Handling Notice: Familiar Figures Observed Through the Issue Eyeshade

Staff on the standing fortification schedule have begun to report figures, visible only through the green lens of the clerk’s eyeshade (standard issue, Accounts pattern), and only after a sufficient number of servings of Ration 7-C. The number varies by staff member and is not published, to discourage counting.

The reports are consistent, which is the concerning part. Staff describe:

A number of arms in excess of the standard allocation, engaged in what is agreed to be filing.
Supplementary appendages best described as reaching, though nothing has been reached for. Yet is implied in several reports and has been struck.
A form that does not hold. The figures settle, briefly, into persons the observer barely knew — the man who sold ice cream near the observer’s childhood residence when the observer was nine; a physical-education instructor whose name was not retained; a neighbour seen only through a fence. The figures do not present as anyone the observer knows well. The Ministry considers this a courtesy and has logged it as one.

Staff are reminded of the following, in order:

Sightings are to be recorded on Form FF-9: Report of a Familiar Figure, available at the intake desk. One form per figure. Where the figure will not settle, file continuation sheets until it does.
Do not wave back. The wave has been logged. Logging is the response.
Do not accept ice cream. No ice cream has been offered. The instruction stands.
Recognition is not acquaintance. That you remember the figure does not mean the figure remembers you. Several reports suggest otherwise and have been filed accordingly.

Figures presenting as members of the excavation detail are a separate matter and are to be reported directly to Facilities & Disappearances, which advises that any resemblance to staff currently at depth is not to be interpreted as a return.

The figures have been counted. The count disagrees with itself. Both totals have been entered in the record, which is now reconciling.

— Sustenance & Fortification, Canteen 3