You are filling a trench on a giga-project, and the quota is the only thing between you and your passport. The Freedom Timer measures sand currently in the pit, not sand you have ever shifted — which is why the wind matters. It takes about a quarter of everything you move, and more during a gust.

Scorpions rear up before they strike; that pause is your window to either sidestep or swing. Foremen cost 180 coins to wave through. Refuse one and your quota goes up by 20 m³, and you watch the bar you have been filling shrink. Fill 30% of it and they will put you in a truck — twelve times the load, but a six-second wait at the hopper with nothing but a windscreen between you and the sand.