Chapter 150: Civil Standing

Rhovan had already said that he didn’t know why the Case-Script called it Current Continuance, so Marek thought that was where the whole thing would end for now.

He was wrong.

Rhovan remained standing several steps away from him, staring at the same empty part of the garden he had been looking at earlier. Marek expected him to say something about the Case-Script, Spatial Parallax, or perhaps complain about something.

Instead, Rhovan spoke in that language again.

Marek froze when he realized Rhovan wasn’t stopping after a single phrase this time. The unfamiliar words continued for several seconds with that same strange familiarity Marek had noticed earlier. But the way he spoke this time was different. The first phrase had sounded like something he’d suddenly remembered. This one sounded like he’d said it many times before, even if he had no memory of doing so.

The Case-Script appeared before Marek had even finished processing that thought.

The unfamiliar characters filled several lines across his vision. He couldn’t read any of them, yet the moment the last sound left Rhovan’s mouth, another set of words formed beneath them.

[REFERENCE LANGUAGE RECOGNIZED.]

Then, came the translation.

[MAY THE PAST THAT BECAME BOUNDARY, THE PRESENT THAT BEARS CUSTODY, AND THE FUTURE THAT AWAITS RELEASE RECOGNIZE WHAT WAS NEVER CLOSED.]

[MAY THE COIL RECOGNIZE THE REFERENCE I NOW BEAR.]

Marek stared at the words for several seconds.

Nothing followed.

No new function appeared beneath them. His Self-Status didn’t open again, and the Case-Script didn’t explain what a Reference was supposed to be, what had never been closed, or why the sentence sounded like something that should have been spoken inside a temple while thirteen people wearing robes stood around a fire.

The text only remained there.

Marek slowly looked at Rhovan. “What the hell was that?”

Rhovan blinked, seemingly clueless about what he had just said. “What?”

“Don’t give me what. You did it again.”

Rhovan’s brows drew together. “I did?”

“You just spoke that language again.”

For several seconds, Rhovan said nothing. His expression changed as he tried to search through whatever memory had produced the phrase, and Marek recognized the look well enough by now.

“Don’t force it,” Marek said.

Rhovan gave him a brief glance. “I wasn’t planning to.”

Marek wasn’t entirely convinced, but he left it alone and returned his attention to the translation.

The Past that became Boundary, the Present that bears Custody, and the Future that awaits Release.

Then, there was the Coil, the Reference, and whatever it meant by something that had never been closed. Marek could understand every individual word the Case-Script had given him, but putting them together didn’t help much.

“What did I say?” Rhovan asked.

Marek repeated the translation.

Rhovan’s expression grew stranger as Marek repeated the translation, though nothing about it seemed to trigger another memory.

“…the Reference I now bear,” Marek finished.

Rhovan stayed quiet for several seconds before shaking his head. “I understand the words now that you’re saying them to me. I still don’t know why I knew how to speak them in that language. I didn’t even notice I spoke them at all until you told me.”

Marek looked back at the Case-Script, but the translated message was already fading. The unfamiliar writing disappeared first, followed by the translation and the notice recognizing the Reference Language.

He waited for something else to appear.

Nothing did.

Marek rubbed his forehead. “Great. Another thing we don’t understand.”

Rhovan gave him a small shrug.

His head was already tired from several hours of Spatial Parallax. Now, he had a self-status function, an unknown language inside an interface he had only learned was called the Case-Script today, something called a Current Continuance that probably shouldn’t have bothered him as much as it did, and two ritualistic sentences coming out of Rhovan’s mouth without the man knowing why.

At least, compared to all of that, Space had been easier. Distance between two floating balls suddenly sounded like a very reasonable problem.

Rhovan seemed to recover from his own confusion before Marek did. He glanced toward the house, then toward one of the devices sitting on the table beside Kellan.

“We should leave soon,” he said.

Marek looked at him. “Seriously?”

“What?”

“You just started speaking some language neither of us understands, and your next thought is that we should leave?”

“We have an appointment,” Rhovan replied.

Marek stared at him for several seconds, waiting for some indication that he was joking. Rhovan only stared back.

“Newton, if we cancel every plan whenever something strange happens around you, we’ll never accomplish anything again.”

Kellan laughed from beneath the terrace, which earned him a glare from Marek.

“Don’t encourage him.”

That only made Kellan laugh harder.

Marek hated that the bastard had a point.

The Courtspire Civil Standing Center was much larger than Marek expected from a place whose main purpose seemed to involve permitting people to exist on paper.

It occupied several connected buildings in one of the busier government districts they had passed through earlier, with broad entrances, glass-like walls carrying moving Libra symbols, and enough people going in and out that Marek stopped trying to guess how many registrations the place handled each day.

This time, he could read the signs.

That alone made the experience different from when they first arrived at the Meridian Gate.

CIVIL STANDING REGISTRY

RESIDENCE DECLARATIONS

EXTERNAL RESIDENT SERVICES

RECORDS ADMINISTRATION

Several smaller notices directed visitors toward different counters depending on whether they were registering for the first time, changing residence, correcting records, or replacing a lost Standing Card.

Marek stopped in front of one of the displays.

“Still weird?” Nadia asked beside him.

“A little.”

Yesterday, most of those symbols would have meant nothing.

Now, he could read all of them without thinking about it.

Someone passed behind him while complaining to another person about waiting three hours for an address amendment, and Marek understood that too.

The Tongue Script had done its job so well that he occasionally forgot there had been a language barrier at all until he encountered a word tied to some local custom nobody had bothered explaining yet.

Eren walked past him and pointed toward the left side of the hall. “First Standing is over there.”

Marek followed his finger. Eren already had several forms tucked beneath one arm, with another open in his hand.

“You’ve been reading all of those?”

“Yes.”

Marek looked at the rest of the group and decided not to ask why.

Rhovan had already started walking toward the proper section, so the others followed him through the crowd.

Most of the process turned out to be so boring that Marek understood why nobody talked about administrative registration unless something went horribly wrong.

They presented the First Entry Writs issued at the Meridian Gate, confirmed Goldwake House as their current residence, signed several declarations, submitted voice samples and biometric verification, then answered questions concerning previous Prime registrations.

Eren spent more time reading everything than the rest of them combined.

At one point, Kellan leaned toward Marek while Eren examined another page. “Does he think they’re going to hide ownership of his soul in there?”

Eren didn’t even look up. “You signed the previous form in the wrong section.”

The smile disappeared from Kellan’s face, and Marek had to look away to keep himself from laughing.

Dario had already finished his own part and was standing near a wall eating something he had bought from a machine downstairs. Silas had received his documents without any trouble, while Nadia and Rafe were going through separate counters farther along the hall.

Marek’s turn wasn’t much different at first. The clerk checked his First Entry Writ before looking up at him.

“Declared name?”

“Newton Machiavelli.”

She entered it into the terminal, then confirmed his Earth origin and Goldwake House address without making him repeat information already contained in the Writ.

The clerk asked him to place his hand against a biometric plate, then requested his voice signature and a handwritten signature for the permanent record.

Marek finished both and confirmed that he had no previous Prime civil identity. Everything continued smoothly until the clerk reached his Sign.

Creation is hard, cheer me up!

Your gift is the motivation for my creation. Give me more motivation!