The Outside Register

The instrument was out of service. The reading was published.

In the Vault, a sealed city, the Outside Register publishes reports saying the outside is unfit for life and the doors must stay shut. For sixteen years, Cole Iversen has calibrated the instruments named in the reports. He works at the city wall, signing slips certifying that each was in service and properly calibrated when read.

Then a report claims a reading from an instrument Cole had out of service for calibration at the stated time.

Cole finds no mistake in his work. At the office, he watches a clerk write another reading for a time when the instrument was out of service. The clerk treats it as routine. Cole cannot establish that his instruments measure the outside at all.

Dain Ferris maintains the doors and wants to open one to find out for himself. He agrees to wait while Cole questions Alma Cray, the office head who trained Cole. Without an answer, Dain will try to open a door. Alma intends to keep publishing.

Cole once read a report to his dying sister Wren, assuring her there was nothing beyond the walls to miss. Now he must find what evidence supports the reports before Dain risks the lives inside.

The Outside Register is a closed-system mystery about a sealed world, the public record it trusts, and a man whose name stands under every certificate on his run.

What does his signature stand for now?