Completely broken. More than ever before.
   I pull Hermes aside and whisper-shout at him. “There’s no way this is correct! I can only make out like two words!”
   Hermes shoves my hand off his shoulder and eyes the other new recruits to make sure they can’t hear us. They can’t. “Well, it is correct.”
   “It just says-”
   “Stop!” he snaps. “Just stop. You’ve now been chosen a seventh time by MATH. No one has ever been chosen more than  three times, do you understand?”
   “No. I don’t understand what’s going on and I’m starting to think I'm doing the wrong thing here, man. What are we actually doing here? Like, what's the point of these innocent instructions?”
   Hermes grimaces, looks to the new guys, then pulls me further away into some shadows. The anger on his face vanishes, and he suddenly looks like a normal guy. Maybe a line cook or something. Not a prophet.
   “Listen,” he says, “I don’t know what’s going on either, but I trust MATH. MATH sees all the little coincidences and statistics that go into everyday life and somehow sees a link between things you do and the ends of our jobs. And MATH loves you. It gives you the easiest spot here; participation and payment without direct contact. You can keep your head down and keep your conscience clean. All you did was some mundane thing that some bad guys and bad luck took advantage of. Nothing to be ashamed of, and you get paid. If not you, someone else, right? There's no guilt there. These things must happen. MATH sees to it that they happen, and that when they do, the windfall comes to us.”
   I let that hang in the air for a while. I half turn around. “I wish I’d worked in a fuckin’ deli or something.”
   “I don’t know why its messages to you are so cryptic and confusing. I’m sorry about that. But it wouldn’t make a mistake like that- it can’t. It tells you exactly what you need to hear. It is not broken. It’s making a choice.”
   It wouldn’t? It’s not glitching? What is it, then? Maybe it was to get me to drop my guard a little, to think I’m slipping by its system by doing these simple tasks. How sweet that I get to leech off this thing and do none of its dirty work. But everyone is needed for the job to get done. This stupid mysterious job.
   “A deli sounds awesome.” Hermes says in this really wistful way. He stares long past the concrete wall in front of him.
   “I actually really wish I’d been an architect.” I say.
   He doesn’t say anything for a long time, then he starts walking back to the main room and says “Do the job. We need you.”
   Fine.