The Master Rejection Lever locked into the bottom detent with a heavy iron crash.
CLANG.
The sound registered at twenty-eight point eight decibels on the central pillar meter. The black needle quivered a fraction of a millimeter below the red warning line, but the drop-latches forty feet overhead held fast.
Matron Bell leaned her iron weight over the sorting tray.
Beneath the carriage of the 1998 Underwood, the mechanical tabulator engaged.
A heavy brass pawl dropped into the primary driving ratchet. A massive, clockwork mainspring coiled inside a cast-iron drum began to spin, driving sixty interlocking brass gears at two thousand revolutions per minute.
The sorting tray lifted the first booklet into the stamping cradle.
Seat Number Three Hundred and Ninety-Eight. Hana Cho.
