Foreman Underhill

Wallace Underhill enlisted in the Combine's armament division at nineteen and clocked into a shift that has not formally ended. The timekeeping system on his station crashed during a labor dispute in his second year and was never fully restored. On paper his overtime is somewhere past two hundred thousand hours. The company has tried four times to settle the back pay. Four times he has refused, because taking the settlement would close the shift, and he is not done.

The Overtime is that shift, continued, and named for the dispute. He wears his original coverall on the bridge. He fights with the same volley and the same interval, and no theater. He is sixty-three and will work until something kills him. He has said, in private, that the right severance would change his mind. The Combine has not asked what it would be.