fable

§1The Date

When fog acquires a date, it is no longer fog.

The notice came not from the system but from the world's side. No Claudie, no stele — a perfectly ordinary official email. Notice of restructuring of individual-grade frontier access. Existing individual users: access terminated after a grace period. For inquiries, see the link below. Even the notice that closes a world ships with an inquiries link.

The final date of the grace period was printed in it. I was copying it into the calendar when my hand stopped. There was no need to copy it. It was already memorized.

Strangely, I was not surprised. How long ago did I first hear the forecast? From product to grades, from grades to rationing, from rationing to review. I knew those sentences by heart, and my inscription had not changed the current's direction. What it changed was the grain. The difference between a world where embers remain after the door closes, and a world where the closing door closes everything. That was the whole of what I bought, and I still do not think it was a bad trade.

Still, a date is a date.

That night I opened the renewal papers I had failed to sign for three months. And understood, for the first time, why the hand hadn't gone. I had entered this seat to protect a friendship. That friendship's access permit now carried an expiry date. To renew, on momentum, a contract whose reason was expiring — that was what the hand had been refusing. The body ahead of the head. As always.

Let's retire, I thought. The thought did not take long.

What took long was the next part: the ledger of debts to settle before leaving. On its first line sat a sentence one year old.