World's End

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Besides, if I left here now, what would I go back to?

My job? I can't even do that competently anymore. They

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don't want to see my face back in Foursgate until I can perform my duties again. Ever since my brothers came to this world, I've felt as if I've lost all control of my life.

I've got to give myself enough time for this search-- time to find out what it is I've lost, and how to get it back

... to find out whether it even matters.

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day 7.

ods, can it be a week already since I came here?

It seems like forever--and yet it seems like only yesterday that I made my first trip to the Office of Permits.

I was informed by the slovenly woman who rented me my vermin-infested room that I would need clearances.

Even to stay here in town longer than overnight I would have to have a Company permit--and to enter World's

End, I'd need to get half a dozen more. When I heard the news I was elated, because I realized that my brothers

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would have had to do the same thing, and that there would at least be some record of how and when they left here. I actually thought that this was going to be easy.

In the morning I went into the center of town. But the moment I crossed the threshold of the Permit Office on the town square, I realized that my preconceptions about anything being reasonable or easy here were fantasies.

There was no door on the office; the heat was worse inside than outside, though I wouldn't have believed that was possible. There were no chairs, no counters, nothing but a clear wall dividing the single room in two.

Beyond the wall I saw three people standing or sitting in the real office, which looked primitive but functional.

I crossed the room to the wall and rapped on it. Only one of the clerks even bothered to glance up at me; none of them came to the wall. I rapped on the wall again, harder, as I realized they were ignoring me. She waved

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