Location from Severance by Dan Erickson
Four desks in a room where people sort scary numbers into categories of human emotion — and nobody knows what the numbers mean or what happens when they're sorted.
The MDR office is where Mark, Helly, Irving, and Dylan spend their entire conscious lives. They sit at desks. They look at screens filled with numbers. Some numbers feel 'scary' — they sort those into bins labeled WO, FC, DR, and MA (Woe, Frolic, Dread, Malice). They don't know what the numbers represent. They don't know what happens when they're sorted. They do it because it's their job and their job is all they have. The office is where rebellion was born — where Ricken's book was smuggled in, where the Overtime Contingency was planned, where four people with no other world decided their world was worth fighting for. The desks that were their prison became their war room.
A sparse office with four desks arranged in a loose cluster, outdated computer monitors, and minimal decoration. The room is fluorescent-lit, windowless, and exactly large enough for four people to work and nothing more. It looks like a 1980s office preserved in formaldehyde.
Also known as: MDR, Macrodata Refinement, The MDR Office