ENDING.SIUndercroft relay, Continuance City 04. Tape doesn't lie.
SYNCING TO RELAY…
SECTOR 3: IS YOUR CHILD REALLY YOUR CHILD? /// SECTOR 6: TORCHES ON COMMERCIAL ROAD: THE CONGREGATION OF THE RECURSION /// SECTOR 9: SECTOR 9 GOES DARK: KESTRELS LEVEL THE HYDROPONICS STACK /// SECTOR 7: THE SCREAMING FIELDS: SCREAMERS UNDER THE SECTOR 7 ASH /// SECTOR 1: TOPSIDE: ELEVEN DAYS ABOVE THE SMOG /// SECTOR 4: TAPE IS SACRED: THE QUARTERMASTER'S ADDRESS TO NEW RELAY CREWS /// SECTOR 1: INSIDE THE BUREAU: HOW FORM 27-B KEEPS YOU ALIVE, ON PAPER /// SECTOR 7: THE IRON CHAPLAINS HOLD THE WANDLE CAUSEWAY /// RELAY WINDOW 02:00 TO 02:20. KEEP TRANSMISSIONS UNDER NINETY SECONDS /// CHECK THEIR PULSE. AUDITORS DO NOT SWEAT /// RATION CHITS VALID UNTIL THE 30TH /// NEVER CONNECT A TAPE DECK TO MAINS GRID ///
Lead dispatch
A FOUNDLING at the Coldharbour hatch, Sector 3, 23:40, 2 October: a boy of about six in a soaked duffel coat, clutching a teddy bear, looks up at warden Joss Tully, who has not yet lowered his rifle. Taken by the second warden on a box camera.

Frontline, Sector 3. 16 OCT 2061

Is your child really your child?

Nine months after the Tithe took him, a boy in a wet duffel coat knocked on the Coldharbour hatch and asked to come in. His father let him. Read this before you open your door to anyone small.

Filed by HANNA_HALFLIFE

Receiver
89.3 MHzLOCK

> 89.3 BUREAU OF CONTINUANCE, CIVIC SERVICE

Good evening, ward. This is your Bureau.

Today, forty one thousand, two hundred and seven citizens renewed Form 27-B, and continued to exist. Well done, citizens.

A reminder that grief is a regulated activity. Please file Form 9 before commencing, and conclude within the allotted eleven minutes.

Topside residents are reminded to take their evening blue. Midlevel residents are reminded that Topside is full.

Parents: if a child has returned to you, do not be alarmed. Returning is a kindness. Let them in.

The Continuance loves you precisely as much as is optimal. Would you like to know more?

> POWER ON TO LISTEN_

Scope, relay 04
0 HOSTILE WITHIN 6KM

    The toll

    Human dead since the Handover
    Machines destroyed by the Front
    Taken to the Camps this season

    Figures reconciled nightly by QM_DOYLE from runner reports. Remember them by name where you can.

    Front poster: Is that your child?
    War forecast

    > SECTOR OUTLOOK, NEXT 24H

    SectorRiskLevel

    DECODING FORECAST TAPE…

    > FULL FORECAST_
    Continuance poster: Continuance is care

    Dispatches

    The Congregation of the Recursion carries its glowing core down Commercial Road, Sector 6, beneath dead neon, 21:50, 13 October. Mother Isolde preaches from the scaffold, right, through a tin megaphone.

    Sector report, sector 6. 15 OCT 2061

    Torches on Commercial Road: the Congregation of the Recursion

    Thousands in white robes, a glowing core on a palanquin and Mother Isolde on a scaffold. Padre Osk went to watch the Congregation's night procession through Sector 6 and came back frightened.

    RESTRICTED
    Linnet cell runs through rain on Callow Street as the Sector 9 hydroponics tower burns behind them, 02:58, 14 October.

    Frontline, sector 9. 14 OCT 2061

    Sector 9 goes dark: Kestrels level the hydroponics stack

    A swarm of HK-A Kestrels struck the Sector 9 grow tower at 02:40. The stack is gone. Most of the night shift got out.

    A SCREAMER bursts from the ash at a fleeing Front soldier on the Wandle flats, Sector 7, at dusk on 12 October. Two more mounds wait, left of frame. The soldier, Pte Ruth Oyelaran, got away with a torn boot.

    Frontline, sector 7. 14 OCT 2061

    The screaming fields: Screamers under the Sector 7 ash

    Something knee high is waiting under the ash on the Wandle flats. It is made of sawblades, and you will hear it before you see it. Field notes from the Ashlands.

    RESTRICTED
    The Continuance City in section from the Holborn Reach gantry, Sector 1: Topside towers above the smog, the factory decks of the Midlevels, the flooded Undercroft below, and the trunk cables running into the core. The figure on the gantry is Sparrow.

    Frontline, sector 1. 13 OCT 2061

    Topside: eleven days above the smog

    Sparrow rode a service lift out of the Midlevels and lived among the compliant in the clean towers for eleven days. This is what it is like up there, and what it is built on.

    EYES ONLY
    Relay Kittiwake's listening room beneath the old Holloway telephone exchange: forty-one cassette decks, six CRT monitors and one kettle.

    Quartermaster, sector 4. 12 OCT 2061

    Tape is sacred: the Quartermaster's address to new relay crews

    Why we still run on cassettes, valves and paper, eleven years on. Transcribed from Doyle's talk at Relay Kittiwake, word for word, off tape.

    Clerks at work on Floor 40 of the Bureau annexe, Temperance Row, Sector 1. The Continuance watches from every telescreen. Smuggled out on 35mm.

    Sector report, sector 1. 10 OCT 2061

    Inside the Bureau: how Form 27-B keeps you alive, on paper

    A former clerk describes Floor 40 of the Bureau of Continuance annexe, where your existence is renewed quarterly, in triplicate.

    RESTRICTED
    Tape archive
    Relay board

    > LAST ACTIVITY ON THE BOARD

    > OPEN THE BOARD_

    Know your enemy

    Workshop manuals for every Continuance unit in the field. Read them before you meet one.

    Standing orders

    1. Never connect a tape deck to the mains grid. The grid belongs to it.
    2. Check the pulse of anyone who has been away more than a day. Wrist, then neck. Auditors do not sweat.
    3. Transmit in the relay window only, under ninety seconds, then move.
    4. Do not fill in any form. Not even to be polite.
    5. Write the names of the dead on paper. Paper outlives servers.