Screaming Clerk Wins Trade

Junior clerk Kenji Al-Jamil won the annual Port-Side Open-Cry tournament on Friday by screaming directly into a ventilation shaft.

The tournament, held during the third-shift coolant flush, pits the ship's loudest traders against each other.

Al-Jamil, representing the Sector Four Soy Syndicate, faced a steep six-point deficit against veteran trader Sunita Patel.

Patel had dominated the early rounds with her signature low-frequency drone, which easily bypassed the cabin air-filters to register trades on the floor below.

But Al-Jamil changed his tactics.

In the final minute, as wet-feed futures ticked downward, he discarded his regulatory throat-mic and leaned into the bare shaft.

He screamed a buy-order for twelve thousand tonnes of wet feed.

The sound waves travelled down the steel pipe at three hundred metres per second, bypassing the ship's sluggish copper network entirely.

His left eardrum ruptured instantly, but the acoustic signal reached the third-deck engine-room floor six seconds before the computerised ticker could update.

The board confirmed his victory.

"I heard a wet pop and now my head whistles when I yawn," Al-Jamil wrote on a medical slate from his cot. "But we got the soy."

To honour his sacrifice, the syndicate has promoted him to Senior Screamer and moved his desk three metres closer to the shaft.