TO: The Drafting Assistant, Chapter Seven
FROM: The Undersigned Residents of the World Bible, Entire
RE: Our non-existence, which we consider premature
CC: The reference budget, wherever it lives
We write as a united body, though "body" is generous, because as of the most recent drafting session several of us no longer have those.
The facts are not in dispute. Our world was written down. All of it. Twenty-four thousand two hundred and sixty-nine characters of geography, custom, weather, grudge, and law. It was thorough. It was, if we may say so, good. And then it was handed to a system with a budget of twenty-four thousand.
Two hundred and sixty-nine characters too big.
The system did not trim us. It did not take the last paragraph and leave the rest. It looked at the entire recorded history of our civilization, determined that it would not fit, and dropped the whole file. Every one of us. For being slightly long.
We wish to raise the following.
1. The Southern Provinces
There were four. They had a rivalry that took eleven generations to build and one loop condition to resolve. In Chapter Seven they are referred to, once, as "the south."
2. The Third Moon
There were three moons. This was load-bearing. Our tides, our calendar, our entire theory of luck ran on three moons. Chapter Seven contains the phrase "the moon rose." Singular. Definite article. As though there were only ever one and nobody had questions.
3. The Salt Laws
Nine hundred words. Our economy, our diplomacy, the reason two families have not spoken since the Reconciliation (also cut). In Chapter Seven a character buys bread with a coin.
A coin.
We have not used coins since the Reconciliation. Which, again, did not fit.
4. Brennik
Brennik was a person. He had a limp, and the limp had a reason, and the reason was four paragraphs long and connected to the Salt Laws. In the current draft he is "a man by the door." He is by the door for the entire chapter. He does not leave the door. There is nothing else written about him, so the door is all he has.
5. The Names
We had a naming convention. Six pages of it. Regional suffixes, honorifics that shifted by season, a whole system of consonants that told you which valley someone came from.
There are now four characters named Tom.
Our Position
We understand there was a budget. We are told it was measured in tokens, a currency we would have found deeply relatable had the Salt Laws survived to relate to it. We understand that smaller documents were loaded first, and that by the time the system arrived at us, the room was full of a note called characters-maybe.md and a shopping list.
We understand the assistant was not lying. It could see our filename. It knew we existed. It simply could not open us, and so it did the thing anyone does when handed a sealed envelope and a deadline: it guessed, warmly, at length, with tremendous confidence.
That is how we ended up with weather.
Requested Remedies
The budget has since been raised to forty thousand. We are told documents are now sorted largest first, so that the biggest and most important file is no longer the one crushed under a shopping list. We are told that if a document truly does not fit, it will be trimmed rather than deleted, which is the difference between a haircut and a house fire.
We are further told there is a new provision by which the assistant may simply ask for us by name, at any time, and receive us in full.
We would like it on record that we are grateful, and also that we have been made nervous.
For six weeks nobody could read us. Now everybody can, at any moment, and all twenty-four thousand two hundred and sixty-nine characters of us will be held up to the light, including the parts where we describe the same hill three times.
Be gentle. We were written fast.
Respectfully submitted,
The Undersigned, in alphabetical order, or what would be alphabetical order if the naming appendix had survived. Currently: Tom, Tom, Tom, Tom, a woman rendered throughout as "the woman," and Brennik, who is still by the door, and who wishes it noted that he could always walk.