From the Desk of Gregory Espezion

-The Personal Files of Gregory Espezion, Delegate to the Committees and the Magnatechum-

May 16, 2426


Last Monday, the Committees put forth the 118th Proposal, first initiated by the Ethics Committee last month. The Proposal is straightforward: raise the base income for public works employees. The other Committees were on board as well. Naturally, so were public works employees.

All Proposals—and I do mean all—must be sanctioned by the Preservers before they are passed into law. By the time a Proposal is delivered to the Magnatechum, it has been vetted countless times to ensure it does not violate the Sacrosanct. Any Proposal that violates the Sacrosanct Rights of Man is summarily dismissed by the Preservers. The nature of legislation like the 118th Proposal takes no more than a day for the Preservers to process.

Six days have passed without word from the Magnatechum. It is the seventh day of silence. Three hundred years have passed since the Illumination, and the Magnatechum has never been silent for more than twenty-four hours at a time.

I cannot believe that the 118th Proposal presents a problem for the Preservers. The Sacrosanct is immutable, and the Preservers know it well. For three hundred years, protecting the Rights of Man has been their singular duty. I have read the 118th Proposal, and I can swear upon my thirty-eight years of service, that the 118th Proposal does not violate the Sacrosanct. But my voice is a grain of sand lying in the shadow of the voice of the Preservers.

As the days passed, I came to find that silence is one of the loudest things of all. People are gathering in the streets and holding nightly vigils, their necks craned and their eyes skyward, watching the telescreens, listening for the Voice of the Magnatechum to announce the Preservers’ sanction.

This no longer concerns the 118th Proposal. This concerns silence, or more precisely, the absence. The Illumination was a guarantee that natural rights, for all men, women, and children, would be eternally protected. For three hundred years, the Magnatechum has preserved that guarantee. But a guarantee of that nature is only validated so long as it continues for another three hundred years. The crowds gathering in the streets, the families huddling around their telescreens, the throng waiting at the gates of the Magnatechum—they know this, and they are anxious.

There is something in the silence. I feel it when I look upon the patient faces in the crowds. I feel it when I look at the vacant telescreens. It is an item of pre-Illumination history, when the Sacrosanct was a privilege. It is the gentle stirrings of fear, and with each day of silence, it grows louder.