Calgary

The dead man's head is in Calgary.

The rest of him is in Rocky View County.

A yellow municipal boundary line runs beneath his shoulders with bureaucratic precision.

Calgary police stand on one side.

County officers stand on the other.

Nobody has touched him.

This is how the Office of the Second Census gets involved.

The death itself is ordinary: cardiac arrest, witnessed, resuscitation ended, family identified.

The location is not.

Once the Office starts asking which jurisdiction owns the dead, the boundary begins producing answers nobody requested.

Bodies appear where legal lines cross physical ones. Death certificates disagree with maps. Roads, counties and cities begin behaving as though jurisdiction is something the dead can feel.

The Second Census likes boundaries.

Boundaries are the reason the Office exists.

Calgary is about what happens when the boundary notices the Office back.

Included free: a complete Reality Services story, where municipal lines are generally content to stay painted on the road.