MINISTRY OF GRAIN

The Fourteenth Grain is not, strictly, a grain. It was classified as a grain in Year Zero for administrative convenience and the classification has proven durable, popular, and impossible to revisit without opening a file that several people would prefer stayed closed.

Citizens have asked what the Fourteenth Grain is. The Ministry's position is that this is the wrong question and that a better question is available to anyone who wants one. The better question is not published. Requesting the better question is itself a mild irregularity.

It has returned. That is the operative fact. Where it returned from is a matter for the Archive of Things That Did Not Happen, which has been extremely clear that it did not go anywhere, and extremely clear that it has come back, and has declined to reconcile those two positions on the grounds that reconciliation is a foreign obsession.

This quarter's quota is emotional rather than agricultural. Citizens must produce four thousand units of GRAIN FEELING. Units are not measurable. Failure to meet the quota is impossible. Exceeding the quota is also impossible. You are doing great. You are behind.

Citizens who have produced physical grain in error should not report this. The Ministry has no process for receiving physical grain and the last time it received some, the receiving officer was promoted to Window and has not been available since.