The exams that began at the crack of dawn didn't yield the final results until the sun began to set.
The crowd surged forward in a great wave.
Some stood on their tiptoes to peer over others' shoulders, while others shouted the names on the list out loud.
Joyous cheers mixed with bitter curses, making the Campus Martius sound like a crowded market.
At first, Marcus couldn't even bring himself to step forward.
He thought it might be better not to look; that way, he wouldn't have to face the bitter disappointment.
He paced around the edges of the mob for a long time before finally taking a single step forward. And then another.
Shoved by elbows, cursed at from behind, and having his feet stepped on, he somehow pushed his way up to the board.
"I'm not on it."
That was his first thought.
"I guess it was my fault to have expectations."
The Subura had taught him one thing above all else: never expect good fortune-always expect the worst.
That was why he didn't even recognize his own name when he first saw it.
It was on the third line down.
'Marcus of the Subura.'
Next to it was a number.
3rd Place.
For a moment, he could only stare at his name.
Someone behind him yelled in irritation.
"Move! If you're done looking, get out of the way!"
Only then did Marcus stumble to the side. But his eyes refused to leave the board.
Terrified that he had imagined it, he pushed forward to look again.
"Are you alright?"
Someone next to him asked, but Marcus couldn't answer.
His throat tightened. No words would come out.
Raised in the filth of the Subura, he had lived his entire life without anyone ever seeing value in him.
A moment later, the examiners began distributing wooden badges to those who had passed.
When it was Marcus's turn, the examiner glanced up at him.
"Marcus of the Subura."
"Y-Yes." Marcus coughed in surprise.
"You placed third overall. You are clearly capable. Make sure you work hard during your training and probation."
The wooden badge the examiner handed him was rough and unpolished.
Marcus bowed his head in a daze.
"Th-Thank you."
As he turned and walked away, his legs felt strangely light.
He couldn't even tell if his feet were touching the ground.
"Maybe I'll buy some meat on the way home today."
***
The walk back to the Subura felt far longer than usual.
The passersby, the stench of the alleys, the drunken shouting outside the taverns, the uneven cobblestones - Everything was exactly the same, yet Marcus felt as though he were walking through a completely different city.
He reached into his tunic to run his fingers over the wooden badge again and again.
Every time his fingers brushed the rough wood, a strange flood of relief washed over him—it wasn't a dream.
When he arrived at his tenement, the door was slightly ajar.
He could hear his baby crying and his wife trying to soothe it.
Marcus stood silently at the threshold for a long time.
When he finally pushed the door open and stepped inside, his wife looked up.
"You're back?"
Instead of answering, he pulled the badge from his tunic and held it out.
At first, his wife just stared at it, not understanding what it was.
But as she recognized the emblem carved into the wood, her eyes widened.
"Don't tell me..."
Marcus nodded.
"I passed."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
A brief silence fell over the cramped room.
The next moment, his wife burst into tears, laughing as she hugged the baby tighter.
The infant, having no idea what was going on, just blinked up at her mother.
"You really did it..."
Hearing the commotion, the neighbors began to poke their heads in through the open doorway.
"What's going on?"
"Marcus passed the tower exam!"
"That Marcus? Stop lying!"
Someone leaned in and squinted at the badge in disbelief. Realizing it was authentic, he yelled at the top of his lungs.
"It's real!"
In an instant, the narrow alley erupted in uproar.
"What rank did you get?!" someone asked.
Marcus hesitated for a second before saying quietly.
"...3rd."
Dead silence.
And then, an explosion of cheers ten times louder than before.
"Third place?!"
"Someone from the Subura came in third?!"
"Hey! You better be buying the drinks tonight!"
They were joking, but the excitement in their voices was real.
That night, his family hosted a great feast, and the story of Marcus spread like wildfire throughout the entire Subura district.
The man who became a tower operator by merit alone, without anyone backing him.
And it wasn't just Marcus's family.
Families and tribes all across the city were holding great banquets, celebrating their own victories.
***
A few days after the exams concluded, the new tower trainees began their rigorous training in earnest.
And right on cue, an entirely new problem reared its ugly head.
Hundreds of operator trainees and dozens of new clerks were hired to manage the grid.
As Caesar's workforce swelled, one commodity suddenly became desperately scarce.
"I never took you for the sort to visit such a rundown bathhouse, Felix."
"If I go to the larger thermae (public bathhouse), too many people recognize me. I don't really have a choice," Felix replied with a heavy sigh.
After thoroughly scrubbing himself down with Palmolive, he washed his body and sank into the hot bath alongside Babu.
Initially viewed as a strange luxury, Palmolive had rapidly become a common sight in Roman bathhouses.
There wasn't a single public bath in the city that didn't stock it, and citizens scrubbed themselves thoroughly with it both before and after soaking.
As rumors spread that it could even ward off disease, more and more women were using it to launder clothes and washing the dishes as well.
"Even when I just want to relax in the baths, people are always crowding around me and begging favors. Coming to a small, quiet place like this is much better."
"True, it's peaceful here. You and I have both grown far too well known lately," Babu agreed, stroking his smooth, bald head.
"By the way, once those towers are fully operational, the administrative burden is going to explode again."
"It's going to be a nightmare. An absolute nightmare."
The two men sighed in unison.
Felix essentially served as the chief steward of Lucius Caesar's enterprises, while Babu managed the insurance business and oversaw the teaching of mathematics and accounting at the academy.
Recently, these two men shared one great concern.
"Rumor has it the Egyptian merchant guilds are preparing to raise the price of papyrus again."
"Again?! I thought they just raised the prices two months ago!" Felix scowled.
In Rome, writing materials available in Rome were extremely limited.
The finest material for record-keeping was papyrus.
The Egyptians manufactured it using reeds that grew along the Nile. They sliced the pith into thin strips, laid them crosswise, and used the plant's own sap to bind them.
Once pressed and dried, the resulting sheets were perfect for writing.
What made papyrus so useful was its low cost.
It could be made in great quantity and bought in bulk for significantly less than animal-skin parchment.
But that was rapidly ceasing to be true.
"We've been consuming an absurd amount of papyrus over the past few months," Babu noted, splashing some hot water on his face.
"The sheer volume we go through just for the math and accounting classes is staggering. Add in the insurance ledgers, the Palmolive records, and now the technical school..."
"And the problem got ten times worse after the Young Master announced that 'patent' thing," Felix grumbled, letting out a long, exhausted breath.
It wasn't just the technical school students anymore; craftsmen and inventors from all over Rome were swarming them, eager to present their inventions to Caesar.
And drafting written proposals and plans required papyrus.
Almost by himself, Caesar was driving Rome's hunger for papyrus ever higher.
Every new venture brought with it mountains of documents, which ultimately meant burning through even more scrolls.
"The Egyptian merchants have definitely seen the change in demand and choking off supply," Babu said.
"The papyrus trade over there is controlled by a very small number of merchants. They've likely joined hands to raise the price."
"If only we could just use wooden wax tablets for everything..." Felix muttered, submerging his face up to his nose in the steaming water.
Wooden tablets coated in wax were perfectly fine for scratching out temporary notes or rough sketches. But they were incredibly heavy and took up a ridiculous amount of physical storage space.
No matter how hard he racked his brain, Felix couldn't come up with a workable alternative.
"There are already rumors spreading that we're the ones causing the papyrus prices to surge like this. And considering we're by far the largest consumers of it in the Republic right now, they aren't exactly wrong. If this continues, the public's anger might turn on us," Babu warned.
"Why don't you just bring this up with sir Caesar? I'm sure he'd find a solution in no time..."
"No. I have to solve this myself. I cannot burden the Young Master with this."
Felix violently shook his head before rising from the bath.
"I'll figure something out. Do not say a word of this to the Young Master."
Watching his friend march off with such grim determination, Babu muttered to himself.
"That man really does work himself to the bone."
***
"First things first, we need to secure as much papyrus as possible."
Felix immediately sprang into action.
"Contact our agents in Egypt and demand they speed up additional deliveries. The demand for Palmolive over there is surging, so use that to pressure them."
"I will contact the warehouses in Ostia and secure whatever surplus papyrus they have, sir."
"And let's start using lower-grade papyrus. There's no need to use premium Hieratica for every single document. We should be able to source Livia and Regia grades much cheaper."
Following Felix's orders, the staff frantically scrambled between the Egyptian merchant guilds and the docks of Ostia.
A few of the Egyptian merchants yielded for the Palmolive trade, and the market prices stabilized for a time.
However, the supply shortage only grew more severe by the day.
The newly launched tower project caused demand to spike even higher, and the resulting frantic buying even caused a severe shortage of parchment.
Eventually, Felix was forced to resort to drastic measures.
"We need to make the most of the papyrus we still have. Trim down the wording on all standard contracts, and replace any repeated clauses with ink stamps."
The clerks in the meeting room diligently jotted down Felix's instructions on their wax tablets.
"Use premium papyrus only for official records. All duplicates and drafts must be written on wax tablets or the cheapest grade of papyrus available. And ensure all internal notes are written on both sides of the sheet."
Felix implemented new measures to save papyrus almost daily.
"Instruct the scribes to write their letters as small as possible to minimize wasted space. What news of the negotiations with the parchment merchants?"
"They've caught on to the panic among buyers and have begun throttling their supply as well, sir. There are simply too many desperate buyers..."
"At this rate, it may be cheaper for us to buy the damn sheeps ourselves."
Felix muttered as he squinted at a supply report.
The letters written on the papyrus were so small that he could barely read them.
"Complaints from the clerks are mounting, sir. They claim writing this small is ruining their eyesight."
"The quality of the recent low-grade papyrus shipments is so terrible that an increasing number of scrolls are tearing during transit."
"The technical school is requesting more papyrus immediately for their classes."
"We're also experiencing serious delays in updating the insurance ledgers..."
No matter how many desperate temporary measures he employed, none of it solved the root of the problem.
The supply of papyrus was limited, and their demand was growing by the day.
Ultimately, Felix dragged his exhausted body home every night, completely defeated.
"Why don't you just stop wearing yourself out and ask sir Caesar for help?"
Tilia, Felix's wife, asked with a sigh as she handed him a cup of honeyed water.
"I'm sure he could come up with some clever answer, couldn't he?"
"No. This is my responsibility to solve."
"Dear..." Tilia murmured softly, taking in her husband's grim, exhausted expression.
"Is there a specific reason you're so opposed to asking him?"
"If I bring this to the Young Master, he's undoubtedly going to set some enormous plan in motion. Between the Palmolive, the insurance, and the towers, I am already losing my mind..."
Felix massaged his forehead, groaning in sheer dread.
If Lucius Caesar stepped in himself to solve a papyrus shortage, how much more work it would bring crashing down on him?
"I cannot afford to let my workload expand any further."
He pushed himself up from his chair and splashed his face with cold water from a basin.
"Besides, I am more than capable of handling simple shortage on my own."
It didn't take long for Felix to realize just how spectacularly wrong he was.