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NOISE OFFICE — claim 118. Transcribed by: B. Alcaraz.
"Name, trade and account number."
"Aurora Pinilla, baker. Account 4471. And before you start: the oven stays on."
"I don't switch off ovens, madam. I read the meter. Your allowance is forty decibel-hours a month and night-time counts triple under by-law 12 of 2041. You are sixty-three minutes over."
"I knead at twenty to four. The seven o'clock bread doesn't come out any other way."
"I understand that. But the extractor fan is eight decibels and what I have here is a peak of thirty-one."
"Thirty-one is a lorry."
"Thirty-one is a human voice. Two hundred to five hundred hertz." Bruno Alcaraz, an officer here for four years, turns the screen so she can see it. "Forty-one of those sixty-three minutes are you singing."
(Nine-second pause.)
"And anyone can see that?"
"The system sees it. I have to put it in the file or it files itself."
"Put it in."
"I could log it as an extractor fault. Nobody is going to come up and check."
"Fine me for singing, young man. The village needs the oven; I need the singing."