RUTILE
The world had become quieter.
More efficient, too.
At least, that was what everyone kept saying.
Rutile had no particular opinion on the matter.
Efficiency was useful.
Quiet was useful.
Neither required an emotional response.
At 6:12 in the morning, an electric kettle clicked off in her kitchen.
Rutile waited thirty seconds before pouring the water.
There was no reason to pour it immediately.
Water that was too hot could not be consumed efficiently. It would simply sit there cooling inside the mug while she carried around unnecessary thermal energy.
She filled a heavy stainless-steel thermos, tightened the lid, and placed it beside her bag.
Nothing else went into it.
No tea.
No coffee.
No lemon.
No powdered supplement advertised by someone with unusually white teeth.
Just hot water.
A colleague had once asked her why.
“Is that a health thing?”
Rutile had considered the question.
Explaining that she saw little reason to pay money to make water taste like something would invite further questions.
So she had answered:
“Yes. Beauty and health.”
The colleague had nodded immediately.
That was useful.
People rarely challenged decisions made in the name of beauty and health.
Since then, that had been her official explanation.
The truth was simpler.
Water came from the tap.
Heat came from the building infrastructure.
The additional cost of combining the two was negligible.
Rutile liked negligible.
She opened her closet.
Seven white shirts.
Five pairs of black tapered trousers.
Two black jackets.
One navy coat.
The shirts were made from a stain-resistant synthetic fabric that did not require ironing. The trousers retained their shape after washing.
She took the shirt from the left.
Then the trousers from the left.
There was no decision to make.
This was intentional.
Rutile disliked people who talked about decision fatigue and then owned forty shirts.
She dressed, stood in front of the mirror, and ran her fingers once through her hair.
Short bob.
No styling required beyond that.
Once every four weeks, she went to the same salon and requested the same cut.
The stylist had stopped asking whether she wanted to try something different.
This, Rutile considered, was evidence of a successful professional relationship.
Her face required slightly more work.
Sunscreen.
Foundation where necessary.
Brows.
Nothing memorable.
That was the objective.
She did not want to look bad.
Looking bad generated comments.
She did not want to look particularly good either.
That also generated comments.
The ideal appearance was one that allowed another person to recognize her reliably while producing no additional thoughts.
At 6:51, Rutile left the apartment.
Beside the pedestrian path, something green was growing through a gap between a hedge and a concrete retaining wall.
Rutile slowed down.
Not enough to stop.
Her eyes moved over the leaves.
Edible?
Probably.
Worth collecting?
No.
Vehicle exhaust.
Possible dog urine.
Maintenance chemicals unknown.
She continued walking.
The plant remained where it was.
Rutile’s mental database quietly changed its classification.
EDIBLE — NOT ECONOMICALLY VIABLE
A few metres later, there was another planting bed.
Decorative grass.
No nutritional value.
Seasonal maintenance required.
Public expenditure.
Rutile looked away.
Cities contained a surprising amount of vegetation that existed only to be looked at.
She had accepted this as one of civilization’s stranger luxuries.
At the station entrance, a digital advertisement showed a woman holding a paper cup of coffee.
START YOUR DAY RIGHT.
Rutile checked the price displayed in the corner.
She continued down the stairs.
Twenty of those a month.
Two hundred and forty a year.
She ran the annual cost through her head.
For flavoured water.
She tightened her grip on the thermos.
The office was already half awake when she arrived.
Lights turned on automatically as people entered each zone.
The air-conditioning adjusted itself according to occupancy.
Meeting rooms released reservations when sensors detected no human presence.
The coffee machine had recently been replaced with a model that predicted demand and reduced standby power.
The company had sent three emails announcing this achievement.
Rutile had deleted all three.
At 8:58, she opened the spreadsheet that had arrived the previous evening.
At 9:04, the salesperson responsible for it appeared beside her desk.
“Morning.”
“Morning.”
“Did you get a chance to look at the forecast?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“It doesn’t work.”
The salesperson laughed.
Rutile did not.
After a moment, he stopped laughing.
“What part?”
“The 120 percent.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes. That.”
“We’re targeting 120 percent.”
“Of what?”
“Revenue.”
“I know it’s revenue. Why 120?”
He leaned against the partition.
“Well, that’s the target.”
Rutile looked at him.
“Yes.”
“So we’d like the forecast to reflect that.”
“A forecast and a target are different things.”
“I know, but for the presentation—”
“Do you have an additional contract?”
“Not yet.”
“New customers?”
“Pipeline.”
“How much?”
“We’re still working on that.”
“Price increase?”
“No.”
“Additional sales staff?”
“Actually, we’re one person down.”
Rutile looked back at the spreadsheet.
Revenue growth: 20%.
Sales capacity: reduced.
Confirmed additional contracts: zero.
Pricing change: zero.
Evidence: optimism.
She took a drink of hot water.
It had reached the correct temperature.
“I’ll fix it.”
The salesperson smiled.
“Great. I knew you’d figure something out.”
That was not what she had meant.
But correcting him would require another conversation.
Rutile considered the matter closed.
By 11:37, the 120 percent had become 106.4.
Not because 106.4 was necessarily correct.
It was simply a number that could survive questions.
Rutile rebuilt the assumptions underneath it.
Existing contracts.
Renewal probability.
Historical conversion.
Current pipeline.
Seasonality.
Staffing capacity.
Then she added notes explaining where each number came from.
A completely ordinary act of administrative reconstruction.
The salesperson returned.
“Oh.”
He stared at the screen.
“That’s lower than we wanted.”
“Yes.”
“Can we make it a little more positive?”
“Yes.”
His expression brightened.
“When sales become more positive.”
His expression changed again.
Rutile saved the file.
There was a time when she would have cared about this.
Not the number.
The work.
She had once believed that if she worked hard enough, understood enough, anticipated enough, fixed enough things before anyone noticed they were broken, something would accumulate.
Trust, perhaps.
Recognition.
Position.
Meaning.
She had invested heavily in all four.
The return had been poor.
Worse, it had been volatile.
A compliment on Monday.
An impossible request on Tuesday.
A good evaluation in June.
A reorganization in September.
A manager who called her indispensable.
Then another manager who had never met her deciding that the work was no longer necessary.
Rutile had eventually recognized the problem.
She had invested in an asset whose value was controlled entirely by other people.
A beginner’s mistake.
She no longer made it.
At 12:03, her salary continued accumulating exactly as specified in her employment contract.
That was enough.
At lunch, three colleagues stood near the elevators.
“We’re getting pasta. Coming?”
“I brought lunch.”
It was true.
Olive-oil toast.
Bread, olive oil, salt.
Three ingredients. No cooking utensils beyond a toaster. No container that required serious washing.
Nutritionally incomplete, perhaps.
Operationally excellent.
Something green she had bought at a discount the previous evening.
One colleague noticed the thermos.
“You’re still drinking hot water?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know how you do that. I’d get bored.”
“It’s for beauty and health.”
“Oh.”
Again, immediate acceptance.
Rutile was pleased that the phrase continued to perform reliably.
The elevator doors closed.
She went in the opposite direction.
At 17:34, Rutile shut down her computer.
Someone was still talking enthusiastically in a meeting room.
Someone else was apologizing into a headset.
A manager hurried past carrying a laptop and two phones.
Rutile put the thermos into her bag.
Approximately one hundred millilitres remained.
She would finish it on the way home.
Nothing wasted.
Her work for the day had produced several corrected numbers, one revised forecast, two documents, and a predictable amount of cash flow.
A satisfactory exchange.
Outside, the city was beginning to light itself for the evening.
Advertisements changed automatically.
Delivery vehicles moved almost silently through traffic.
Doors opened before anyone touched them.
Payments disappeared invisibly from accounts.
Everything had become smoother.
Faster.
More efficient.
Rutile walked past a convenience store.
Through the window she saw rows of bottled tea.
Water, transported to a factory.
Processed.
Packaged.
Refrigerated.
Transported again.
Illuminated under LEDs.
Then sold back to someone who already had water at home.
Rutile took out her thermos and drank the last of the warm water.
Free was not quite the correct word.
Nothing was free.
But some costs were so small that they could be treated as rounding errors.
Rutile understood rounding errors.
Nothing was free.
But some costs were so small that they could be treated as rounding errors.
Rutile understood rounding errors.
She put the empty thermos back into her bag and continued home.
Tomorrow she would wear a white shirt.
Black trousers.
She would arrive at the office.
Someone would give her a number that did not make sense.
She would make it make sense.
At the end of the month, money would arrive.
No passion required.
No loyalty required.
No expectation of meaning.
A clean transaction.
Rutile liked clean transactions.
They left very little behind.
