Primoday, Sarnat 7th 067.M42

Two weeks of double shifts, snatching what sleep we can more or less where we fall, sharing ablutions, sharing the mess, sharing our pilfered stocks of flavourings for the bulk starch-gruel they've brought in to feed us on the cheap. Patience is running out and tempers are starting to wear thin.

There's already been a few aborted fights - and I think the only reason they're not progressing to actual violence is that everyone is just so exhausted. The idea of having to consequence someone for snapping under this sort of strain doesn't sit well with me, but if they don't reel it in, we may have to. This is our duty, and those who would break under the burden when usually we have it so fair need to be corrected.

We're also struggling to keep our error rate down. Little things keep sneaking through. A transposed number here, an error on a name or a date there. Errors are always an issue, but now more than ever it's incredibly important that we try to keep our standards as high as possible. A small error in one location could lead to a cascading effect of errors and problems as it propagates through the data. Senior Stack Master Arovak reminds us of this daily.

Even Maddy, who hasn't committed a single error that I've caught since the day she started, finally made an error a few days ago. It was the moment I'd been dreading. I hoped she'd rise above, but she too is only human. She's feeling the strain as much as the rest of us. And the look on her face when I had to tell her that the error I'd found was in her data… it pierced my heart. She looked completely distraught. To her credit, she accepted the correction with good grace. She didn't try to provide excuses or use our… whatever it is that's happened between us to try to get out of the correction or her data validation. She apologised and said she'd try to do better. Then she smiled at me.

… I can feel myself nodding over my dataslate. I've had to delete a mess of nonsense and poorly-written words just to get this far. I need to sleep. I hope that we won't be strained too far beyond this breaking point and that relief will come soon. The council continues to meet, still trying to work out the terms of this ore vein and who will be given permission to not only work it, but to profit from it. We hope that their decision might finally quell the tide of applications we continue to drown under, despite the order that no more would be accepted. We pray that it arrives soon.

Thought for the Day: The burden of failure is the most terrible punishment of all.