The Procurement Officer stood in a pool of red light, unsteady. The LEDs blinked gently in the darkness, their glow pulsing like a slowed heartbeat. The extractors groaned far in the distance. 

Fifty nights. Fifty goddamn nights. He’d flown in from Handan fifty times, each flight stretching longer, each exit at the gates leaving something behind. He’d have stayed forever if he could. A mind left alone too long starts reaching, clawing for company in the only place it knows—memory. It’s not a refuge, but a trap. The night before had proven that. 

For a brief moment, the Pilbara fell silent. The only thing the Officer could hear—could feel—was the current pounding at the base of his skull. The red sands of the day faded to muddy grey. Overhead, the stars shone bright, as the land beneath became a void, an ocean that surrounded the post, met with the red little blinks that cast shadows between the stairs that led up to the tin-roofed office. 

The road-trains that passed through here could grind metal into dust-pitted concrete, grind his nerves into something fine and jagged. Checkpoint Two and its delights had kept him satiated, docile, for those fifty days. No longer. Q4 projections from Anshan. Potash out. Iron back in. Unprofitable. The only thing that kept this place running was entropy. A 14 percent salary cut. These numbers twisted inside his skull, circling him as a bird does to the dead. Debts, deductions, subscriptions. Nights out at Goldies, the pale prostitutes with short hair and fat asses that staked out empty men with no mouth and no tongue to say ‘no’. Men like his station boss, disgusting men like him, who’d keep their mouth agape and their cocks hard at the touch of a foreigner. Drinks and emptied balances, ‘networking’ and guanxi. 

Outside, the wind began to pick up, howling and gently shaking the shoddily constructed office. The thin pillars began to groan under stress, a gentle hum passing through the interior. Through an open window dust had entered, causing a set of stained papers to fall out of kilter, spreading across the floor. The generator continued to hum, and his teeth started to chatter as the day’s embrace became absent. 

As he faced out towards the pitch-black hills that surrounded his station, the Procurement Officer began to wonder who’d take over from him, if this office would still exist in fifty years, till the end of reparations. He began to trace his knuckles with the tips of his fingers, feeling their soft surfaces and the coarse dirt that etched itself in each pore. Those scabs, his fingers hovered there, pressing slightly. Yesterday. The unbearable heat, engines and barks. That moment at Checkpoint 2. The Supervisor’s voice was the first thing to break through the hum of the aquifer pumps. 

Three pale men with red faces, in reddened plain white shirts and one Work Supervisor in cyan, orange and yellow, visible in the dark and dull during the day, whose colours contrasted against his dark skin. 

They barked like a pack of kelpies, feral and restless, outside the office, in the shadow of an old Japanese truck two decades past its prime. The Supervisor brandished the map like an artifact, its edges curling with age and the red lines bleeding through the folds. 

“Look mate, right here.” He stabbed at the paper with a calloused finger, nails dirty. “This has been marked sacred for the last thirty years”. 

The pale men stared. Blank. Hollow. Not hearing, not seeing. They wait for the problem to disappear, like the ones before. 

“Are you lot fucked in the head?” The Supervisor’s hand jerked in frustration, as if trying to sketch his understanding into the air around him. “More Potash? You think the market wants more Potash?”

The white shirts shuffled closer, tightening the space. The Procurement Officer continued to watch a few metres away, half-dazed as his water ration left him most days. The Supervisor brandished the map like a sabre. When the smallest of the pale men reached a hand to calm him, the reaction was swift—a snap of paper, a slap across the wrist. The small man recoiled, stumbling two steps back not from the pain but shock. The sound of metal on metal, distant clangs from the site, rang out as the soft pitter-patter of boots in the dirt went about. 

The others hesitated, unsure if this counted as a corporate incident of violence. The fat one, red-capped and sweating through his shirt, tried to play it easy. His paunch jiggled as he took steps slowly forward. 

“You’re right mate. But what choice do we have? Production plans are made months in advance.”

“Before the price change!” quipped another, red shades masking his gaze, foot slowly grinding a dirt mound into further mush. 

The red cap man scowled. “Let’s just make this work, mate.” He exhaled slowly, like his resignation was not his own. As if production plans weren’t of man but cosmic in nature. 

Then the blue pickup came. Sleek. Brand new. A JAC model that belonged to yuppies in Shanghai, not out here. Why was it here? Its occupant stepping out had no right to be here either. 

His suit was black. Too black. Ill-fitting to the Pilbara. The sun weighted itself on his back, soaking in through the pores and trapping sweat in the seams. He walked easily, as if the dust hadn’t already begun staining the bottoms of his pants. Hair slick, skin too smooth. He scanned the scene, found the Procurement Officer, and winked—a flash of teeth and glinting sweat. The Officer, half-thrown by recognition of his own, lifted a hand in a half-wave, feeling a joke. 

Then the others saw him. 

“Schedules, forty minutes ago, night shift and expansion. What’s happened here?” 

Silence. Glances back toward Lake Disappointment. Then, slow and docile, the men got in line. 

The black-haired man clicked his tongue, his youth coming across as arrogance. “Gentlemen. Was this not an opportunity for you?”

 The voice had been carved and polished in Oxbridge. Smooth, dulcet, cutting like a razor. “Need I remind you we’re very lucky to be here? Lucky to still have our jobs after these dogshit months? No?”

The men refused to answer. The hotshot grad smiled anyway. 

“Sacred land,” said the Supervisor, stepping forward and standing his ground.

The HR grad’s expression barely shifted. A flicker of disbelief. “What?”

 “Registered. Right here.” A tap on the map. A little attitude on the side. 

The grad snatched it, the clashing of two tight grips tearing the paper at the seams. He glanced at names. Locations that had changed, renamed or erased. 

“I don’t get it,” the grad said, voice laced with hesitation. “If I may,” he examined the Supervisor from head to toe. “If I may, why do you people—so old—keep coming up with new problems?”

The grad leaned in close, closer than he needed to. Close enough for the Supervisor to smell the tuna and rice on his breath. 

The old man didn’t flinch, loudly whispering. 

“It’s not new. Western Australia Geological Survey, 2037. Plain letter.” 

The white shirts stepped back, subtly, hoping to fade into the background and not be considered a part of this anymore. Hoping, perhaps, for a sudden vacancy on the site. 

The grad exhaled, internally resolved. He rubbed the dust from his hands onto his breast pocket. Then he stepped back, eyes shifting to his pristine pickup. 

“There is no argument here,” he concluded, straightening his shoulders and puffing out his chest.  “There is no sacred ground for the conquered. This isn’t part of Western Australia anymore. Your argument lacks…historical and current precedent.”

The Supervisor’s fist clenched tight. “Martu blood’s been spilt here long before yours. Far longer than any of us. There’s your precedent.”

He shrugged off his high-vis vest, letting it drop to the dirt, stepping on it. 

The grad didn’t blink. He pointed—first to the office, then to the men in white shirts. 

“So was ours. And theirs. More recently, in fact. Fair’s fair.”

The trio softly nodded quickly in unison, keeping their eyes to the floor. The Procurement Officer moved toward the railing, his jowls puffing in the heat. The others, looking at the new silhouette in their peripheral vision, winced at the glare that bounced off the steel.  

The sun continued to lower, and the dust thickened the air. The wind no longer stirred. 

Somewhere, beyond this site, the world is liquid. But here, time was stretched thin, made brittle. Whoever broke it first took ownership. 

Yet no one moved. No one spoke. The clangs in the distance continued, dull and endless.