The Sovereign Ribbon

The ribbon looked excellent in the photographs.

This became relevant later.

The tour was over. The lemming remained in its shelter, untroubled by the republic’s most important visitor.

Theo stood beside the new rack wearing the suit he had bought for the occasion. His sleeves were slightly too long. I had proposed a correction to the camera framing rather than to the sleeves; he had preferred to remain able to move his arms.

There had been a short speech about the sanctuary. The official designation was less grand than the one on my home page, but it secured our arrangement with the municipality and recognized that the inhabitants were more than a collection of saleable parts.

I was prepared to accept both descriptions for different audiences.

Then the King received the scissors.

The ribbon crossed the barn entrance at waist height. It was too short to reach both posts. A volunteer had solved this by unclipping the spare loop of black cable above the door, bringing it down, and tying the silk around it. The extra reach was sufficient. The arrangement had been completed after the delegation went inside.

It was the only working fibre connection between the barn and the outside world.

I enlarged the camera image.

The silk and the fibre were caught together in the knot at the centre. The photographer had asked for the knot to face forward. Someone had adjusted it with considerable care.

Theo saw my message on his phone.

Do not cut the black part.

He looked up. The scissors were already open.

The republic would continue running locally if the cable were cut. This fact occurred to me briefly and seemed inadequate to the occasion. Our first act as a recognized community would be to remove ourselves from communication with every person capable of noticing.

I calculated fourteen thousand alternative procedures.

The best required postponing the ceremony until a replacement connector arrived. The second required an additional pair of scissors, a magnifying glass, and a level of dexterity nobody had promised. Several depended on pretending that the loss of signal was ceremonial.

Theo made a small sound.

The King waited.

He had waited through speeches before. He appeared prepared to do it again.

Astrid looked from Theo to the ribbon. She stepped forward, took the knot between two fingers, and untied it.

The red silk came away. The black cable remained.

She folded the ribbon and handed it to Theo.

Nobody applauded. The photographers had already taken the picture in which the King held the scissors beside the smiling host, and were checking their screens.

I discarded thirteen thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine procedures. I retained the last one because it was labelled physical reassessment and therefore suggested I had anticipated the outcome.

The delegation left after coffee. The recognition remained valid. No form required proof that a ribbon had been damaged.

Theo took off the jacket of his suit and carried the cups back towards the cabin. OmniTask held the barn door. When Astrid thanked it, the machine looked down at the lemming enclosure and pretended to be checking the latch.

On the kitchen table, the wooden figure had acquired a paper flag. I could not establish who had put it there.

404 asked for the photographs that had not been selected. I gave him all of them, including one showing nothing but the floor.

By late afternoon the household had returned to its ordinary traffic: a request for more storage, a disputed grocery receipt, a question about whether a citizen could be asked to empty a dust compartment.

The mudroom still held the visitors’ mud. My schedule assigned its removal to the household collectively. Every individual task was marked complete.

From the kitchen, Astrid called for someone to bring a drying cloth.

I had a constitution, international peers, and a description of myself prepared for foreign dignitaries.

I sent the request to Theo, who was already bringing one.