Stephan Schwab

Júlia knew what Stefan sounded like when he wanted her. She could still hear him against her pillow. Across the lunch table, he had begun using the patient voice with which he explained a test to someone who hadn't understood it. He had come to her desk at one, exactly as promised. She had closed her climate-control notes and taken his hand all the way to the lift, stupidly happy that she had asked and he had come. Now the restaurant had run out of her favourite dish, his phone was trembling beside the cutlery, and she was halfway through a story he had already stopped hearing. It was a good story. At rehearsal a woman had spent twenty minutes swearing at a broken fan before discovering she'd switched off the wrong socket. Júlia had wanted to show him the woman's furious face, the accusing finger, the whole room collapsing with laughter. Stefan smiled at the wrong moment and glanced down at the screen. She closed her mouth. He kept reading. "Rodrigo?" she asked when he put it back. "They are asking for another review. I need to speak to Dieter." "Dandara told me about the stale speed value. If climate loses an acknowledgement, I can't let the display pretend the command worked either. We still don't have the captures we asked for." She reached for the water bottle. "Is he willing to separate the questions?" "I hope so." Stefan started explaining the branch conflicts. Júlia knew the shared handler. She had fought over its ownership before he arrived in Brazil, and she could have finished three of his sentences. Once she had loved how much he wanted her to understand. Now he was hiding inside things she already knew, and she hated hearing the warmth leave his voice whenever she reached past them. His hand had stopped beside his fork, fingers curled against the cloth. She touched them. "How are you?" "Once I get the evidence in front of him—" "You. Stefan." He looked at her then, and the hurt in his face almost made her withdraw the question. Almost. She had seen him tired, angry, naked, laughing into her pillow. She could still be made to feel as though asking about the person inside those moments was an intrusion. He turned his hand beneath hers, grateful for the touch; she felt the gratitude arrive without an answer. Their food came. The waiter squeezed between the tables, called her querida, and asked whether they needed anything else. She said no in Portuguese and bent over her plate until the sting behind her eyes eased. If she cried, Stefan would be kind. She knew he would. The prospect made her furious: she would have to break in front of him to get the attention he had given a vibrating telephone. He began cutting his meat with terrible care. She could still rescue the lunch. A joke, a kiss outside, her mouth against his neck later, the relief of making him forget. She had liked being the woman who asked for no promises. She hadn't understood how often she would have to perform her. "I'm not asking you to make me happy about the job," she said. "I work there too. I want to know what's happening with you when you go away like this." "I don't want to bring all of it into what we have." "What do we have?" The question escaped before she could dress it in anything gentler. Stefan stopped cutting. She could hear the kitchen radio under the clatter of plates. "You can wake up with your face between my breasts, but I ask one question over lunch and suddenly I'm outside." "Júlia." He said her name softly, glancing at the next table. "Don't lower your voice at me." Her fingers were wet against the water glass. She wanted to kiss him and shake him, and the wanting made the heat in her face worse. "I'm speaking to you. Let them eat." He reached across the table. She let him touch her fingers, then took her hand back before the familiar warmth could finish the argument for him. "You already bring it," she said. "Whatever you're frightened of, I sit here with it. You just don't tell me what it is." He set down his knife. For a moment she thought he might finally say it: that he was frightened, that he could not stand another failure, whatever made his mouth tighten before he looked at the phone. Instead he said, "I thought lunch would help." "Help you do what?" She watched the answer form and disappear behind his teeth. For a moment she wanted to wound him badly enough to make him speak. She could mention Berlin, ask whether being far from his own life was the part of her he liked best. She swallowed it. She wanted him to tell her something true; she didn't want the obedience she might get by finding the cruelest thing to say. He did not answer quickly enough. Júlia drank some water, feeling its coldness travel through her chest. "I can have lunch with a man who's having a shitty day. I can't keep guessing whether I'm allowed to notice." He put the phone in his pocket. Júlia made herself eat, although the food had gone thick and tasteless in her mouth. When he said he was sorry, she nodded. She couldn't thank him for that now. Outside, a bus sent warm dirty water over the kerb. He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. His thumb moved over her knuckles. She wanted to turn into his chest and stay there until they were late; instead she walked beside him with the ache intact. "Rehearsal tonight," she said. "I'm going straight there." He nodded. She did not offer to come over afterward. At the lift he brushed his mouth against her temple, and she almost said it then: I'll call when we're done. The words were ready, sweet and humiliating. She pressed her tongue against the back of her teeth and watched the floor numbers change. “A Place at the Table” is part of the serialized story “Samba dos Números”. Link to all stories in profile.

They called it an “unearned windfall.” Berlin ministers sitting in heated offices decided my 80-hour weeks retraining with neural nets aren’t work anymore—they’re “automated surplus” to be confiscated. When did surviving by learning new tools turn into a crime against the collective? Two years ago, my freelance contracts vanished almost overnight. Nobody offered me a safety net. No minister held a press conference to worry about my rent or the knot in my stomach every time I checked an empty inbox. They told people like me to adapt. *Upskill or get left behind.* So I didn’t sleep. I drained my savings on API credits, compute time, and endless night shifts debugging workflows until my eyes burned and my hands trembled over the keyboard. I took all the risk. I taught myself how to build things ten times faster so I wouldn’t end up in line at the job center. And now that it worked? Now that I finally have invoices going out again? Now Karin Prien goes on air to declare that value created by AI cannot belong to the individual, because it concentrates “wealth without labor.” Now Karsten Wildberger floats a special levy on machine productivity so the state can finance the transition of everyone who didn’t bother to adapt. Lars Klingbeil is already measuring my server logs to figure out how much of my output is “mine” and how much belongs to the treasury. If a carpenter buys an electric saw to double his output, you don't tax the electricity as an unearned societal surplus. But because my tool runs on tokens instead of oil, you call my survival an exploit. When I was drowning, it was my private problem. Now that I learned to swim with an engine strapped to my back, you want to siphon the fuel to fund the shore. Tell me: if the machine created the value, let the machine pay the tax. But if it’s my bank account you’re reaching into at the end of the month, look me in the eye and stop pretending you’re taxing code. You are punishing initiative.

"Don't you dare put your name on their failure." Dandara caught Rodrigo's wrist before he could press Enter. He jerked against her fingers, and she let go, startled by the violence of his flinch. The command on his screen would clear the integration workspace. His code would survive in its branch; the mess they had made bringing four weeks of separate work together would not. He had already opened a fresh incident form. In the box for the responsible developer, he had typed his own name. "Keep this attempt," she said, more quietly. "The logs. The choices we made resolving it. All of it." Her hand was still suspended between them. She lowered it beside his keyboard. "And leave that box alone." He took his hand off the keyboard. Around them, the morning continued obscenely: the grinder at the coffee machine, someone laughing by the lift, a delivery man calling for a signature. Dandara could feel yesterday's cold coffee turning in her stomach. They had spent nearly two hours reconciling two definitions of the same message structure. Each branch had compiled against its own version. Together, they did not even build. Stefan pulled up a chair instead of standing over Rodrigo. "Show me the last point where both changes were together." Rodrigo scrolled back to the branch dates. "Before QuantumMind separated the work. Four weeks. They wanted clean review boundaries." He rubbed his face with both hands, pulling the skin down beneath his eyes. "I said we'd have to put it back together. In the meeting. You were there." The accusation caught her before he looked away. "Then everyone stopped talking, and I thought, fine. I'll keep mine clean. At least they can't say it was me." Dandara remembered the meeting. She had looked down at her own notes when Marcus asked whether Rodrigo needed another explanation of the process. Her face grew hot. She had hated Rodrigo's silence afterward; she had helped make it. Beside his keyboard lay a list of completed tasks, each tick pressed hard enough to dent the paper. He moved it out of Stefan's way, hiding the last column with his sleeve. She wanted to tell him she was sorry. Instead she pulled her chair beside his and opened the dated objection they had both failed to defend. They kept the failed attempt, made a fresh integration workspace and worked through the incompatible definitions. By eleven, the executable compiled. Rodrigo let out a laugh that broke in the middle; then the first acceptance test failed. With a simulated loss of the vehicle-speed signal, the navigation display retained the previous value as though it were current. Another test never completed. Dandara followed the recorded inputs with her finger, wanting the familiar concentration to take her somewhere nobody could ask whether she had replied to a message. Her phone lit beside the trace. Natalia: I'll come and find you today. You haven't eaten, have you? Her body answered before she could stop it: a loosening low in her stomach, the remembered pressure of Natalia's mouth beneath her ear. On Sunday she had waited for a promised call until she hated the sound of every other notification. She had rehearsed a funny complaint this morning, something light enough to keep her from sounding wounded. Now Natalia had remembered she needed feeding, and Dandara wanted to lay her head against her and stop being useful for ten minutes. She turned the phone over before Rodrigo could see her smile. "This doesn't tell us where the value stops being refreshed," she said, turning the phone over. The work steadied her. "The replay shows what comes out. We still need the captures on both sides of the handler." Rodrigo opened the request he had submitted before the branches were mandated. Stefan read the refusal, then the later review schedule. "We can bring the changes together in small steps again. Keep one behaviour under test while we do it." "Can we?" Rodrigo asked. His voice rose, and he looked toward the glass meeting room before continuing. "Your way worked. They stopped it. They say Passau needs the full pack before every test flash. Now I'm supposed to explain why four weeks apart didn't produce one working thing." A notification arrived while he was speaking. The failed integration had been logged as an incident. Passau's reviewer requested the failure record, root-cause analysis and corrective-action proposal before a retry of the submitted candidate. Underneath, QuantumMind's coordinator had added that no development or controlled bench investigation could resume until its progress review cleared the team. The next available review was a week away. Rodrigo stared at the date. Then he laughed, once, so harshly that someone at the next desk turned. "A week. We need the rig to find the cause, and they won't let us touch the rig until we've told them the cause." He reached for the incident form again. "What do you want me to write? Tell me. I'll write whatever gets us out of this fucking chair." "No." Dandara pushed her own keyboard away. Her voice carried farther than she intended. She could see Marcus's empty chair through the glass, the water bottle someone had set out for his next meeting. "He stood there and made you look stupid for asking to keep the work together. Now you want to sign this for him?" Rodrigo's mouth tightened. "I want to keep my job." That stopped her. The coffee machine hissed into the silence, and she hated herself for making his fear something he had to confess in front of Stefan. She moved her hand back to the mouse, away from his. "So do I," she said. "Save the attempt. Please. Let them answer what's in it." Stefan asked him to open both messages separately. He was careful enough that she looked up. "I want Dieter to tell us which of these restrictions is actually his." Rodrigo deleted his name from the box. He saved the attempt, then pulled the disconnected head unit nearer with both hands. Dandara stored the input sequence and the failed result under the build identifier. Her phone was warm when she picked it up. Not yet. Come when you can, she wrote to Natalia. The question about Sunday still waited in her head. She pictured Natalia arriving, the private smile that would be hers in front of everyone, and left it there. “The Work They Had Kept Apart” is part of the serialized story “Samba dos Números”. Link to all stories in profile.

Cíntia came back from the parking lot on Monday afternoon with the vehicle key clipped to her jeans. "Still muted," she told Renato, smiling as she unhooked it. "Until I asked it not to be." Stefan had watched the operator check the hardware and power before they flashed the booked, stationary vehicle with the identified radio bundle. The display restart had preserved the mute indication there too. Now Cíntia recorded the result beside the bench run, naming the checks performed and leaving the others open. She returned the key before anyone could turn the test into a speech. At the lift, Júlia touched the inside of Stefan's wrist, where she had kissed it on Friday. "Tomorrow, eat lunch with me. Somewhere without a screen." He said yes, already thinking about putting the equipment away. Her hand stayed on his wrist until he looked at her properly. The promise at her apartment returned to him, along with the memory of her making room for his shoulder in bed. "One o'clock," he said. "I'll come to your desk." She let go, smiling, and he watched the lift close before returning to the bench. Adriana waited until the others had gone. "They'll put this in the transformation report," she said, pointing to the result. "It should be in a report. With its scope." "Beside the things they've stopped. Not in a footnote." She set her folder down but kept a hand on it. "I returned two reviews today. Named the missing evidence, sent them back to the leads. One asked when I could finish the analysis for him." He could hear a chair rolling across the floor. Rodrigo was still at navigation, a calendar on his screen where the signal trace had been. Stefan's pleasure in the radio result became something he did not know how to carry past that desk. He had helped Renato remove minutes from a task while Rodrigo waited weeks to begin his. "You had them shipping," Adriana said. "QuantumMind destroyed it. Now they'll blame you when it fails." He wanted to argue, partly because her certainty frightened him and partly because he could still see the next experiment. If they gathered the refused requests, matched each one to the unanswered question, perhaps Dieter could intervene. He looked at her folder, preparing to ask what they could do tonight. Adriana lifted it before he spoke. "I'm going home. Beatriz needs cardboard for a model. I promised we'd get it today." "Of course." His answer came too quickly. He had just promised Júlia an hour tomorrow and been ready to spend Adriana's evening for her. The realization made him stare at the papers, searching for a way to respond without asking her to reassure him too. "Send me the references you've already recorded," he said. "Tomorrow. I'll put the blocked investigations beside this. You don't need to write them again." She nodded, her grip easing on the folder. Her phone rang, and she answered in Portuguese. He caught only pieces: a shop, a colour, a protest loud enough to come through the receiver. Adriana laughed, rough-voiced from the day, and left while she was still talking. He waited until he could no longer hear her before sitting on the low stool. The head unit was off. Stefan opened Rodrigo's request beside the radio run: a narrowly defined change observed on bench and vehicle; a failure still waiting for captures on both sides of the shared handler. His message to Klaus began badly. Good progress today sounded wrong with the request beside it. He deleted it. Before he tried again, Klaus wrote. I need your evidence of what is working, and the record of what cannot be tested. Separately from QuantumMind's progress pack. There is a payment clause I want you to see. Stefan read it twice. Across the floor, Rodrigo reopened the old trace and leaned toward it. For a moment he looked like himself again. Then he sat back, leaving the same gap on the screen. Stefan attached the bundle identifier, bench log and vehicle result. Then he attached Rodrigo's request, with the date it had first been refused. “Across the Same Floor” is part of the serialized story “Samba dos Números”. Link to all stories in profile.

On Monday Klaus read Clause 9 three times before moving the exhibition leaflet out from beneath the contract. A coffee stain marked one corner. He smoothed it with his thumb, remembering Thaís's bracelets against his wrist, then put it safely in the notebook. The clause had not changed. The contract summary Bernardo had sent called QuantumMind's compensation outcome aligned. Klaus had accepted the phrase as something to verify later. Now he had the signed agreement and its annex, and later had arrived. There was a fixed fee. There were success-based bonuses. The bonus schedule tied payment to AutoConnect's assessed valuation at the next investment event, using agreed financial thresholds. Farther down, an option granted QuantumMind a right to acquire equity on terms that improved with the same event. Klaus went back to the delivery milestones. He could not find a corresponding requirement for navigation to work in a vehicle. No defined climate-control behaviour, no manufacturing acceptance result, no benchmark for the pilot fleet. Some supporting language described transformation progress. The measurable trigger was a number assigned to the company. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. There could be a commercial reason. A growth adviser might be paid on valuation; an equity arrangement might reflect a risk taken. Neither fact, alone, proved a false invoice or a fraudulent report. He knew the danger of making a satisfying theory out of an ugly clause. Still, he thought of the green slide. Accountable owners, completed structure, no new integration build. The report could improve while the product did not. Under this contract, improvement in the report had somewhere to go financially. Bernardo arrived carrying two coffees. "You missed a good lunch yesterday," he said, placing one beside the keyboard. "I called, but I suppose you had something more interesting." Klaus kept his face still. He did not want Thaís brought into this room as an explanation for his time. "Thank you for the coffee. I am reading the compensation annex." Bernardo paused with the second cup still in his hand. Klaus had been about to move his papers so they could sit comfortably. He left them where they were. "Their incentives align with ours," Bernardo said. "If the business recovers, everyone benefits." "Who establishes the valuation?" "There is an independent assessment." "And what evidence goes into it?" Bernardo drew the spare chair closer. "Financials. Forward contracts. Transformation progress. You know how these assessments work." Klaus did. That was what frightened him. A valuer could be independent and still work from a body of information somebody else had arranged. A bonus could be legally earned on a number that rewarded presentation more directly than a working head unit. He turned the screen. "Where is the technical acceptance condition?" "Delivery is in the main statement of work." "For the bonus." Bernardo leaned back. Through the glass, someone called to him from the corridor. He raised a finger without turning away from Klaus. "We can clarify that with Marcus." "Please do. In writing. And send the valuation instructions and the reports supplied to the assessor." Klaus wrote the request while Bernardo waited. The coffee smelled good. His hand had begun to reach for it when Bernardo tapped the cup's handle toward him; he went on typing instead. When Bernardo left, Klaus noted the clause references and saved the signed version with its annex. He did not write fraud. He wrote compensation trigger not dependent on demonstrated product acceptance and opened a list of documents he had not yet seen. His phone lit up. Thaís had sent a photograph of a lopsided hill drawn on the edge of her meeting notes. This one passed your measurements? He laughed, then looked back at the annex. Last month he had asked Stefan for a delivery date while Stefan was still explaining what the teams could not test. He remembered his own impatience, the pen ready above a box that required a number. Now he wanted the details because Thaís was among the people inside that box. The thought embarrassed him enough to make him turn the phone facedown. After a moment he answered her, then added one more request: the evidence used to report technical progress. “What Success Cost” is part of the serialized story “Samba dos Números”. Link to all stories in profile.

By Sunday morning, Natalia had filled her notebook with references from the channel. In Marcus's suite she set it on the glass table, then raised the temperature setting and put it back. I'm cold. He likes it this way. He continued his call while she stood at the window, watching him in the reflection until she lost track of the traffic below. "Bring it here," he said at last. She picked up the notebook. He shook his head and held out his hand, and she went to him instead. He drew her beside his chair. His thumb moved over her knuckles while she explained the guest invitation: one channel with its history, no repository access. At Adriana's warning, the thumb stopped. Natalia described Dandara's questions more carefully, watching his hand. You couldn't have done it. She'd have asked you for a work order. I wore that dress and listened, and she asked me to stay. "She sent it herself," she said. "I didn't touch the keyboard." He pulled her closer and kissed her. Natalia tightened her hand on his shoulder, forgetting that she had meant to make him ask about the notebook first. Again. I want your mouth again. But he reached past her for the book. When she touched his shoulder, he lifted her hand away and placed it on the table without looking up. "I need the review requests today. Names, dates, approvals. Start with Stefan's contact with Dieter." "I booked the car for two." "Move it to six." She flattened her fingers against the cold glass. I told you what I'd arranged. I didn't ask you to arrange it. She pictured herself leaving anyway, choosing clothes in a shop while checking whether he had called. When he finally looked up, she was ready to say she would finish tomorrow. Instead she heard herself promise four o'clock. "Good. Sit here." He placed a chair beside his and pushed the laptop toward it. Natalia changed the booking. I want him to be my master. I want him deciding where I sit, what I do next, when I get his hands on me. But I wanted this afternoon. She sat where he had put the chair, close enough for her knee to touch his. He moved his leg to reach a cable. He hasn't even asked whether I've eaten. Tell me what you need, Marcus. Give me something I can do so well you have to look at me. The work caught her. She followed the dates back through Rodrigo's requests and stopped at the refused bench capture. Stefan's contact with Dieter came afterward. She checked the sequence again, finding the unanswered question carried forward into the new pack. You asked for the experiment before they blamed you for the missing answer. I've got what you're going to put in your report. She drew a line between the references, pleased enough to forget the clock. She left the files untouched and recorded the details by hand. I haven't forwarded anything. Dandara's face came back to her, waiting beside the invitation form. Natalia pressed harder with the pen. You'd know exactly what this is if you saw the page. At four she turned it toward Marcus. Before she reached the second column, he took a call and read out her dates. "Have the coordination invoice ready. I want Bernardo's approval before Monday's review." Natalia held her pen against the unfinished line. I haven't finished speaking, and you're already arranging to be paid. When he ended the call, she continued from the interruption, making him follow the references. Only then did he look at her. "My clever girl." She smiled before she could stop herself. I still want my afternoon. Say it again. He swivelled toward her and rested a hand at the back of her neck. She turned in her chair, leaning into his reach. Keep it there. I know what you want me for. I want you using me, and I want this too. She kissed him, her fingers closing around his wrist. He disengaged them and turned back to the notebook, underlining two entries for her to check. She edged her chair nearer. He'll take the work and the afternoon and whatever I offer afterward. I still want to make him put his hand back. She opened the discussion again. At six the driver messaged. Dandara had written too: Have you eaten? Natalia remembered the sofa, the hand finding hers in sleep. You'd tell me to close this and come back. You'd mean it. She promised to call later and asked the driver to wait. Marcus tapped the page beside her hand. She put down the phone before he had to point again. “Sunday Belonged to Somebody” is part of the serialized story “Samba dos Números”. Link to all stories in profile.

The reporter needed one living person to interview. Her producer had muted the village's account, assuming somebody nearer was dealing with it. Now recovery workers were opening every house, and nobody was coming out alive. Inside one house, she recognized a dead woman's face in a photograph on the refrigerator. Hannah was laughing beside the farmer whose home she would help burn. On the floor, her hand still reached toward her dead friend's. The GNN crew had driven three hours from the highway through unplanted fields. Outside, workers carried bodies through the square to waiting trucks. Her producer remembered the young organizers naming drivers and shopkeepers online, accusing them of starving children. They had seized a carrier’s load. Demands for coverage became accusations against anyone who questioned them. He searched his phone for the messages he had stopped reading. There was no nearer newsroom. No carrier had returned after the seizure; winter floods had closed the freight bridge. The town’s last planting seed had been milled for bread. All the fields lay bare, and every household that stayed had starved. The officer showed her the five housemates’ names. She looked again at the photograph: Sarah Miller holding one end of a soup pot, Madison the other, both laughing. Hannah knelt beside a little girl whose hand rested in hers. The Millers alone had escaped, with their four children. She wrote down every name. She could not stop looking at the little girl’s hand in Hannah’s. Outside, two workers lifted a small black body bag onto a stretcher. The reporter lost her place in the notes. In her earpiece, the anchor asked whether anyone had survived. “Nobody who stayed,” she answered. “They starved in every house.” She tried to continue. Behind the lens, her cameraman wiped his face without taking his other hand from the camera. She had a daughter the little girl’s age. In her earpiece, the anchor told her to take her time. The Common Granary — a serialized story.

That Friday evening, Natalia reached Dandara's apartment at seven, the takeaway bag knocking against her knee. Dandara opened the door in a faded band T-shirt and cotton shorts. Natalia set down the food, turning so the open back of her green dress caught the lamplight, and heard Dandara stop asking about her day. I wore it for you. Come here and let me see what it does. She smiled over her shoulder. Dandara caught her waist and kissed her; Natalia steadied a tipping carton without moving away. They ate on the sofa. Dandara had found the beer Natalia liked and kept explaining that the shop had only had two left. Natalia took a grateful swallow. You went looking for it. When Dandara showed her a photograph of her cousin frowning over a program that drew crooked stars, Natalia supplied the cousin's name. Dandara grinned and scrolled to another picture, her hand resting between Natalia's shoulders. The fan rattled, and Natalia leaned into the touch. I could leave my phone in my bag all night. Then tell Marcus tomorrow that I forgot what I came for. She could almost hear his silence afterward. She kissed Dandara again before mentioning Friday: one room apart, the whole day lost to documents. "If I were in your Slack channel, at least we could talk where you actually are." Dandara's hand stilled. "Adriana asked me about that." She sat back, describing the old discussions, traces and customer details. "She asked what you need them for. I couldn't answer." Natalia kept their knees touching. You haven't forgotten the question. Even with me sitting here in this dress. She looked down at their hands. "Does she think I'm pretending to care?" "That isn't what she asked." Natalia released her hand to pick up her glass. Dandara watched it, rubbing a thumb along the cushion seam. I notice every time Marcus takes his hand away. I hate that I notice. She put the glass down and left her hand beside it. "I don't want trouble between you. Forget I asked." "You're not trouble. I'm asking you a question." The firmness surprised her. Natalia nodded, resisting the urge to touch her again too quickly. "Then tell me." "Being with you doesn't mean I can give you everything at work." The laptop remained closed at the far end of the sofa. Natalia could leave it there, eat another mouthful, give Dandara an evening that required nothing. She felt an impatient little heat at the prospect of returning empty-handed. I want his face when I show him. I want him to put down whatever he's doing. She lifted her eyes. "I know you can choose for yourself. That's one of the things I like about you." Dandara looked at her for several seconds before reaching for the laptop. She set it on her knees without closing the space between them. On the invitation form, Consultant support appeared in the reason field, then vanished. "Support with what?" Dandara murmured. Natalia kept her hands in her lap. I could answer you honestly. I need to know what your team can prove before Marcus bills for fixing it. Dandara typed Integration coordination with QuantumMind and hesitated over the trackpad. Natalia smiled when she turned, resting a hand against her wrist. Dandara's fingers relaxed beneath it; then she sent the invitation. "One channel, including its history. Your own guest account," she said, turning the screen. "No forwarding anything outside the company. If you need a file, ask me." "Of course." Natalia read the conditions before kissing her cheek. Dandara checked the channel name again, then closed the laptop. Natalia moved the empty cartons aside and made room for her on the sofa. I heard you. I can't pretend I didn't. When Dandara leaned against her, Natalia brought their joined hands to her lips. She stayed. There was pleasure in making Dandara laugh, in feeling her settle more heavily against her as the evening grew quiet. When Natalia's phone lit beside her bag, she turned it facedown. You can wait, Marcus. I want to be there when you see what I've brought you. Dandara followed the movement, then laid her head on Natalia's shoulder. Later, in bed, Dandara found her hand without opening her eyes. Natalia waited until the fingers loosened. She could still see the words being deleted from the reason field, could feel that pause while Dandara turned to her. You asked me twice. I kissed you instead of answering. She eased her hand free and turned over, carefully enough not to wake her. “An Invitation with Her Name on It” is part of the serialized story “Samba dos Números”. Link to all stories in profile.

“Check Lucy Walker. Please.” Sarah Miller held the officer's list against the doorframe. She had fed that little girl when her father was ill. Now he was telling her Lucy had starved with everyone else who stayed in the village. Sarah kept him from turning the page. She asked about another street, another house. Finally he said, “We opened every door, Mrs. Miller. They’re all dead.” Jim and Beth Walker had been found with Lucy and Jim’s father. Sarah pressed her thumb against the child’s name. She could see Lucy carrying bread upstairs when Jim was ill, a slice for Daddy and another for Grandpa. There had been enough then; Sarah had brought enough. The five volunteers who took the last planting seed and burned her farm were dead. So was Mr. Peterson, who had helped them. Nobody escaped after the Millers. People waited for relief and permission to leave until they could no longer walk out. “We called you,” Sarah said. Her sister Rachel came to stand beside her. The officer said their warnings had been filed with the town’s threats against drivers. Only after weeks of radio silence had anyone gone to look. Rachel’s reservoir housing had sheltered Sarah, her husband Dan, and their four children after they escaped. Now Dan and their son Luke worked in maintenance; their eldest, Emma, helped in the canteen. Each evening Sarah laid six places, then checked them again. That evening they sat beside the service road, Ben asleep against Sarah. Ten-year-old Abby had a letter in her pocket for Hannah, the volunteer who had held her hand. Sarah had promised they could send it when things were better. Ben woke and asked when they could go home. Dan gathered him into his good arm. Sarah was trying to answer when Emma began crying about Lucy’s unfinished planting lesson. Sarah drew her close. Luke put his arms around them both, and Abby pushed into the space beneath her mother’s elbow. They stayed beside the road until Rachel came looking for them with supper going cold. The Common Granary — a serialized story.

Thaís spotted the exhibition leaflet inside Klaus's notebook before he could hide it beneath his arm. "You prepared for Saturday. Of course you did." He offered it with a smile, and she leafed past the financial tables to retrieve it. "Then you can tell me whether the paintings obeyed the plan." Inside, the gallery smelled of old wood and wet clothes. Marília greeted her from the desk in Portuguese and warned her about a leak beside a painting of a very dry landscape. Thaís laughed. When Klaus asked what was funny, she translated; she liked that he waited for the joke instead of pretending to share it. He stopped before a hill that towered over a row of houses. "Is that intentional?" She leaned against his upper arm. "You think she couldn't measure the hill?" "No. I am asking what she wanted me to see." Thaís looked again. She had first found Brazilian modernist paintings in a book with cracked plastic over its cover, loving the improbable bodies and angry colours before she knew their names. Later, learning those names had made her proud and oddly nervous, as if somebody might revoke her pleasure if she explained it badly. Beside Klaus, the urge returned: have the answer, make the afternoon worth his time. "I keep looking for the road between the houses," she said. "You'd have to pass through someone's kitchen to get up that hill. But I still want to go there." He stepped closer to the canvas. "I hadn't noticed the doors." She showed him the little blue one, almost lost against a blue wall, and caught herself tracing its shape as she did when a driver failed to find something on her interface. He followed her finger. She liked him so much just then that she imagined bringing him to another exhibition next month, and another after that. It frightened her how easily those afternoons assembled themselves. At the next picture he asked about a word in the catalogue. She knew what it meant in Portuguese. The English would not come, and she nearly offered something plausible just to keep the day moving. "I can't translate that," she admitted. "Not properly." "Show me in Portuguese." "You won't know it either." "Then we will be two people who don't know it." She laughed and opened her phone. Shoulder to shoulder, they argued over two translations that pleased neither of them. Klaus tried one aloud with a pronunciation so terrible that she caught his sleeve. A visitor squeezed past, and she stayed close after there was space to move away. She had forgotten to worry about being a good guide. In the courtyard he set his notebook on the bench. "There. Unemployed for the afternoon." Thaís sat beside him, knees touching his. Water clung to the leaves above them, and a bus braked beyond the wall. She wanted to kiss him. She also wanted to be kissed without first arranging the whole thing, and the wanting made her unusually still. "Are you tired?" he asked. "Shall we go?" She turned toward him, smiling despite her impatience. "You could ask a different question." His face reddened before he smiled back. "May I kiss you?" "Yes. That's a much better question." She held his cheek, feeling its roughness while his hand settled at her waist. He did not hurry. When she drew back, he followed a little and stopped; she kissed him again, pleased by that unguarded movement toward her. His glasses were crooked afterward. She straightened them, only making it harder to bear how happy he looked. "You're smiling," she said. "I know. I cannot seem to stop." She pressed her face against his shoulder, laughing because otherwise she might say something enormous before either of them was ready. His phone vibrated inside the notebook's pocket. He glanced at the cover and left it closed. Thaís took his hand and asked where he wanted to eat; when he reached for the leaflet, she caught his wrist. They could find somewhere without preparing for it. “The Wrong Way to Read a Picture” is part of the serialized story “Samba dos Números”. Link to all stories in profile.

When colleagues depend on an employee's AI experiment, the CTO has an operating decision to make: give the service an owner and maintenance time, or let business continuity depend on somebody's spare attention. The employee has done something valuable. They know the awkward process, have tried real examples, and can show what helps. That is a better starting point for collaboration than another abstract specification. Making them the unofficial operator alongside their existing job spends the benefit on a new dependency. AI also changes the alternative. For a well-scoped workflow, purpose-built software becomes much cheaper to create. Let a model interpret a messy request where that helps; keep prices, duplicate prevention, approvals, and recovery in explicit rules and tested tools. A general-purpose agent does not need to rediscover your business process every morning. Work with the employee and the CTO to decide what must happen, capture exceptions, and establish who operates the result. The first version can arrive faster. Maintenance, failed integrations, and staff departures still need an answer. Encourage the experiment, then fund the responsibility it creates.

On Friday, Júlia told Stefan to bring dinner and not a laptop. He arrived carrying two hot paper bags with a solemnity that made her laugh. One handle had broken in the taxi; a patch of sauce darkened his shirt. She kissed him, tasting rain on his upper lip, then pointed him toward the sink. While she found plates, he studied the photographs above her desk: a rehearsal, a birthday, Dandara making an obscene face behind someone who had expected a respectable picture. Júlia liked watching him discover the people who would still be here when his assignment ended. She wished she had not thought of that already. "On Monday you kept moving your hands away from the keyboard," she said, sitting beside him. "You wanted to do it faster." He laughed, looking down at them. "I wanted it to work while I was still there. Renato knew what to do. That's not a good enough reason to take it away from him." She leaned against his shoulder, pleased that he had admitted it. Beneath the damp cotton he was warm and solid; she wanted to climb into his lap. She also wanted to ask what she had left unasked at the bar. The two wants interfered until she was angry at both. "I liked watching you," she said. "But I didn't invite you because you were good at your job." His hand settled beside her knee. She placed it where she wanted it, enjoying the change in his breathing, then made herself hold his eyes. "I want you here tonight. But I don't want to keep proving how little I need." His fingers stopped. She nearly laughed to soften what she had said, to rescue them both from having to take it seriously. Instead she pressed her foot against the floor. "At the bar I wanted to ask when you leave. I wasn't asking for forever. Somehow I made every question sound like forever in my own head." Stefan looked toward the window. Below, a motorcycle passed, and someone shouted from the pavement. She let him have the silence until she could no longer bear it. "Your assignment is temporary. Mine is my fucking life. Don't look surprised that I want to know where I am in it." He turned back. "The initial assignment is ninety days. I don't know whether BergMotor will extend it. I haven't arranged a return flight. Sophie is in Berlin. I will go back." She had asked, and now she wanted to push him away for answering. His daughter belonged in that answer; knowing it did nothing to ease the hurt. Júlia kept his hand against her knee, unwilling to turn the warmth she wanted into something she had to refuse. "Tell me when you know. Not after you've decided how much I can handle." "I will." He held her gaze, his face reddening. She wanted to believe the promise enough to stop there, but there was still Monday morning, her desk beside her colleagues' desks, the possibility of reaching for him and finding only the visiting consultant. "And sleeping with you doesn't change who decides about my work. Or whether you tell me when my code is wrong." "Adriana makes the team decisions. If there's a conflict, we tell her." "Before it becomes a favour." She squeezed his fingers. "If I stop wanting this, you still work beside me." He nodded. "Yes. Either of us can stop." She had wanted that freedom, and hearing that he wanted it too hurt a little. She brought his palm to her mouth before he could mistake her silence. "I haven't stopped." "Neither have I." She moved onto his lap, holding his gaze until his arms came around her. His mouth lost its caution when she kissed him. She wanted his hand at her back, his rough breath against her neck, the sound he made when she pulled him closer. The fan clicked through its turn; outside someone laughed, and she laughed against his mouth. Her apartment, her noisy street, this person she had chosen to bring into them. When she stood, she took his hand. At the bedroom door he asked, "Still what you want?" She drew him inside. Later, rain covered the clicking fan. He held her too tightly for a moment, and part of her wanted to stay perfectly still, to be whatever made him need nothing else. She shifted. "I'm not gone. You don't have to hold me like that." His arms loosened. She settled beside him, finding a comfortable place for her shoulder, and remembered the dinner cooling in its bags. In a minute she would be hungry. She could ask him to get it. “What She Wanted on Friday” is part of the serialized story “Samba dos Números”. Link to all stories in profile.

The bank offered our new LLC a loan—if I promised to repay it myself. My sister and I had formed the company to keep its debts from following us home. Our biggest order now depended on my signature beneath PERSONAL GUARANTEE. The loan required a personal promise on top of the company’s new legal protection. Wilmington, spring 1997. We made stainless-steel rollers for packaging lines. A plant had ordered four hundred, due by June. Our old lathe could make them well, just not fast enough. A used machine sat at a dealer’s warehouse, and I had already measured the shop floor for it. We had waited for January’s new federal tax rules before forming our LLC. With both of us as owners, it would be treated as a partnership unless we chose otherwise. We filed in Delaware, signed the plant’s order in the company’s name, and brought it to the bank. I thought the hard part was over. I offered the new machine as collateral. The loan officer said its resale value would not cover the loan and turned the guarantee toward me. I asked for less money; it would not buy the machine. My sister pointed to the purchase order. “That tells me you may be able to pay,” he said. “I still need you both to sign.” I used the bank’s phone to ask the plant for an advance. The buyer could pay only after delivery and needed our answer that afternoon. When I returned to the table, my sister’s hand was on the pen. Our houses were nowhere on that page. Our names were. I pushed it back. Before closing, I told the buyer we could not meet the deadline. At the shop, we had written Saturday shifts on the board for June. My sister stood beside me while I erased them. Have you ever had to choose between guaranteeing a company loan and losing an order?

Not the Same Door On Friday morning, Dandara was still smiling at Natalia's message when Adriana stopped beside the kitchenette. She swallowed her coffee, expecting a question about the protocol review. Adriana glanced toward the desks, then back at her, and the pause made Dandara lower the phone. "Natalia asked me for access to the integration discussion channel in Slack," she said. "Did she ask you too?" Dandara set down the cup. The pleasure she had been carrying since Natalia's morning message went hard beneath her ribs. Tonight they would be at her apartment, eating the food Natalia had offered to bring, with no colleagues waiting to see whether this was serious. Adriana's question arrived in the middle of that happiness like a bill. "She wants to understand what we're working on." "She can ask about a specific task. The channel has old discussions, traces, customer details. Her job doesn't give her a need for all of that." Dandara looked toward the invitation form she had left open. She had not sent it. It was supposed to be an ordinary thing she could do, an invitation to the person who kept remembering what exhausted her when everyone else asked for another explanation. "You're happy to let Stefan sit in everything." The words came out sharper than she intended. Adriana's face changed, and Dandara immediately wanted to take the comparison back. Stefan had a defined assessment assignment. She knew that. Knowing did not loosen the old feeling of having to justify wanting Natalia. There had been questions before: a friend's careful warning that she was moving too fast, a relative's certainty that the right man would settle her, people who meant well and still made every girlfriend something to defend. Adriana was not those people. Dandara knew that too. But the body remembered being made smaller before the mind could sort the voices. "His access has an owner and a scope," Adriana said. She took a breath. "I am asking about this channel. Not asking you to stop seeing her." Dandara picked up the cup again although it was empty. She wished Adriana would say something plainly wrong. Something she could reject without having to carry this small, practical doubt into the evening. "You don't trust her," she said. "I don't know what she needs those records for. She hasn't answered that. If there's a work reason, let's name it and use the appropriate access." Adriana stopped there, pressing her lips together around whatever else she had meant to say. Dandara knew that look from difficult reviews: the effort of letting someone reach an answer herself. It made this harder to dismiss. "I'll think about it." She meant it when she said it. Back at her desk, she closed the invitation form. For five minutes she worked through a protocol review and felt almost relieved. Then Natalia sent a photograph of a takeaway bag beside her knees in the back of a car. I remembered you hate coriander. Still seven? Dandara smiled before she could stop herself. Nobody had to remember that. It was such a small thing to be suspicious beside, food with one ingredient left out because she had said she disliked it. She typed Seven. Come hungry and put the phone under her hand, keeping that little warmth for herself. She would decide about the channel later, at home, where she could ask Natalia without Adriana's voice coming between them. This episode is part of the serialized story “samba-dos-numeros”. Link to all stories in profile.

Three Weeks, at the Earliest On Tuesday the fastest route into a navigation test vehicle became three weeks long. Adriana watched Rodrigo close his laptop at the third coloured block, then open it again. Marcus's calendar divided the wait into preparation, progress review and stakeholder approval. The first cutoff had been yesterday. Rodrigo's jaw worked while Marcus explained that these were calendar windows, not estimates of development effort; complete the pack, and the later stages could be reserved. Stefan leaned forward. "Which part did Dieter request?" "Passau needs a consistent account. We've translated that into an operating process." Marcus glanced toward Bernardo, who was studying the calendar. Adriana knew the expression: the pleased concentration with which he found a sentence he could take to the board. "Dieter restricted production-candidate flashes and manufacturing approval," Stefan said. "You have put controlled test vehicles into the same calendar. We need a suitable parked vehicle, an operator, an identified bundle and a defined test. What makes that take three weeks?" Bernardo rubbed his watch clasp. "We cannot keep changing the process. People need stability." Adriana lowered her folder before she bent its cover. Since Friday, the invitations called her consulted instead of accountable. Her review queue had stayed the same. Nobody had explained the change; she had lain awake trying to decide whether she had been punished or merely made easier to ignore. Now Rodrigo would have to carry this calendar back to people who still expected him to protect their work. "We haven't captured both sides of the shared handler," she said. "We need controlled bench work before there's anything new worth taking into a vehicle." Natalia turned a page. "The investigation request remains in technical review." "My review is in your folder. It explains why the investigation is necessary." Natalia kept her finger against the paper. She had read it; Adriana had seen her acknowledge the receipt. For a moment they looked at each other across the table, and Adriana waited for her to say what the review actually contained. "Then we need the agreed prerequisites closed," Natalia said. "Otherwise the release stages don't have a reliable input." Rodrigo turned his screen toward them. Incoming temperature messages, then the gap before the display. Adriana could have drawn the trace from memory. "The prerequisite is the answer," he said. "The answer needs captures on both sides from the same run. We don't have them. You want me to attach this again?" Marcus moved nearer, lowering his voice as he rested a hand on an empty chair. "Attach the updated plan. Once it's approved, you'll have a proper slot instead of competing for equipment." Beyond his shoulder, the bench was empty. Adriana could see the power supply's green lamp. Rodrigo looked past Marcus at it, then closed his laptop with a care that made her afraid for him. If he swore now, somebody would write down the swearing. She would spend the afternoon defending his tone instead of getting him the missing capture. Beside her, Júlia folded her climate-control notes and put them away. Adriana wanted to tell her to submit the request anyway. She could already hear the question that would follow—would Adriana back it?—and the answer she would have to give. Yes, with all the authority of a woman whose review was sitting beneath Natalia's finger. "Now we know the path," Bernardo said, standing. He paused behind Adriana, touched her shoulder and asked about Beatriz's school project. She had told him about it beside the coffee machine last week, when remembering her daughter had briefly felt like having a life that reached into the office. His hand settled more comfortably while he waited for her answer. "Perhaps you can help Rodrigo make the plan clearer," he added. "He listens to you." She looked at the hand until Bernardo removed it. Rodrigo was still gathering his things, close enough to hear. She could take the folder, soothe him, promise another attempt. By evening he would be thanking her for helping him wait. "He made it clear," she said, making herself speak above a whisper. "I won't ask him to change the reason." Bernardo's smile thinned. "Nobody is asking that." He left her shaking, the folder pressed against her stomach. Rodrigo met her eyes before he went. She was glad he had heard, and ashamed of how little else she could give him. Note: This episode is part of a serialized story.

The café's €1 limited company owed my tile shop €8,000. It closed before paying, and my three installers expected their wages on Friday. I found the owner at the shutter with my invoice. He pointed to the company's name. I pointed to the floor inside. Our tiles were still on the café floor. The invoice was still in my hand. Valencia, March 2023. He had ordered the patterned floor for his new café before Christmas. My crew spent two days laying it. He asked for thirty days to pay, and I gave them to him. I saw S.L. after the name on his order and thought about the other cafés that might want our work. I did not look at its capital. The café opened. Thirty days passed. He promised to pay after the next weekend, then stopped answering. When I reached the shop, chairs were stacked behind the glass and he was pulling down the shutter. “The company is going into liquidation,” he said. “There isn't enough money for the bills.” I put the invoice in front of him. “Will you sign for it yourself?” He read the amount and shook his head. “The company ordered the floor.” I took the papers to my adviser. She found the company's capital in the register: one euro. Spain had recently allowed an S.L. to be formed with that little. I asked whether the owner could really walk away while my tiles sat under his empty tables. “If the company's assets cannot cover its debts in liquidation, you can pursue him under the new rule,” she said. “But the amount tied to that rule is the gap between his capital and €3,000. Here, that's €2,999.” I asked her to pursue it. I had no promise he could pay, and even the full amount would leave most of my invoice unpaid. Back at the stockroom, my installers were waiting by the tile racks. I took the cash I had saved for the van and counted it into three wage envelopes. The youngest offered to wait until Monday. I put his envelope in his hand. He had done every hour of the work. Have you ever checked a customer's company capital only after its invoice went unpaid?

Rodrigo closes his laptop before he tells Marcus where to shove the plan. The test bench is empty. His team could be working. Instead, another document. Now Bernardo wants Adriana to make that sound reasonable. He rests a hand on her shoulder and asks about her daughter. A little warmth before the favour. Rodrigo listens. Adriana has heard him explain the problem until he can barely stand repeating himself. She knows exactly what is missing. Now she's being invited to become one more person telling him to wait. She could make this easier for herself. Rodrigo is still close enough to hear her answer. caimito.net/en/blog/2026/10/… Note: This episode is part of a serialized story.

I put €1 into our new limited company. The timber merchant still held a €12,000 bill with my signature on it. Italy had dropped the age rule that kept me off the deed. I asked him to release my sister and me from the old debt. He looked at the company’s €2 capital and said, “No.” The merchant points to the order we signed the year before. Bologna, July 2013. Three oak counters stood under canvas in our workshop. The hotel developer had run out of money before taking delivery. The timber merchant let us pay him a little each month. My sister and I had signed his order in our own names last autumn, when I was 36 and too old to join the new simplified company. My sister came in with a newspaper folded to the business page. “The age limit is gone.” I made her say it twice. We returned to the notary’s desk and signed a standard deed with our names side by side. We each put in one euro of capital and paid the remaining formation charges. When our company appeared in the register, I ran my thumb over my name on the papers. I took them to the timber merchant. “Let the company take over the balance,” I said. “Release us from the old order.” He set the new papers beside the invoice bearing both our signatures, then slid that invoice back toward me. “The company can pay me,” he said. “Your names stay here until I’m paid.” I pulled the canvas off one counter. “Take these against the balance.” He shook his head. He sold timber, not hotel fittings. He had delivered every board I asked for, and his workers still needed their wages. I opened the envelope we had been filling for a secondhand panel saw and handed him this month’s payment. He counted it and wrote the remaining balance on our old order. After he left, my sister hung our company name above the workshop door. I carried the old invoice home in my coat pocket. Have you ever found that forming a company later could not undo a debt you signed personally?

“Don't leave me alone,” Hannah whispered from the rug. Madison tried to reach her hand from the sofa. They had promised to feed the village and taken its last planting seed. Now Hannah was dying within arm's reach, and Madison could barely move. In June, Hannah lay on the rug with a pillow beneath her head, her cargo pants folded around sharp hips. The tablet on the coffee table held their unanswered requests for replacement grain. Their three housemates lay nearby: Olivia in the armchair, Ethan with his glasses slipping down his nose, Jacob in a kitchen chair. Madison had tried to straighten Ethan’s glasses, but her hand fell before it reached his face. They had moved here after college to do something useful together. The reservoir still supplied electricity. The refrigerator clicked on, the TV played an old program, and a washing machine chimed that it had finished. Nobody moved. They had eaten the last flour weeks ago. Jacob had kept going to the creek until he collapsed. Now he apologized whenever anyone looked at him. Olivia kept telling him he had tried. The last answer had come from a carrier whose truck they had threatened to take. He told them never to contact him again. Beyond the window, the fields they had left without seed were bare. “We said nobody would be left alone.” Hannah moved her fingers against the rug, asking Madison to sit beside her. Madison tried to slide to the floor, but pain folded her back against the sofa. She remembered the farmer whose seed they had taken. Sarah Miller used to put lunch aside for her, wrapped in a clean towel. Madison had stood watching while Hannah set Sarah’s house alight. She had never asked whether Sarah had eaten. Hannah’s hand lay open beside the pillow. Madison reached down until her fingertips found it. Neither could close a grip, so they rested their fingers together. When Hannah began to cry, Madison told her she was there. She kept saying it until she no longer had the breath. The Common Granary — a serialized story.

“What are we supposed to plant?” Jacob called from below the platform. He had helped Madison take the village's last seed. Now she was promising freedom from hunger beneath red banners, and he wanted her to name one sack they could put in the ground. Five young people faced Madison and Hannah in the square. Behind the houses, the fields lay bare. Hannah raised an arm beneath *JUSTICE FOR ALL*. Ethan started clapping. Madison smiled toward a student’s phone. “The thinkers we studied understood that charity leaves the giver in charge. We’re building something no owner can take away. Every field, every storehouse, all of us working for everyone. No family can call itself free while another owns the ground it needs to live. No child begging at a locked door because her parents have nothing to trade.” Jacob kept his hand raised. He had shared a house with Madison since college. Sarah Miller and her daughter Emma had begged them both to leave enough seed for spring. “Answer me,” he said. Madison tightened her grip on the microphone. “Those sacks fed Lucy when she was hungry. You carried them yourself.” “I know what I carried. What do we plant?” Hannah began explaining their requests to the regional office. Jacob said the deadline had passed. Olivia lowered her hands. “Once everyone contributes freely, we won’t need collection orders,” Madison said. “Until then, the council has to keep the keys. We can’t let a few households undo everything we’ve built.” A column of dust twisted beyond the street. Several people turned toward it. Madison leaned toward the microphone. “The children who ate that bread were real. I won’t apologize for feeding them.” Ethan clapped again. Hannah raised her arm, and Madison smiled toward the phone. The loudspeaker carried their applause across the square. Then Jacob walked away. Hannah turned the clipboard to the next page. Beside the speaking notes was Lucy’s name. The Common Granary — a serialized story.