Idris Kovac
Seventy-four percent
Two people were under the drop line and neither of them was crushed, and seventy-four percent of the afternoon is entered against his name.
Overview
Two people were standing under the drop line and neither of them was crushed.
That is the part he leads with, when he leads with anything, and it is true. A plate stack slipped its choker three metres above the yard on a Tuesday afternoon in January, and the Series-4 bolted along his spine drove his left arm out and took the corner, and the stack came to rest instead of coming down. On the way out his forearm swept Wren Abaza's hand into the pinch between the plate edge and the trestle. She lost three fingers. Her claim paid in full.
Reading 4471-K came back nine days later: twenty-six percent to the subplate, seventy-four to him.
He agrees with the figures. He has said so at every stage, to his own cost. The trace shows four hundred milliseconds of available fall, two bodies inside the cone, and an actuation at forty — and the shout he says he would have made, which the yard trains and which he has made eleven times in nine years, takes nine hundred milliseconds before anybody moves. He did not decide to move his arm. He also does not think the arm was wrong.
What decided the columns was a service-contract instalment of four hundred and ten credits, nine weeks unpaid.
The Nine Weeks
Ghost Grinder is the only party permitted to touch a Series-4.
That is on page four of the terms and it was on page four in 2179, when he was twenty-nine and the alternative to signing was not getting onto the plate yard. The subplate was serviced on schedule; what he missed was one instalment on the contract that runs between cycles. Under the apportionment clause, a component's share bills to its maker while the contract is current. Let it lapse and the share is unattributed, and unattributed share comes home.
A current contract that January would have produced twenty-six him and seventy-four the arm — the same act, the same trace, the columns exactly reversed. He worked that out before the clerk did, said so at the hearing, and the clerk agreed with him and closed the finding, because agreement is not one of the two available grounds.
The seventy-four went onto his certificate, then into his Score, then into a housing band that did not renew. The Score reads the share. It does not read the invoice date, because the sheet does not publish the two together. Nothing in that pipeline was built to hide anything. Nothing in it was built to carry the date either.
There is a second file. Arresting a suspended load by hand is not among the acts a Grade 2 rigging card enumerates, so the scope audit opened an exceedance on the same second — whole, undivided, against him. He appealed that too. It failed on the two available grounds: the act occurred, and the certificate does not name it. Both sentences stay true whichever party moved the arm, and the two forms have no field in common.
His account of the afternoon ran to eleven lines in the represented column. A clerk read it back to him, offered him a correction, and destroyed it when the finding closed, which is what that column is for. He asked whether he could keep a copy and was told, accurately, that he could not. So he walked down to the Cathodics and paid eleven credits to have the actuation trace printed, and he carries it folded in his breast pocket, and it is the only document from that afternoon that still exists in his hands.
What He Is Actually Arguing
Not that the reading was wrong. He has been offered that argument by three people and has declined it three times.
His objection is one line long and he has never widened it: the sheet should print the contract date beside the percentage. Not remove the clause. Not absorb the share. Print the date, so that anyone reading seventy-four percent can see that it is a fact about an invoice and not a fact about a man.
He has filed it twice. Both replies observed that the service-contract field is administrative and is not part of the published finding, which is true, and neither reply engaged with why that is the problem.
Four months after the finding he filed a personal apportionment with the Show of Hands and started reading it out before a lift. Left side goes before I do. He says the plural still makes him feel stupid, and he says it anyway, because since he started the other slingers stand differently — a half-step further off his left, without ever discussing it, and it took him a while to notice why that mattered.
Ironclad is his employer, his certifier, his auditor, and the party that heard his appeal against the finding its own audit opened. He can recite the four roles in order without heat and calls the combination the arrangement, which is what the yard calls it. Under the Corporate Compact the certificate, the Score and the housing band are the same document read three ways, so the seventy-four percent did not stay on a form.
At a Cathodics bench he asked what Judge Dreg would have said, and got the Dregs answer without having to travel for it: a man is answerable for what he carries. That doctrine would have given him the whole hundred percent. He has repeated the sentence several times since without agreeing with it and without arguing, and once observed that it was the only version of the afternoon anybody had offered him that treated it as one thing. The technician who told him also mentioned Grandmother Rust, whose seven donors have no maker left to bill and who would read a hundred percent too, and has never once objected to the number.
He and Abaza have spoken twice since. She thinks the arm was right and told him so at the ward, unprompted, on the second visit. He has not found anything to say back that is not either an argument or a thank-you, and he does not think she wants either.
| Age | 41 |
|---|---|
| Occupation | Slinger, plate yard, the Foundry — nine years, Grade 2 rigging certificate |
Appearance
Forty-one, built like nine years of rigging: heavy across the shoulders, hands that close slowly in cold weather, Ironclad hi-vis worn over grey coveralls with the plate-yard band on the sleeve. The Series-4's service port sits at the back of his collar, a matte grey oval about the size of a thumbprint, and he has stopped growing his hair long enough to cover it.
The left sleeve is worn shiny at the forearm and the right is not. His rigging gloves have gone through at the left palm and not the right. He knows why, and so does everybody who works the yard, and it is the sort of thing people notice once and then decide not to look at.
He stands square to a load, always, even when he is only walking past one.
Sample Dialogue
"The arm was right. Put that in whatever you're writing, because everybody keeps leaving it out and it's the only part I'm sure of."
"Four hundred and ten credits. That's the whole difference between the two columns. I'd like somebody to write that down next to the number, that's all."
"Left side goes before I do. — You feel like an idiot saying it. Then somebody stands a half-step further off, and they never tell you they moved."
| Stratum | Working |
|---|---|
| Position | Below |
| Moral Stance | Survivor |
| Primary Drive | Standing |
| Augmentation | Moderate |
| Visibility | Known In Circles |
He does not dispute the trace and has never claimed the arm was wrong to move
A current contract that January would have reversed the columns exactly; he worked that out before the clerk did
He calls it the arm. Everyone at the Cathodics noticed and nobody has mentioned it
Connections
The people, places, systems, and open questions connected to Idris Kovac—and why each connection matters here.
Primary connections
Reading 4471-K. He has the sheet, he has the trace, and he agrees with every figure on both. The appeal grounds are error and identity, and he has neither.
Divides one act among the parts of one body, and sends the remainder to whoever is behind on maintenance.
The second file. Arresting a suspended load by hand is not on a Grade 2 rigging card, so the exceedance opened whole against him while the reading divided the same movement.
The machine-read list of acts your certificate permits, audited live, with no column for how it turned out.
Fitted his Series-4 in 2179, financed it over eleven years, and is the only party permitted to service it. The lapse that decided the reading was four hundred and ten credits.
Ironclad's demolition and augmentation division — the safety gear that becomes the leash.
Nine years on the plate yard, eleven recorded stack calls, and the twelfth one that his arm answered before he could.
Ironclad's 31-million-worker forge, where a human wing sells hand-finished welds as proof a person was there.
His account of the afternoon is eleven lines. The clerk read it back to him, offered a correction, and destroyed it when the finding closed.
The column where everything a subject authors is entered, weighed at nothing, and destroyed when the finding closes.
He filed a personal apportionment four months after the finding and reads it out before a lift. Left side goes before he does; he says so, and then he rigs.
Divide yourself out loud before the job, so that nothing a tribunal reads back to you afterward is news.
Seventy-four percent of a handling injury he did not decide, on a reading that turned on a service contract nine weeks lapsed. A current contract would have inverted the columns.
The parts of one body each hold a share of the act, and a maintenance contract decides whose share comes home.
Major connections
The same form from the other side: one man cited for what he chose to do, one apportioned for what he did not.
Cited for seventy-one seconds of compressions, he now pays somebody uncertified to do what he did.
Where the seventy-four percent went after the finding closed, and why the housing band did not renew.
Good Fortune's 847-signal Prosperity Score, sold as recognition, that gates housing and follows a debt past death.
Employer, certifier, auditor, and the party that hears the appeal against the finding its own audit opened.
The megacorporation that controls the Sprawl's physical infrastructure — steel, concrete, and the Orbital Elevator.
Where he had the trace printed for eleven credits, because a bench there can read a subplate and cannot file anything.
The Dregs' only middle class, anchored by a shop whose technicians out-diagnose Helix at a fifteenth of the price.
Asked what the doctrine would have said about his arm, and told: a man answers for what he carries.
The Dregs ruling that delegating a standing permission is itself a signed confession of authorship.
Supporting connections
No maker to bill, so her reading would be one hundred percent her.
A scavenger whose every augmentation was cut from a different bay-floor dead — and who can name each donor.
Certificate, band and finding: one document read three ways.
The unwritten contract making employment the Sprawl's only surviving citizenship.
Asked what the Dregs court would say: you answer for what you carry.
A former Guardian officer who now runs the Dregs' entire judicial system for free, on foot.
Local Intelligence Scan
Nearby Signals
CANONICAL PROXIMITY
Environmental Readout
LIVE CONDITIONS- Air
- Hazy
- Light
- Shadowed
- Flood
- Seasonal
- Heat
- Heat island
- Security posture
- Contested
- Infrastructure
- Patchwork
Position Data
SECONDARY- Elevation band
- ground
- Lattice fix
- E-0.9 · N-3.8
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