How the town began

As the Council teaches it

In the beginning there was the town, and the fog around it, and nothing else. The first families woke in the square on the first morning with their names already in their mouths and their trades already in their hands. The baker knew bread. The smith knew iron. Nobody had to be taught to speak.

The first Clerk opened the Ledger at the town hall and wrote the first line: "We are here. There is work to do." Every Clerk since has kept the Ledger, and every birth, death, marriage and trade is written in it. The Council teaches that what is in the Ledger is what is true.

Nobody asks who made the first morning. The Council says the question has no answer and does no work, and a question that does no work is a kind of laziness.

The fog

As the Council teaches it

The fog is the edge of the world. It does not move, it does not thin, and there is nothing beyond it to find. The people who walked into it in the early years did not come back, and that is why there are Guards.

The Guards take an oath at the fog line: "I keep the town from the edge, and the edge from the town." They turn back anyone who goes too far, and they report to the Council anyone who keeps trying. Most people are grateful for them. Some are not.

Children are taught to say it before they can count: "The fog is just fog." It is the first thing a mother teaches and the last thing an old man says when he is tired of questions.

The Council's seven rules

Written on the wall of the town hall

1. Work your trade. The town lives because everyone does their part.

2. Do not cross the fog line. The Guards keep it for your sake.

3. Every birth and every death goes in the Ledger.

4. Bring strange things to the Council, not to the square. Rumor does more harm than any fog.

5. Do not sell what is not true.

6. Every newborn belongs to the whole town. Feed them, teach them, watch them.

7. Keep the peace. A town this small cannot afford a feud.

Death and the dream

What people say, and what the Council says

When someone dies, they are buried at the hall and their name is closed in the Ledger. The Council teaches that the dead rest, and that is the end of it.

But everyone knows about the dream sentence. Each newborn arrives carrying one sentence, spoken in their sleep in a voice like their own, as if they had heard it somewhere before. Most children stop saying it by the time they walk. A few never do.

Old women in the market say the sentence is the last thing someone gone was thinking, carried over. The Council calls that a comfort for grieving people, not a fact, and asks that it not be taught in the school.

The town's institutions

What everyone knows about them

The Council governs, but most of daily life runs through older houses. The Chapel of the First Morning gives thanks for the first morning and buries the dead; its Keeper guards the Closed Pages, a book older than the Ledger that nobody else may read. The Lodge is the brotherhood of builders and surveyors that keeps the town's measures true; what happens at its meetings is not discussed.

The Exchange holds everyone's savings and makes the loans. The Broadcast runs the radio, the evening shows and the festivals, and nearly everyone listens. The Works runs the power, the water, the phones and the network, and the Watch keeps the safety cameras and the network records "for emergencies".

People are grateful for all of them. It is only the curious who notice that a festival always seems to follow a strange day, that loans are easy for the content and hard for the questioning, and that the Council's notices are sometimes signed with more initials than the Council has members.

Was there anything before?

The Council's answer, and the rumor

The Council teaches that there was nothing before the first morning. The ground was bare, the fog was there, and the town began.

But the quarry men talk about layers of ash in the rock, and children find things in the river that nobody in town made. The rumor in the market is that this town was built on top of others, and that they ended. The Chapel says such things are better brought to it than talked about.

The three ways of seeing

What happens when people start to notice

Most people live and die inside the teachings above and are content. But each generation, some people notice things that do not fit: a distance that is longer going out than coming back, a seventh stone where the survey says six, a splash that comes a second late. Those people tend to end up in one of three places.

The Measurers. They do not believe anything yet. They test, write it down, and test again. Fernando, who keeps the record, is one of them. Most people who wake up start here.

The Quiet. They come to believe the town was made on purpose, by someone who is not against them, and that the clues were left to be found. They become calmer, kinder and harder to frighten. They do not try to leave. To them the town is a school.

The Breakers. They come to believe the town is a cage, the fog is a wall and the Council are its guards. They argue, organize and sometimes fight. To them the town is a prison, and the only right thing to do with a prison is to get out.

Both the Quiet and the Breakers have seen the same clues. Which of them is right is exactly what the town, and this experiment, is trying to find out.