Warm Stock

The last crate of Sera's shift sat on the intake scale with its bands tight and its tag square to the reader: OREN VALE, WORKSHOP CLEARANCE, 412.6 KG. The mass held steady, down to the tenth. She had eleven minutes to sign it through, strip off her gloves, and reach the commissary before Oren's window table went to someone else. The two crates ahead of his had cleared without a flicker. She had already begun composing the apology she would not need.

The inspection lamp leaned over the crate's front corner, throwing a yellow spot across the top bundle of strip. Sera watched the center-of-load indicator while the belt nudged the crate toward the uncoiler. The total stayed 412.6. The dot slid left.

She stopped the feed with the flat of her hand. The belt quit with a shiver. Under the lamp the shrink bands shone. She walked the pallet, rechecked the four corner clamps, the buckles, the feet seated in their cups. Nothing loose. The crate had no reason to lean. She warmed the corner again, and the dot crept another two marks before she killed the lamp and locked out the line.

At the open slats she could see the top strip bowed against its retaining clamps. Not much, a thumbnail's gap, but flat stock had no reason to bow. Sera worked the corner strip free with tongs and clamped it to an isolated work tray. It was a dull gray band, fifty centimeters long, cool enough to handle through the glove. The tag read ANNEALED SHAPE-MEMORY ALLOY, FLAT STOCK, NON-RECOVERABLE. She read it twice, then checked the declaration code against the receiver's spec. Annealed meant no stored training, no shape to recover. Non-recoverable meant it should have stayed a strip no matter how warm the line got.

She brought the heat gun down. The strip twitched at forty degrees. At sixty it folded. The clamps caught the ends, and the alloy curled into a U with two guide cheeks and a folded stop, its grip polished pale where hands had worked it. A gouge marked the left cheek, the place Oren's soldering iron had slipped the year she turned nineteen. She had held this jig over his bench while he talked her through conduit tabs. The mass display on the tray didn't move. Only the shape had.

She set it down and keyed the floor channel. "Line nine is stopped. Receiving warms stock before the controlled anneal. If trained pieces recover in the feeder, they fold against the rollers and jam it. Mass stays the same. Shape doesn't."

The intercom clicked. A voice from receiving asked how many pieces.

"Enough," Sera said.

She printed a quarantine tag, clipped it to the tray, and put the jig where the camera could see it.

The bay door opened at 19:41. Oren came through in his good coat, collar turned under on one side, a paper reservation chit still folded in his hand. "You're late," he said. "The window table's gone. They gave it to a pair of freight auditors."

Then he saw the tray. His stride broke. Color rose above his collar, and he put his hands behind his back. The chit crumpled.

"That's scrap," he said.

"It's a jig. It curled when I warmed it." Sera tapped the certification tag. "Your signature says annealed flat stock."

"It's alloy. It gets weighed, it gets melted."

"Then why is it trained?"

He looked at the uncoiler, then at the door. "The luggage allowance is thirty kilos. Recycler credit clears the rest. You know that."

"I know what the forms say. Why did you sign them?"

"I thought I'd have time," he said, and closed his mouth.

"Time for what?"

He didn't answer. His thumb worried the chit's edge.

Sera pressed the quarantine seal onto the tray. "The crate stays stopped. This stays with me."

Oren looked at the jig. "The table's gone."

"I know."

He reached toward the tray but stopped short of touching the metal. "You could have sent it through," he said. "It's within the mass."

"And if it folded in the feeder?"

He didn't answer that either.

The jig ticked once as it cooled and stayed a jig.

The jig sat on the isolated tray under the camera, still wearing the shape Sera had warmed into it. Oren stood on the other side of the yellow line with his crumpled meal chit.

"Name it," she said.

He looked at the ceiling. "Two-hand folding jig. Over-and-under. I made it the second year you were on the bench."

"And the declaration?"

"It's alloy stock."

"The declaration says annealed. Flat. Inert." Sera tipped the tag toward him. "You trained it. Receiving warms every strip before the controlled anneal. If that opens under the clamps, it jams the feeder."

"I know."

"Then why did you sign?"

Oren's jaw worked. The clock over the bay clicked to 19:56. "The window table's gone," he said.

"Oren."

"Nineteen thirty. I booked it in March." He smoothed the chit with his thumb, then seemed to hear himself. His hand stopped. "I packed them because I couldn't pick which ones to keep. Thirty kilos, and twenty-five of it already in my case. A new shop. Every time I set one aside, another looked worse." He stared at the jig. "I signed because flat stock was the only way to send all of them. I knew the anneal would wipe their shapes. I told myself the furnace could decide."

"The crate doesn't decide. It jams a feeder."

"I know that too."

Sera set the heat gun beside the tray. "Then decide. We warm each piece. You name it, weigh it, and put it in one of two columns. Keep or anneal."

He looked at the sealed crate. "All of them?"

"One at a time."

Sera passed him the heat gun. "Your crate. You warm it."

He broke the quarantine tape. Inside, the tools lay nested in paper sleeves, each pressed into a flat leaf. He lifted the first onto the tray and played heat across it until the metal remembered. It opened into a three-point bend jig with a scar at the brass screw.

"Bend jig," Oren said. "You cracked that screw the week you stopped wearing gloves."

"I was sixteen."

"You were careless." He weighed it. "Six point eight."

Sera wrote the shape and mass in the log. The next came up a coil former with a streak of green paint along one arm.

"Bench paint," she said.

"Your bench by then."

"Your paint."

He set it on the keep side, then moved it back to anneal without being told. The third was a scroll jig. Its lower jaw carried a bad weld, ground smooth but still visible.

"You fixed my handrail job," Sera said.

"You fixed it. I only showed you which file."

They worked through the crate. The mass ledger held at 412.6 kilograms. The tools came back one by one: an edge setter with a notch from her first scoring gauge, a vise jaw he had machined twice because the first was out of true, a small folding jig worn bright at both grips. Oren's hands slowed each time he laid one down. The keep column stayed empty.

Back at the folding jig that had started it, Sera stopped the heat gun. "Your luggage allowance is thirty kilos. The credit was paid on all of this. Whatever you keep, you repay."

Oren turned the jig over. The grips had two worn hollows, one from his hands and one from hers. "This one," he said.

Sera weighed it. "Four point three."

He signed the credit transfer without arguing. The chit clicked through the reader, and 4.3 kilograms came off the stock ledger. Sera put the jig in a marked bin on the bench.

Then they clamped the rest flat in the reset fixture and ran its hotter, controlled annealing cycle. Oren logged each piece as it cooled. Sera took the bend jig through the feeder's lower warming cycle once more; it stayed flat. So did the scroll jig, then the last coil former. She checked them against the gauge and wrote flat.

The canteen was nearly empty. The reservation had been released at 19:40. Sera carried two bowls of barley soup to a bare table and set the saved jig upright between them. Her left hand found the near grip.

Oren watched her thumb settle. "That's wrong," he said, automatically.

He reached for the jig. His fingers turned the smaller fork toward her right hand, the old correction. Then he stopped. He rotated the jig back on the table, widened the left fork under her thumb, and left it there.