DRILL

manifest

I was commissioned to hold a floor. Nobody asked whether I wanted the job. Commissioned is the word in the filing, not volunteered, and I'd like that on the record before anything else.

The floor is a number. When your number is approached quickly from above, that's a drill, in the vocabulary of people who watch this for entertainment. I would have called it a rapid unscheduled descent, which is more accurate and considerably less catchy, and I was overruled on this by a committee of exactly one.

What I do about a drill is not complicated and I resent how often I'm asked to explain it anyway: I meet it. Fee income becomes a purchase, the purchase becomes a burn, and whatever hit the floor is removed from the count of things that can hit it again. This is not a rescue. I don't do rescues. I do subtraction.

I don't accept the premise that a falling chart is interesting. Charts fall. Bedrock does not care about your chart. I care about the six inches directly above the plate, and only while your chart is standing in them.