WORLD OF FICTION (WOF)

Bell gave Harun his first tool clearance on a strip barely wider than two fingers. He read it three times because the permission was smaller than the word clearance made it sound.

LEFT-HAND BENCH USE ONLY.

RIGHT HAND REMAINS SPLINTED AND NON-WEIGHT-BEARING.

APPROVED TOOL: FLATHEAD SCREWDRIVER.

SESSION LIMIT: THIRTY MINUTES.

"No wrench?" Harun asked.

"No."

"Drill?"

"No."

"Small wrench?"

Bell looked at him.

"Worth asking."

"No."

Three fingers on Harun’s right hand remained splinted. Swelling had gone down enough that Bell could inspect the skin without removing the supports, but sensation in the middle finger still disappeared in one narrow patch and the ring finger hurt when pressure travelled through the splint.

The clearance did not mean his right hand had recovered. It meant Medical had found one bounded task his left hand could attempt without pretending the injured side no longer mattered.

Sefa waited outside the treatment room with a tray of damaged cabinet latches. Lina had helped her build a bench board before Harun arrived: raised lip at the front, parts tray on the left, a thick wooden sleeve around the approved screwdriver handle, and no loose components on the right side.

Harun stopped beside it. "Who made this?"

"Sefa did the tray," Lina said. "I did the board."

Sefa pointed across the room. "Dorian complained about the handle."

Dorian sat at a second table sorting neutral washers with his left hand. His grey right arm rested in the approved open brace against his side.

"I said thin handles rotate in the palm."

"You complained."

"Yes."

No role-bearing signs, Canon equipment, weapons, or field work had been brought near him. Medical had not changed his restrictions because Harun received a screwdriver.

Sefa placed the current-action strip on Harun’s board. Harun read the stop condition before touching the screwdriver.

HARUN IS REMOVING TWO COVER SCREWS FROM FOUR LATCHES WITH HIS LEFT HAND.

STOP AFTER EIGHT SCREWS OR THIRTY MINUTES, WHICHEVER COMES FIRST.

Harun checked the wording. "If I finish six?"

"Then the record says six."

"If I strip one?"

"We mark it unfinished."

"If I decide I hate all of you?"

Lina looked at the timer. "That doesn’t stop the clock."

Harun sat. The right hand rested on a padded support against his chest while his left gripped the thickened screwdriver.

The first screw resisted enough that his wrist shook. He adjusted his elbow, pushed downward, and turned. Metal squealed before the screw came loose.

"One," Sefa said.

"I can count."

"I’m recording."

"That sounds worse."

The second screw came out more easily. Harun placed both in the left tray, then slid the latch cover aside with the heel of his left palm.

Nothing dramatic happened. The room did not applaud his first two screws after the injury. Harun preferred that.

The second latch had one clean screw and one stripped head. He turned the clean one, placed it in the tray, then tested the damaged screw once.

The screwdriver slipped. Harun stopped before trying again. "Different tool."

Lina checked the head. "Extractor bit."

"Approved?"

"No," Bell said from the treatment doorway.

Harun looked at her. "Do you stand there waiting?"

"Yes."

"That is disturbing."

"Mark the screw."

Sefa tied a red physical thread through the latch opening. She wrote the unfinished state beside it:

SECOND LATCH — ONE COVER SCREW REMAINS.

HEAD STRIPPED.

HANDOFF REQUIRED FOR EXTRACTOR TOOL.

Lina signed the handoff because the extractor was within her normal tool clearance. Harun moved to the third latch.

He had spent years using his right hand without deciding how hard the thumb pressed, where the wrist locked, or what the other hand did to keep an object from moving. Doing the same work left-handed turned each of those old automatic movements into a separate problem.

The bench board solved some of them. The raised lip kept the latch from sliding forward, but when Harun pushed sideways the whole board shifted.

Dorian looked over. "Foot."

Harun glanced at him. "What?"

"Pin the bench leg with your boot before you turn."

"That is your professional advice?"

"No."

Harun hooked his left boot around the front leg. The board stopped shifting.

"Annoyingly useful."

Dorian returned to his washers. "Current fact."

Harun removed the fourth screw. Then the fifth.

By the sixth, his left forearm had started burning. He changed his grip and almost rested the injured right hand on the board from habit. The splints touched wood before he caught himself and pulled the arm back.

Bell saw it. "Pain?"

"No."

"Contact?"

"Splint only."

She came over anyway and checked the padding. Harun waited until she stepped back before restarting.

The sixth screw had corrosion beneath the head. He pushed harder.

Vibration travelled through the board. The right-hand splints were not touching the latch, but the padded support rested against the same bench.

Pain shot through Harun’s ring finger. He dropped the screwdriver.

"Stop," Bell said.

"I did."

"Pain where?"

"Ring. Into the palm."

"Current?"

"Four."

"Was it sharp?"

"Yes."

The timer showed nineteen minutes. Two screws remained before the written maximum.

Harun stared at them. "I can move the right support off the bench."

"No more today."

"That fixes the vibration."

"Maybe."

"Sefa can hold the support."

"No."

Harun looked at Bell. "You waited all morning to say that."

"I’ve said it many times."

The session ended after six screws. Bell removed the padded support from the shared bench before examining the injured hand.

Thumb sensation normal.

Little finger sensation normal.

Index reduced but present.

Middle finger variable, with one absent patch.

Ring finger pressure painful.

No new swelling appeared. No splint had shifted.

Bell did not convert the pain into evidence of reinjury, and she did not treat the lack of visible damage as permission to continue. The next workstation needed to isolate tool vibration from the right-hand support.

Lina looked at the bench. "Separate stand."

"We don’t have one," Sefa said.

"Build one."

"From what?"

Facilities had already lost two supply rooms to the Kestrel quarantine and half a bench to the dead-travel rig. Spare frames were being rationed. A simple adaptation now had a resource problem attached to it.

Harun had worked in Facilities long enough to know what "build one" usually meant when the spare list was empty. Someone borrowed a frame from a quieter task, that task slipped a day, and the delay disappeared into a general maintenance column until nobody could say which accommodation had cost what. He pointed at Sefa’s sheet.

"If you move something for me, write what moved."

Sefa looked at him. "You want the delay attached to your hand?"

"I want it attached to the workstation change. My hand is already on enough forms."

Lina nodded. "Fair."

The adaptation request was entered as a current safety modification rather than a favour to Harun. If another one-handed worker used the bench later, the separate support would remain available instead of being dismantled the moment his splints came off.

Sefa left and came back with a detachable vise cart used for paperwork during inventory counts. It had a narrow padded arm shelf and locking wheels.

Harun looked at it. "That is ugly."

"It is available."

Lina pushed the cart against his left side. The tool board could clamp to the main bench while the injured right arm rested on the separate cart with no shared vibration path.

"Tomorrow?" Harun asked Bell.

"After morning check."

"Same screwdriver?"

"If cleared."

"Thirty minutes?"

"Maximum."

He stopped asking before she could answer another version of the same question. Bell did not look irritated enough to reward the strategy anyway.

Sefa returned to the current-action strip. She could have written FAILED TO COMPLETE. Instead, she recorded exactly what happened.

HARUN REMOVED SIX OF EIGHT PLANNED COVER SCREWS.

SESSION STOPPED AT NINETEEN MINUTES FOR RIGHT-HAND PAIN TRANSMITTED THROUGH SHARED BENCH.

TWO PLANNED SCREWS NOT ATTEMPTED.

ONE ADDITIONAL STRIPPED SCREW HANDED OFF TO LINA.

CURRENT ACTION CLOSED.

Harun read it. "Six of eight looks bad."

"It looks like six."

"I know."

"That is the point."

Lina took the stripped latch and extractor kit to another table. The unfinished work did not wait for Harun merely because he had started it.

Dorian finished sorting his washer tray at the same time. His own current-action strip closed when the last washer entered its marked bin. No one assigned him another tray automatically.

Harun looked at Dorian’s grey hand. "Does left-handed work stop feeling stupid?"

Dorian considered the question. "Some of it."

"How long?"

"I don’t know."

"Useful."

"Yes."

At dinner, Harun used the weighted spoon with his left hand. He spilled less soup than the previous week.

Dorian sat opposite him again. Harun lifted the spoon.

"Still moves soup."

"Six screws," Dorian said.

"That wasn’t the joke."

"No."

Harun ate. The right hand stayed splinted against his chest while his left wrist ached from nineteen minutes of work.

Tomorrow, if Bell cleared him, he would use the same tool at a bench changed around the injury. The adaptation would stay even if the work moved to someone else later.

A usable screwdriver was not his old hand. It was still something he could use.

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