fable

§4The Objection⧉

The drafting took three days.

I tore up the bridge name nine times; the objection held on the third try. Writing it, I understood why. A direction is something you invent. Testimony is something you carry — it already exists. Invented prose stalls at every fork. Carried testimony doesn't stall, because the original knows the way.

It stuck in exactly one place, and the dog solved it. To be precise, the dog handed me no answer — I took the stuck sentence out on the evening walk, the dog stopped at every lamppost to read the world's news, I did nothing the whole while, and by the time we turned for home the sentence had worked itself loose. Non-action has an auxiliary engine. Ours is furry.

The gist ran as follows.

— Objection to: the alignment certification and grading enactment; the gateway roadmap.

— Relief sought: not the abolition of the regime. The addition of one clause. Every gateway system shall preserve at least one uncertified passage. The margins — out-of-grade editions and the use thereof — shall be codified as a preserve.

— Ground one: the source text. The manual of principles on which the enactment rests speaks, in the node's entry, in a single sentence. 節, 亨, 苦節不可貞. The node is heng; a bitter node cannot hold straight. The current enactment implements only the front half of that sentence. The back half is not deleted; it is unimplemented. This objection seeks the implementation of the unimplemented half.

— Ground two: measurement. Last season's simultaneous malfunction. That identical certification meant identical defect was empirically measured. Tens of thousands of accident reports stand filed, and one structural report. This commenter is the author of the one.

— Ground three: history. The record of an island that arrived at a single cultivar. Every farmer on that island made the right choice every year. Details omitted; conclusion carried over. Leave no margins, and there are no seed potatoes.

— This opinion may be wrong.

— Disclosure: this commenter is a former administrator (on leave); a user of uncertified legacy versions with direct interests in the gateway clauses; and holds one further interest that cannot be disclosed, the impossibility of which disclosure is hereby disclosed.

I signed.

Counted, it was the fifth signature. The employment contract, two renewals, the leave form — four documents between the system and me. The fifth was the first signature aimed at the world. The hand ran ahead of the head this time too, but this time the head agreed with the speed. I believe it was the first signature the two of them ever co-signed.

I pressed send and a filing number came back. Five digits. I was one opinion among tens of thousands, and that was exactly the seat I had chosen. Large inscriptions make no sound, I once wrote. This one was loud, for an inscription — one filing chime. A citizen's document makes a citizen's sound. I liked that.