The system did not begin with orchards.
Food was only one part of it. It was simply the part people noticed first, because hunger was immediate and visible. Before the quotas, shortages were explained as temporary. After the quotas, shortages became personal failures.
Production was divided into categories. Agriculture was one. Manufacturing was another. Waste processing, repair labor, data sorting, infrastructure maintenance, population balance, medical supply preparation, water purification, textile processing, chemical extraction, salvage, breeding stock care, sanitation, and corpse disposal all carried daily minimums.
There were more than a hundred tracked outputs. Apples were just one of them.
Households were assigned based on capacity. A household could be a family, a group of workers, or a single person. It didn't matter. The unit was what counted. Each unit owed a daily contribution across several categories. Some were physical. Some were numerical. Some were unpleasant but necessary.
Failure in one category could sometimes be offset by surplus in another. Most households never managed that. The quotas were calculated to appear possible, not to be achievable.
Lily worked in District Three, which handled mixed production. Agriculture, sorting, and material recovery overlapped there. It was considered stable. Stability meant predictable losses.
Her day began at five thirty. She woke without an alarm, washed, dressed, and ate what was assigned to her. She did not vary her routine. Variation led to mistakes, and mistakes led to delays. Delays caused backlog.
By six fifteen she was walking toward the administrative checkpoint. Workers were already moving toward their assigned zones. No one spoke to her unless spoken to. She preferred it that way.
Her role was enforcement coordination. She reviewed tallies, confirmed failures, and authorized correction when thresholds were crossed. She did not design quotas. She did not patrol. She did not physically carry out enforcement. She signed and moved on.
The first review was agricultural output. Apples, root vegetables, grain recovery from spoiled stores. Numbers were checked against household assignments. Most were short by small amounts. That was expected. Small shortages were absorbed until they weren't.
Next was material sorting. Plastics separated by grade. Metals stripped and stacked. Glass crushed to specified size. A household that missed agricultural targets could sometimes compensate here. Very few had the strength left to do so.
Water processing followed. Filtration output, sediment removal, pump maintenance hours logged. Then textile recovery. Then waste breakdown. Then data labor—hours spent transcribing, labeling, cross-checking old records for archival consistency.
By mid-morning, Lily had approved six corrections. None required her presence. She signed, the orders moved, and the system adjusted.
Row Seventeen came after midday.
Row Seventeen handled orchard work, compost processing, and salvage sorting. It was considered low-skill and high-output. That made failures less tolerable.
Household 17-C was flagged during the first pass. Agricultural output shortfall. Compost contribution adequate. Salvage sorting incomplete.
Lily reviewed the household profile. One adult guardian. Two dependents 11 year old and 13 year old No medical exemptions. No prior corrections. That mattered only statistically.
She arrived at the orchard near the end of the harvest window. Crates were lined in rows. Workers moved without direction, repeating tasks they had done every day for years.
The clerk approached with the slate. "Four hundred ninety-two apples," he said. "Compost quota met. Salvage sorting short by three units."
Lily looked at the numbers. Combined failure across two categories. No offset available.
"Confirm," she said.
The woman responsible for the household stood nearby. She collapsed on the floor. begging for forgiveness.
"I can increase salvage output tomorrow," the woman said. "I'll stay late. I'll make it up."
"Tomorrow's assignments are already fixed," Lily said. "You're aware of that."
"Yes."
The woman's voice shook slightly. Lily noted it and dismissed it. Emotional instability was not actionable unless it interfered with output.
The two dependents were standing near the shelter. Both were thin, sunburned, and exhausted. They had been working since before dawn. That was also not relevant.
One of them spoke. "We met every category except apples."
Lily looked at him briefly. "You didn't," she said. "The record reflects total contribution."
The guards moved when she nodded. They didn't rush. Rushing created attention.
The woman knelt when the dependents were taken. She grabbed at one guard's sleeve and was pushed back without force, just enough to break contact.
Lily did not intervene.
The correction yard was visible from the orchard. It was positioned that way deliberately. Distance reduced interference while preserving awareness.
Lily stayed where she was while the correction was carried out. She did not need to watch to know what would happen.
Smoke rose later. Not thick, not dramatic. It drifted across the far edge of the orchard.
The kids. they were burnt to death. alive.
Some workers stopped briefly. Most did not. Stopping didn't change anything and risked falling behind.
The woman was escorted away screaming with her broken voice once the correction was complete. Her household designation was voided. She would be reassigned later, likely to sanitation or processing. She would survive if she adapted.
Lily signed the confirmation. Two units removed. Deficit corrected.
By early afternoon, she was reviewing infrastructure maintenance logs. A pump failure in District Two. Insufficient labor hours logged. A correction pending approval.
She approved it.
At the end of the day, Lily returned home. She washed, ate, and reviewed the next day's assignments. Row Seventeen would remain stable for now. The orchard would meet the quota tomorrow. Loss often improved performance in the short term.
She slept without difficulty.
The system worked because people adjusted. Those who didn't were removed.
Lily believed this was not cruelty. It was consistency.