Crows

Every evening the crows cross Vancouver in one long, loose stream, heading east to roost, and every morning they come back. It looks like a commute because it is one. The crows are Terminal City's inspectors, and they are going home after a long shift.

During the day they check everything: roofs, wires, streets, parks, rails, walls, the edges of the city. They notice the corner that has gone quiet, the wall that has cracked, the boundary that has gone soft. They do not write it down. They carry it to Trout Lake before dawn.

They are reliable, collective, and blue-collar to the bone, but they are still crows: no uniforms, no lunch pails, no English. If you see a whole flock facing the same point at once, they have found something.