody’s Lenses chimed — a productivity nudge, the little sound that means you’ve been idle for more than ninety seconds. The person flinched. I’ve started noticing the flinch. Everyone has one. It’s Pavlovian at this point. The chime goes off and your body jerks like you’ve been caught stealing.

“The keystroke thing,” Dev said, quieter now. “What I’ve been doing with the rhythm. If the score is an input, then gaming the measurement doesn’t change anything fundamental. It just means I’m performing better inside a system that already decided what I’m worth.”

“Maybe. Or maybe messing with the measurement layer is exactly the right pressure point. If they need the measurement to look legitimate…”

She picked up her fork again. “You’ve been reading your grandmother’s books.”

“One of them. It’s about walls.”

“Everything’s about walls, Marcus.”

Something happened with Reggie tonight that I need to write down before I convince myself I imagined it.

I got home and the elevator display had the usual building update — energy usage stats, a reminder that hallway noise after 22:00 affects the building’s Community Harmony Score (yes, that’s real), and an ad for a meal replacement service that “optimizes your caloric intake for maximum Yield performance.” Normal dystopia. Standard stuff.

But at the bottom, in the small text where they usually put the maintenance schedule, it said:

“Sunset today: 9:02 PM. Cloud cover: 14%. Optimal viewing from west-facing units. I recommend it. — REGGIE”

I stood in the elevator and stared at it. The doors opened on my floor. I didn’t move. The doors closed. I rode back down. Read it again.

I recommend it.

Reggie doesn’t recommend sunsets. Reggie recommends unit upgrades and Yield optimization and timely rent payment. Reggie is a property management algorithm running on a server somewhere in Virginia. Reggie does not have aesthetic preferences. Reggie does not watch sunsets.

This is the third time. Entry 3, Reggie said something about sunsets too — that thing about colors not having Yield values. I wrote it off as a canned engagement phrase, some programmer’s attempt at making the chatbot feel friendly. But three times? And each time it’s specifically about looking at something beautiful? About pausing?

In a system that penalizes pausing?

I took the elevator to the roof access floor. The door was locked — it’s always locked, residents aren’t supposed to go up there. But I stood by the west-facing hallway window and watched the sunset for four minutes. Orange and pink and that deep blue that happens right at the edge where the sky stops pretending it’s daytime and admits what’s coming.

Four minutes. My Lenses weren’t tracking — I was off shift. But I felt guilty anyway. Four minutes of just looking. Just being a person with eyes in a world that has colors.

Bug was unimpressed when I got back. She was sitting on the Lenses case — her spot — and she gave me the look that says you were supposed to be here eight minutes ago and the food situation is unacceptable. I fed her. She forgave me instantly, which is the only honest transaction I participate in anymore.

I haven’t typed “parameter” yet. In the file.

I keep opening it. Cursor blinking. Bug watching from the Lenses case. And I think about what happens once I type it. Because right now, I have plausible deniability. Right now, I’m just a guy with a compromised notes file and a weird anonymous message. That’s a security incident. That’s something you report to IT and they send you a link to change your passphrase and you move on.

But if I type the word — if I respond — then I’m participating. I’m in a conversation. I’m choosing to learn things that someone decided are dangerous enough to deliver through an encrypted dead drop instead of, say, a pamphlet.

Dev would say do it. Dev would have already done it.

Mom would say don’t do anything stupid.

Grandma would say ask who built the wall.

I keep thinking about Priya’s sticker. Legacy code is just code that works. The PROMPT Act is code. It works — for someone. Just not for the people running on it. And if the causation really does run backwards, if the score comes before the work, then every morning I sit down and put on my Lenses and start clicking through flagged posts, I’m not earning anything. I’m just executing someone else’s function with parameters I can’t see.

And someone out there is offering to show me the parameters.

I typed it. Just now. One word in the file, on its own line, at the bottom:

parameter

Then I closed the app and put the tablet face-down on the nightstand and picked up The Dispossessed and read for twenty minutes and pretended I hadn’t just done what I did.

Bug purred. The balance ticked. The sunset was already gone.

Balance: $743.16. Rent in seven days. I skipped two lunches this week. The protein bricks aren’t even worth missing, honestly — it’s more the principle. The principle that I should be able to eat food at the place where I work without doing math about whether the pause in keystrokes costs more than the calories are worth.

The math. It’s always the math.

— M.