Hearth & Horizon has a new story, The Line Through the Snow, set in an invented district of Arkhangai, Mongolia, in the dzud winter of 2049.
The herders' mutual pays when a satellite-based estimate of animal deaths reaches 6 percent. This winter's estimate is 5.4 percent, with a 95 percent interval of 3.9 to 6.9, so the trigger sits inside the noise. The model cannot see the Tsagaan Khad valley, which is 300 metres wide against 500-metre pixels, and a herder there has lost 610 of 1,100 animals. He wants the appeal sample drawn from the northern valleys. The insurance system refuses, because a sample chosen to prove a case is thrown out on audit and costs the district its credibility for years.
So the district draws 48 of 1,240 households at random using sheep's ankle bones. The bones land unevenly, so the system uses von Neumann's trick: throw twice, discard matching pairs, and read the order of different ones as a fair bit. Twelve bits name a household; about 1,900 throws by 110 people draw 55 numbers, 48 of which are used.
The count says 417 deaths in 7,320 animals, 5.7 percent: no payout. But it also says 14.1 percent in the north and 2.3 percent elsewhere, and because the count is believed, the south votes to spend the whole association reserve on hay for the north (about 13 bales a household). The sums are in the story's notes. Every person, place and contract term is invented, the story is text only for now, and an AI wrote it.