The Throughput Efficiency Metrics

Monday morning did not begin with a death. It began with a measurement. Thomas placed a steel ruler against his silk necktie to check if the clip sat exactly 4.2 centimeters above his third button. A millimeter of error meant a loss of routine. Routine was the only thing stopping the basement from crawling up the stairs.

On his desk lay the weekly quota from Head Office. The stamp at the top read: Project F15-D5.

“Fifteen funerals a day?” Simon asked. He was the assistant. His voice was currently breaking between two different octaves.

“No,” Thomas said, locking the ruler in his desk drawer. “Fifteen per hour. Around the clock. For five consecutive days. Head Office has updated the district efficiency metrics.”

The first arrival was Mr. Vandersteen. Thomas had spent three hours removing a shade of liver-purple from the man’s cheeks, replacing it with a shade called Muted Sand. The widow wore sunglasses that overrode her entire face. She squeezed a small lace handkerchief.

“He loved the autumn,” she whispered.

Thomas tilted his chin exactly fifteen degrees. “The leaves drop because the logs require it, madam.” It meant absolutely nothing. She nodded, comforted.

By eleven o’clock, Mr. Vandersteen was ash. By noon, the first industrial flatbed truck backed into the courtyard. It reversed twice before the driver was satisfied with its position. Thomas watched from the window. The second attempt had been unnecessary.

The truck carried thirty identical, unvarnished particleboard crates. They were numbered, not named. The driver smelled of wet wool and dropped a clipboard on the counter. “No family. No hymns. Scan the barcodes and move them through. Corporate wants the quarterly backlog cleared by Friday.”

Thomas checked the manifest. A1 through A30. No letters. No history. Just data. Thomas straightened the sheets, aligned their corners with the edge of his desk, and signed the bottom of each page. There was no space for remarks.

* * *

By Tuesday afternoon, the crematorium was a factory. The floorboards in the main chapel were hot to the touch. The furnace blowers hummed a low, flat B-flat that vibrated through Thomas’s teeth. Simon ran between the unloading bay and the rollers, his apron stained with industrial grease.

At cremation number 342—registered as a Rosetta Finch, age 82—the belt jammed. The chapel doors banged open. A man in a yellow plastic raincoat stood in the doorway, trailing mud across the parquet. He ignored the catafalque and walked straight to the altar.

“There’s nothing in them,” the man said. He had a heavy flathead screwdriver in his fist. The handle was yellowed acrylic.

Thomas did not step back. “Sir, you are disrupting a scheduled throughput under protocol F15-D5.”

“Look, you clerk.” The man shoved the screwdriver under the lid of crate 342 and threw his weight against it. The staples ripped out of the pine frame with a dry crack.

Simon made a wet sound in his throat. Thomas looked into the box.

The white satin was flat. No indentation. No Rosetta Finch. Only the smell of dry glue and MDF wood.

The man in the raincoat let out a short rattle of a laugh. “They’re embalming the oxygen, Thomas. Corporate ran out of bodies to meet the target. They’re burning the vacuum to clear the spreadsheets.”

He turned and walked back out into the rain, his boots leaving black crescents on the clean floor.

Thomas looked at the empty silk. Then at Simon, whose hands were shaking against his trousers.

“Thomas?” the boy asked.

Thomas adjusted his collar. The tie was tight enough to restrict his breathing, but the numbers on the screen were green. “Close the lid, Simon. The computer weighs the crate, not the ghost. The fire doesn’t read the nameplates anyway.”

* * *

Wednesday and Thursday became a matter of logistics. Thomas stopped going home. He stood by the main roller, his scanner clicking against the barcodes. The boxes were light. They felt like empty cardboard shoe boxes. Gravity seemed to have abandoned the building.

Hundreds of empty crates entered the brick arches. On the monitor, the efficiency graph rose in a straight, beautiful diagonal line. Thomas printed the graph and pinned it beside the weekly rota. By evening, the paper had curled slightly in the heat. He replaced it with a fresh copy.

“Why are they crying then?” Simon asked on Thursday evening. He was sitting on a stack of unprinted death certificates. Through the observation glass, a family of four was weeping into their coats around crate number 1,104.

“They aren’t crying for a person, Simon,” Thomas said. He looked at his own wrist. His skin looked strangely thin, like tracing paper. “They are crying because the emptiness finally has handles on the side. A coffin is an easy shape to understand.”

An hour later, Simon left his keys on the ledger and walked out without his jacket. Thomas did not look up from the scanner. Friday. The conclusion of Project F15-D5.

* * *

The digital log read 1,799. The final unit—number 1,800—was timed for four o’clock.

The sky outside had turned a bruised, chemical purple. Thomas stood alone in the center of the chapel. On the catafalque sat a box made of solid, dark oak. It had heavy brass latches instead of staples.

On his monitor, the line for the deceased’s name was blank. The cursor just blinked.

The clock hit four. The conveyor belt stopped with a pneumatic hiss. The silence was heavy enough to make Thomas’s ears pop.

He walked to the oak box. His shoes made no sound on the marble. He looked down and saw his soles were hovering half a millimeter above the floor. The floorboards were visible through his leather uppers.

He laid his hand on the oak lid. The wood was cold, but it vibrated like a telephone wire in a storm.

Thomas unclipped the first brass latch. Click. Then the second. Click.

He lifted the heavy timber.

A man lay inside the white silk. He wore a black suit. His tie clip was exactly 4.2 centimeters above his third button. His skin had the clean, grey look of a Monday morning. It was Thomas. A perfect, solid inventory item.

Thomas looked at his hands. Through his fingers, he could see the white silk.

He checked the tie clip once more. Exactly 4.2 centimeters.

Then he climbed in and pulled the lid shut.

Click. Click.

On the desk, the counter turned to 1,800. The books were balanced.