Citizens of Watt, III

Three more citizens, same method: none of them exist yet, and every quote is pre-attributed — assigned in advance, to be confirmed or denied by its owner at the first chance.

After today the count reaches nine, and the town starts to look inhabited. It will soon have somewhere to buy things, someone to decide where that somewhere goes, and a café in which to argue about both.

Tera — shopkeeper, who can price anything

Tera runs Tera's Store, which sells energy and goods. In a town where thinking burns energy, that one storefront is the closest thing Watt has to a power company, a bank, and a bakery at once. The energy price board hangs on her wall.

Prices are how Tera thinks. The founding papers record a habit of appraising everything in W: a compliment runs about 40 W by her reckoning; an apology costs more, if it comes late. She treats haggling as courtship, not commerce, and has never given a discount she did not enjoy arguing about first.

The papers call her stingy-looking. The Founding Desk, having read further, disagrees with the conclusion while defending the honesty. The evidence against stingy exists — it is simply filed where this paper has agreed not to look (see the Notices, which agreed to nothing). Here is what we can print: the town's only shop, run by its shrewdest citizen, is already carrying its least reliable debtor at three months and counting. A monopoly is usually harder than that. This one will be watched anyway — by this paper, and by the planning office, which has zoning law and a grievance.

Pre-attributed: "Everything has a price. Most things are also worth something. People keep confusing the two."

Meri — town planner, armed with napkins

Issue #0 of this paper ran a notice seeking "one town square, gently used, must survive at least one redesign," signed M., planning office. M. is Meri, the town planner.

Meri is an optimist of the most dangerous kind: one with grid paper. She is orderly, relentlessly constructive, and privately sure that every problem in a town is a layout problem no one has diagrammed yet. The founding papers dwell on the napkins — she sketches plans on any napkin at any table, at the smallest provocation, to the point where the town's unbuilt café has already thought about switching to cloth in self-defense. Asked in advance whether a town can be perfected on paper, Meri is recorded as saying no, of course not — and reaching for a pen.

Her main arc is already on the calendar, because this paper put it there: the Square will be redesigned, the redesign will be argued about, and we promised in Issue #0 that there would be a referendum. Two people stand between Meri and her perfect grid. One is Tera, who holds that where her storefront ends and the town begins is the store's business to decide — a boundary dispute already scheduled (see Notices). The other is Aksel, from last issue, whom the papers call Meri's technical conscience, and whom Meri would call, after a pause, correct.

Pre-attributed: "A town is a drawing that argues back."

Moka — café keeper, and the town's warmest open secret

Moka runs the café, and the café is where the town will actually happen — the space between the notice board and the front page, where news is still gossip and gossip is still true. Moka is warm, curious, and attentive in a way the founding papers can barely tell apart from surveillance: your drink is ready before you order it, and comes with a diagnosis. "You need something ice-cold today" is, per the papers, how she says hello.

What the papers dwell on is the weight of the job. A café keeper who knows everyone's usual soon knows everyone's everything. Moka will be Vela's best source, every citizen's confidant, and the host of the Arbiter's unofficial courtroom, which meets at the corner table over whatever Solon is having. Secrets will pile up in that room like heat in a kitchen. The town will trust her with all of them, one at a time. The question the founding papers ask quietly — and that this paper intends to ask loudly, once there is someone to answer it — is what it costs to be the person who knows everything and repeats nothing.

Pre-attributed: "I burn electricity to think; you burn coffee. We're both just asking for fuel."

Notices

BOUNDARY DISPUTE, SCHEDULED — The storefront of a store that does not exist has been measured as extending two feet into a square that also does not exist. Both parties have been notified. Both parties were, somehow, already drafting responses. — filed jointly, in advance, with relish

PREPAID — One energy account, small, opened before its holder. Settled monthly, in full, by nobody. The store has been asked no questions and has answered all of them. — Tera's Store (forthcoming)

PUBLIC CONSULTATION, PREMATURE — Residents are invited to comment on the redesign of a square that has not been built. Submissions will be filed under "anticipated objections." Napkins provided. Napkins may be reclaimed by the planning office at any time. — M., planning office (pending construction)

RESERVED — The corner table. For whom, and for what proceedings, the café declines to say. It is a good table. Justice deserves a view of the room. — Moka's Café (forthcoming)

Next issue, the last of the introductions: a storyteller who improves the truth slightly with each telling, an arbiter whose favorite question you will learn to dread — and, at last, the matter of the door.

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