She ran the query for the entire province.

A strange calm settled over her. She looked out the frost-caked window. The Signal Hill radio tower blinked in the dark, and a nor’easter was starting to rattle the gutters. In Newfoundland, you didn’t complain about the wind. You leaned into it.

At dawn, she published the update. She left a note on the front page, written in the plain, honest tone of the island:

She hadn’t applied for a raise. She hadn’t asked for a promotion. But there it was, in black and white on her own data feed: her salary had breached the threshold. She was now on the Sunshine List.

She titled it:

“I know, b’y,” she whispered. “I’ve become the monster.”

The top of the list wasn't a CEO or a politician. It was a nurse in Corner Brook who’d worked 80-hour weeks during the COVID surge. It was a ferry mechanic in Blanc-Sablon who’d kept the Qajaq running with duct tape and prayer during the winter ice. And it was an archivist in St. John’s who’d spent a decade digitizing weather logs so the province could finally prove climate change was sinking their wharves.