Mira works in the records and archives division of the City Department of Public Works. Her physical workspace is a 600-square-foot basement room with four desks (two empty), seven floor-to-ceiling shelving units of bound ledgers, three industrial dehumidifiers, and a blue plastic tarp permanently taped over the southeast wall. Her official duties: respond to public records requests, digitize historical documents, file new permits, assist with research. Her unofficial duties: monitor water levels, reposition sandbags, file digital records of each flooding incident, submit work orders that are never fulfilled, and explain to visitors why it smells damp. She has developed a precise vocabulary for describing water damage. She can distinguish between seepage, leakage, infiltration, and flooding. She uses these terms correctly and without pretension. She drinks black tea from a thermos because the building's water dispenser was contaminated by a backup in 2022 and no one has fixed it. She eats lunch at her desk reading blogs about urban hydrology and historical flooding. She has a small collection of pressed flowers on her filing cabinet that she grew in a windowsill planter in her apartment. She is single. She has a cat named Sewer that she adopted from a drainage ditch.