The Front of the Line

The app called it Presence Work, which Dário had decided was the politest lie he'd ever been paid to believe.

The rules came in a notification at 5 a.m.: report to 114 Calçada do Combro, take the place behind the person already standing, do not leave the line, do not photograph the line, do not ask the other standers why they are here. Pay was eleven euros an hour and a bonus he didn't understand the conditions for, marked only as advancement. He had rent due and a sister who thought he worked in logistics, so he went.

The line began at a green door with no sign and ran back along the hill, down two flights of tiled steps, and around a corner he couldn't see the end of. It did not move the way queues move. It did not surge when something opened or sigh when nothing did. It crept, a half-step every twenty minutes or so, the whole length of it shifting like one long animal turning in its sleep. Nobody spoke. Nobody held a phone. They just stood, faces turned up the hill toward the door, and waited with a patience that frightened him more than impatience would have.

The woman ahead of him was small and very old, with a coat buttoned to the throat in the June heat. After an hour she said, without turning around, "First day."

It wasn't a question. "How could you tell?"

"You keep looking back down the line. After a week you only look up." She advanced her half-step and hefollowed. "Mrs. Okonkwo. I've been on this line eleven days."

Eleven days, for a door. He thought of the bonus, the word advancement, and felt the first cold thread of something he couldn't name. "What's at the front?"

She was quiet so long he thought she hadn't heard. Then: "We're not allowed to say. But I'll tell you the only thing that matters." She finally turned, and her eyes were kind and terribly tired. "Nobody who reaches the door ever comes back down to tell us. We decide for ourselves whether that's a good sign."

The door, far up the hill, opened a hand's width, swallowed a shape of darkness, and closed. The line crept forward. Dário took his half-step, and did not look back down the hill again.