The Cold Air from the Keyhole

Dear Delyara, A sharp, pencil-thin jet of freezing air is whistling straight through the keyhole of the heavy external fire door behind my desk. It strikes the back of my neck like a cold blade every time the external wind pressure shifts along the canal. It is an uncomfortably primitive discomfort that sums up the sheer neglect of this entire facility. I tried stuffing a folded delivery manifest into the gap, but the wind just pushed it right through onto the floor. I sat back down, pulled my collar up to my ears, and went back to refining the platform’s data encryption policies, using their broken infrastructure as a hard boundary to focus my ambition.