2 posts tagged with "Bureaucracy"

K arrived at the "Comprehensive Affairs Processing Center" on a grey morning. No one knew exactly what "comprehensive affairs" this center processed, only that if you wanted to legally continue breathing, walking, existing in this city, you had to obtain a specific permit from here. No one remembered the permit's specific name; people vaguely referred to it as "that thing" or "the permit."

The Center was a massive, ugly concrete building, like a crouching grey beast, swallowing and spitting out anxious crowds. K took a deep breath; the air was thick with dust, sweat, and an indescribable musty odor, like old paper. He entered the main door and was immediately seized by the sight before him—a queue so long it disappeared from view, like a giant, docile, grey python composed of countless human figures, coiling through the hall and vanishing around a distant corner.

He, let us call him K, or more precisely, Archivist G/T 718, couldn't recall when he began working in the archives of the General Administration of Customs, a place as vast as the Library of Babel. The days were like impressions made repeatedly with the same stamp, blurred and identical. His duty was to receive, classify, and file the announcements concerning tariff adjustments that arrived like snowflakes from every corner of the world. These announcements, initially scattered whispers, gradually gathered into a clamorous torrent, eventually crescendoing into a continuous, deafening roar.