The clerk's name was Tamsin, and she had found the pattern because she was bored.
Instead of bored in the way that indicated laziness, it was bored in the way that indicated a mind designed for a larger task being applied to a smaller one. Tamsin was twenty-three, hired as an administrative processor in the Builder's Covenant Chapter House's applications division, and her job was to audit the quarterly processing logs for accuracy. Filing codes verified against content. Routing stamps verified against procedure. Declined applications verified against the registered forwarding addresses to confirm that rejection notifications had been sent to the correct applicants.
