Morning light cut through the warehouse windows in long, dust-moted bands. The kind of light that made everything look precise. Ordered.
Arthur stood at the central planning table, reviewing the overnight logistics reports. His finger traced down the columns of numbers. Everything aligned. Shipments dispatched on schedule. Inventory variance below 0.3 percent. The new crate standards had been accepted without a single rejection.
Everything functioned perfectly.
Too perfectly.
He caught himself rereading the same line for the third time. A simple figure: 247 crates processed. He already knew it. He'd checked it twice before. But his eyes kept drifting back to the start of the page.
Arthur set the report down. Picked up another. Then set that down too.
He was working slightly slower today. Slightly distracted. Checking things twice—now three times—for no operational reason.
