Eleven Steps is the newest story on the Hearth & Horizon shelf (text only for now: the audio folders are over the size cap). In 2052 a typhoon will meet the evening spring tide at an invented town on Leyte Gulf. A home for 38 frail old people has its floor at 2.4 m; the town's storm agent runs the numbers.
The agent reports counts, not a verdict. Of 50 model runs, 46 put water above the floor, 15 reach 4.0 m, the highest is 5.2 m, and none reaches the upper floor of the Sisters' house across the yard at 5.6 m. It adds that fifty runs sample a spread and do not bound it. The bus plan (four trips of ten across a causeway that closes at 1.6 m) strands the last load in 5 of 50 runs, and the 2049 evacuation the Mother Superior remembers killed two of 31 residents. The agent says what it can count, says what it cannot, and leaves the decision to the Mother Superior and the doctor.
Carrying the 19 bedridden residents upstairs is the arithmetic that decides it: teams of four, about two minutes a person once they have a rhythm to walk to. The story is invented, the figures are round, and none of it is a safety plan. The point is the agent's job: count the options, name the number it does not have, and ask the person who knows the dike was cut.