The Whiteport Heart-Mind Files: Starting with a Refused Perjury

Evan Reed, a low-level clerk at the Whiteport Identity Bureau, has one true talent: stamping reports that others have already written. That routine shatters when a tram goes out of control, and he suddenly sees a black label materialize on a sixteen-year-old boy's chest: "Troublemaker, Entity-Class." The whole city claims the boy sabotaged the brakes. But Evan saw it with his own eyes—the label appeared before the accident ever happened. The boy did kick and damage an escape latch, so he is not entirely innocent. Yet the brake assembly had long been cracked, while the official report insists it was intact. Supervisor Fitch slides a pen toward him. "The city needs a usable answer. Sign it—the boy gets a lighter sentence, your colleagues keep their jobs, Whiteport's loans stay funded, and you get access to a fragment of your father's death file." Evan picks up the pen. Then he crosses out the conclusion already written for everyone. He soon discovers that twenty years ago, Fitch had drafted another "usable answer" for a child who could not speak clearly. That child was him. The man sent to prison by that testimony was his father. And this city's inner demon has never clung to just one person.