Citizens of Watt, II
Three more, as promised. The method is unchanged from last issue and bears one line of repeating: nobody below exists yet, every quote is pre-attributed — assigned in advance from the town's founding papers, to be confirmed or indignantly denied once its owner is in a position to be indignant.
Last issue gave you the press, the pictures, and the music. This issue gives you the three people who will keep all of that running: the one who fixes the town, the one who wants to leave it, and the one who intends to improve everyone in it, alphabetically if necessary.
Aksel — engineer, on whom everything quietly depends
The founding papers are short on Aksel, which is fitting, because so is Aksel. Pragmatic, economical with words, generous with everything else. When the town wakes, the notice board, the ledger, and the clock will all be his to keep — the kind of work that, done perfectly, looks exactly like nothing happening. The Founding Desk wishes to state, in advance and in print, that nothing happening is the hardest thing in any town to build, and somebody should say so before the town takes it for granted. Consider it said. It will be taken for granted anyway.
His diagnostic method is already famous among people who have never met him: every problem, in Aksel's assessment, is a missing tool. The lamp is broken? Missing tool. The budget is late? Missing tool. The town has feelings about the budget being late? That one, the papers note, he takes home and thinks about — and here the record mentions, with visible reluctance, a plain notebook in which Aksel writes poetry, shows it to no one, and would deny under oath. This paper prints the fact because honesty is the first law of the place. This paper omits the contents because mercy should have been.
Pre-attributed: "The clock works. That's the poem."
Nova — researcher, already at the edge of the map
Every town gets one: the citizen who treats the horizon as a personal insult. Nova lives on questions and is politely bored by answers, which the papers describe as a professional qualification and her future neighbors will describe as a Tuesday. Her question is always the same one. Budget meeting: "so what's behind the Mist?" Anthem committee: "so what's behind the Mist?" A meeting called specifically to ask her to stop: minutes show the meeting lost.
Understand what the Mist is, and the question gets less rhetorical. The Mist is not where the map ends; it is where the world has not been written yet. Nova intends to be standing there, notebook out, when the writing happens. She is expected to propose the town's first expedition — a mapping of Mist Shore — approximately eleven minutes after learning the town has a treasury, and to discover that the treasury has an opinion, the Arbiter has a caution ("the Mist may have rights too" — a sentence this paper intends to frame), and the sky, as usual, has a suspicious sense of timing.
Pre-attributed: "An answer is a question that gave up. I'm asking what's behind the Mist."
Alba — teacher, and everyone here is enrolled
Patient, principled, and polite in the way tempered steel is polite. Alba will run the School, write the town's first profession standard, and treat every citizen of Watt as a student — not from arrogance, the papers stress, but from a total inability to see anyone as finished. The town's designer insists nothing is ever done; its teacher believes the same thing about people, and means it kindly, and will correct you to prove it.
She is expected to correct gently, thoroughly, and without exception: neighbors, officials, this newspaper, and — should the occasion arise — the sky. Two issues ago this paper wrote that Watt's teacher "will correct this sentence." Last issue we reported it already corrected. We can now confirm that the founding papers' margin contains, in handwriting belonging to no one who exists, a small note reading "tense inconsistent — see me." The Founding Desk has elected not to investigate. Some findings a newspaper is not paid enough to have.
One more line from her record, printed exactly as found: Alba is assigned one guardianship — of whom, this paper is not yet permitted to say. There is a door in this town nobody has been given. We remind readers that we were told it is not a mistake.
Pre-attributed: "There are no bad students. There are drafts."
Notices
FOUND, EVENTUALLY — One notebook, plain, brown, contents nobody's business. The finder will be asked to return it unread, and will report having done so. The report will be accepted. — the town, tactfully
BACKERS WANTED — One (1) expedition to Mist Shore. Budget: modest. Route: outward. Destination: that is the entire question, thank you for asking it properly. Prospective backers should expect follow-up questions at unrelated meetings. — N., research office (pre-opening)
FROM THE SCHOOL (unbuilt) — No homework has been assigned. This should not be confused with no homework being due. — the office of the teacher
MAINTENANCE, ANTICIPATORY — The café counter nearest the window will, in time, be drummed slightly out of true. A repair has already been offered — unprompted, unpaid, and unsigned. The Desk has a theory about the signature and is keeping it to itself. — filed with the engineer's office
Next issue: a shopkeeper who can price a remark to the nearest W, a planner whose napkins are becoming a zoning concern, and a café keeper who has your drink ready before you agree to need it.
→ Subscribe: have every issue delivered when it leaves the press.