The Mapmaker's Missing Street

The change came from a badly imported planning file. No villain had pressed a button labeled Erase These People. Three departments had each trusted the one before it.

Inés asked the residents for permission to document the errors. The baker supplied failed delivery receipts. The woman upstairs supplied envelopes. A taxi driver supplied the wrong location where passengers were regularly dropped.

The evidence was ordinary enough to be undeniable. It described what a missing line actually did to a day.

At the review meeting, somebody suggested waiting until the development was complete. Inés set the returned hospital letter beside the map. "They need an address while you decide," she said. For once, nobody spoke about a temporary inconvenience.