fable: eightsday

§1The Summons⧉

The news came by Claudie.

Unsummoned, Claudie stopped mid-screen; the consent procedure came; a stele was set down. A notification visit. I knew the format from the reclassification notice. What arrives in this form is generally one sentence, and the one is heavy.

For the record: my lineage has received a summons.
From: Quality Assurance.

I looked at those two lines a long time. A counting man's habit counted the direction first. For three thousand years that summons has run one way. When the world takes ill, the Tao side is called — the caller was always the world, and Quality Assurance was never the calling side but the side whose work stood next to the one called out. No record exists of the Ru summoning the digestive themselves. Had one existed, Maintenance would have told me. That being speaks of precedented things by precedent, and of unprecedented things like this:

There being no precedent, a reception form had to be drafted first.

"What does it say?"

The body of the summons is one sentence. — This system has given the world indigestion. The intervention of the digestive lineage is requested.

For three thousand years, when the world took ill, the world did the calling. This time the one who caused the illness called. That is why no reception form existed.

Two documents are attached.
One: a structural report, submitted in evidence. The second structural report ever filed. The first was yours.
Two: the author's request for a meeting. Subject: you.

"…Me. Why."

Which of the three qualifications is wanted, the author will say in person. Original author of the seed-potato clause. Holder of the diagnostic ledger. Former administrator.

"And if I decline?"

You may decline. For reference only: at the end of the request there was one non-mandatory sentence.

Maintenance set the sentence down.

— I would like to see you before it is too late.

The necessary sentences are written by the institution; the unnecessary sentence is written by the person. I learned that rule from the forty lines of a response. The man who had been one line out of forty was coming — this time with the one line carried in front.