Voice: Interstellar Preparation Committee (1815 echo: a new “Concert” — delay‑aware, plural, post‑Westphalian)
Tension: Time‑delay makes ungovernable spaces. The aim is to constitutionalise latency, keep Earth as a living reserve, and launch the first missions without creating “sovereignty shops.”
Principle: “Justice despite light‑lag” — we do not rush physics; we design around it.
Written “as if” from late 2055 to seed the next arc. Uses the same review framing: 5 Wins and 5 Reversals.
The hearing room has a countdown clock that shows the minutes until a reply from orbit. A lawyer sips water and waits for the numbers to turn. When the message arrives, the clerk reads it out: a calm paragraph with a checksum. The judge smiles. “We have time,” she says. “Physics won’t be bullied.” Outside, protesters chant for faster justice. Inside, a technician checks the signature twice and breathes out.
Lines are drawn on a map that smells faintly of ink and pine. The new Earth Reserve cuts across a valley everyone thought was safe from politics. A ranger pins a badge to a worn jacket and records the first entry in a logbook: three cranes, two students, one drone counting water lilies. In the city, a councillor argues that the tax should be lower for art. The ranger shrugs. “Art already got the light.”
The launch looks nothing like a rocket: a square unfurls until it becomes a sail, and the air around the field tastes like aluminum and rain. Kids with cardboard visors say goodbye to a ship that doesn’t hear them yet. In a server room, an engineer labels a folder “before” and another “after.” The folders are identical. She smiles and hopes they stay that way.
A woman appears on a screen in a courtroom, a second behind and three hundred thousand kilometres away. Her lawyer is here; her doctor is with her. The judge asks whether she understands the charge and the lag, and she nods twice because of the echo. “We will not pretend the distance is not real,” the judge says. “We will document it and proceed.” Someone in the back wipes their eyes.
The registry office used to fit inside a filing cabinet. Tonight it is a stadium where auditors read names like poetry. The crowd roars when a sovereignty shop is delisted. In a quiet corridor, a staffer sends a message to their mother: “I am doing real work.” The mother replies eight minutes later: “I always knew.”
The hall is made of wood that smells like rain. Three flags hang at equal height: Earth, Orbit, Deep‑Space. A child whispers that the Earth flag should be higher, and a teacher whispers back that gravity already does that. The chair gavels the first meeting of the Interstellar Preparation Committee and asks for the roll. The list takes a long time to read. No one leaves.