monday briefing

bureau main office — monday, 08:04

gorm stands at the whiteboard. he has drawn a grid. the grid has color-coded sections. one section is labeled “PRIORITY ALPHA.” it contains a complaint about a dog barking on bredgade.

sanne is seated. she has her thermos. it is 8 AM, so it contains coffee. probably.

line sits with a notebook open, pen ready, posture suggesting she is about to take minutes at the hague.

gorm: weekend intake. forty-seven complaints. nine duplicates. two in languages we don’t service. one drawing.

line: a drawing?

gorm: taps the whiteboard we’ll get to it.

sanne: will we.

gorm: seventeen noise complaints. twelve smell complaints. eight property disputes. four classified as “other.” one of the “other” is the drawing.

line: who classifies them?

gorm: yrsa.

line: what’s her criteria?

sanne: surviving the habsburg empire.

gorm uncaps a marker.

gorm: i want to flag a conflict of interest. complaint 2026-dash-0412. filed by bente fisker regarding unauthorized hedge trimming by complaint 2026-dash-0413, filed by margit fisker regarding retaliatory leaf blowing.

line: are those—

sanne: his ex-wives. second and third.

gorm: i will recuse myself from both cases in accordance with bureau protocol seven.

sanne: there is no protocol seven. you made it up last time this happened.

gorm: i created it in response to an emerging pattern. that’s leadership.

line writes “protocol 7 — leadership” in her notebook.

gorm: sanne, you’ll handle the fisker complaints. treat each case on its merits. the fact that bente once threw my entire record collection into the kattegat is immaterial.

sanne: noted.

gorm: the drawing. he pulls a sheet from a folder. citizen filed a complaint in the form of a crayon illustration. yrsa logged it as a formal submission.

line: is that… a building on fire?

gorm: it’s the bureau. and yes. the building is on fire.

sanne: who filed it?

gorm: anonymous. yrsa says she recognizes the crayon technique.

pause.

sanne: i’m not going to ask.

gorm: she says it’s “clearly” a lefthander who presses too hard. she has three suspects.

line: should we be worried? about the, um. the fire imagery?

gorm: line, if i worried every time a citizen expressed a desire to see this building in flames, i would not sleep.

sanne: do you sleep?

gorm recaps the marker. places it precisely parallel to the other markers.

gorm: monday’s operational. i want the hedge dispute resolved by wednesday. leaf blower by friday. the drawing goes in the file.

line: which file?

gorm: the file.

sanne and gorm exchange a look. it communicates eleven years of something that isn’t friendship but has outlasted most marriages.

line: writing the file.