Timbuktu

By dawn, Timbuktu has already moved.

Not physically.

The streets remain. The walls remain. The minarets remain. But every morning the distances change. The river feels farther away. The desert feels nearer. A market that was in the center yesterday appears today to have been built at the edge of the inhabited world.

Reality Services arrives from Akron wearing desert boots that have never encountered a desert.

The Rangers are not impressed.

Then roads begin behaving as though missions matter more than maps.

Vehicles remember assignments. Routes preserve obligations. A courier can finish the journey and still fail to arrive because the road has decided the mission belongs to someone else.

Reality Services tries to establish ownership.

Who owns the mission?

Who owns the road?

Who owns the vehicle?

Who owns the driver?

The last question turns out to be the important one.

By the time the office understands what Timbuktu is doing, the problem is no longer navigation.

It is who gets counted when institutions turn people into functions.

The answer eventually becomes simple enough to frighten everyone:

Count more carefully.

Not to own the people.

To notice who is missing.

Included free: a complete Second Census story, where noticing who is missing is unfortunately the entire department.