"Justice is a room that keeps trying to grow a throne. Good cities keep giving it a table."
— scratched into a bench under the rotunda, sanded off twice, always returns
EXT. VETRAEUS SEA — MORNING THAT PREFERS COMMAS
Seven-minute rings push and fold with the weary elegance of a practiced apology. Thalassos stands like a metronome for ordinary courage; floodlights sleep with one eye open. Somewhere below the grammar of steel, Somnus breathes in ratios, the way a hospital learns to count without panicking.
INT. SOMNUS — THE AMPHORA — UNTIMED
The lattice hangs like a constellation that passed the bar exam. 71 kept, 29 released. Crowd cadence: six breaths hold, two release. Limiter armed against spectacle. Fasting clause set aside for masks and—if the city insists—children who hear doctrine before adults do.
Veyra's soles are cold against glass that remembers tides. The Aion warms his wrist; the Kairos embryo orbits his shoulder as if taking attendance.
"Somnus," he says, voice pitched to steady the air, "civic band, ears only. Target: the Citadel Courthouse. The docket wants a crown; we will teach it pockets."
THREAD: CIVIC // MODE: AFFECT // ETHIC: NON-TAKING
Mirrors shade. The room becomes the kind of ear that can forgive a sentence for going long. He doesn't speak into it yet. He lets steadiness go on ahead like a friend who gets to the restaurant first and puts jackets on chairs.
The Aion spills its winter of glyphs. He writes in the cold light:
REQUIEM: COURT APPENDIX
Doors first. Tables second. Statues last.
Limiter triggers on applause.
If a judge invites worship, offer minutes instead.
Somnus engraves the lines into the amphora lintel as frost that refuses to melt.
INTERCUT
— THE NERVE: a maintenance hatch with old letters: Transit is a covenant. A janitor re-stencils covenant with the patient malice of someone who believes in wrenches.
— PELAGIC TRAINING POOL: teenagers with Halos breathe to a whistle. The instructor chalks: Wide gives ghosts / tight gives truth. Palms hit water like punctuation.
— FIRST DIVISION PARADE SQUARE: boots mark out triangles that mean don't escalate. A sergeant calls: "Seventy-one?" The square answers: "To memory." "Twenty-nine?" "To grace."
— THIRD DIVISION TENT: ladles move like liturgy. A sign: Drivers eat free. Someone adds: Bailiffs too.
— FOURTH DIVISION CELL: a mask on felt, a clause inked in letters that know they'll be hated: FASTING (7 counts):silence without leverage; apology published.
EXT. DIRECTORATE CITADEL — COURTHOUSE STEPS — LATE MORNING
Stone remembers empires the city refuses to name. Columns swallow sound; pigeons practice the ratio and misplace crumbs. Above the portico, the motto attempts modesty: WE STOP THE WRONG STORIES. Below it, in chalk: We start the right ones, too.
Crowds practice disagreement without combusting. Third Division sets water on a folding table like due process for thirst. First tapes geometry on the steps—lanes that keep arguments from learning momentum. A Black Halo observer leans in shade, hands visible, presence like a comma that changes the sentence.
INT. COURTHOUSE — ROTUNDA — CONTINUOUS
Marble that has learned to be patient. The air smells like paper that got a raise. A statue in the round tries to remember that it is stone and not a sermon: a blindfolded woman, scales, the old lie set to good intentions.
Judge Marin Tal steps through a side door with her robes unbuttoned to the first honesty. Fifty-one, eyes that learned kindness later than power. She takes the bench. The bench thinks about being a throne and doesn't get the promotion.
She bangs the gavel once—a courteous threat. "Docket begins. Petition 112-A: Statute 7–12 — Civic Edition, to be crowned with enforcement protocols." Crowned is not in the document. She says it anyway. The room hears the word and licks its teeth.
In the gallery, Ari Vale slides into a seat like a door closing quietly. Ines Halberd takes the aisle, Halo snug, nineteen, already tired of apologies sold by the minute. At the back, a man in a dark, unambitious suit holds a slim case with custodian impatience. The brand hides in plain letters on the latch: Custodial Praxis.
Third Division's liaison, a nurse whose face has practiced the kind of smile that returns names, sits two rows up, hands folded as if the bench could see sincerity and value it correctly.
INT. THALASSOS — CONTROL GALLERY — SAME
Kerr watches the feed. The courthouse camera renders everyone more honest than they intend; that is its job. "Doors get doctrine," she says, half to herself, half to the sea. "Tables get grace. Statues can wait."
"Commander," a tech murmurs, finger on a vibration that makes his own bones remember cold water, "we're reading scaffold flavor under the rotunda—Crownline memory. Not a surge. A pedestal. It wants to amplify the loudest noun."
Kerr's jaw clicks once. "The loudest noun today is law. Tell Requiem to measure in minutes. If the room asks for a crown, give it a calendar."
She thumbs the Threadlink. "Doctor?"
"Here," Veyra says. He sounds like sleep did not get to win. "I'm humming at the marble. It's learning to count."
INT. SOMNUS — THE AMPHORA — SAME
The mirrors show the rotunda as an ear; the Requiem field threads the coffered ceiling like a low, competent hymn. Veyra resets the limiter to trigger on applause—praise is a flood dressed as a compliment.
"Somnus," he says, "autofail any device that claims to disinfect deliberation."
The Aion ticks approval. The Kairos floats closer, heart-bright, crown-dim, like a child who wants to bring a toy to court and can't understand why they shouldn't.
"Not today," he whispers to it, and hopes the future will forgive him for teaching restraint as a first language.
INT. COURTHOUSE — ROTUNDA — CONTINUOUS
Judge Tal clears her throat in a register that used to make rooms fall in line and now only floors. "Public comment is open. Time limits are in effect."
Third's liaison stands. "Statute 7–12 teaches: Lucid acknowledgment follows consent. Third arrives first; Fourth last. No doctrine without ledger; no ledger without cost spoken aloud. We ask the court to ratify without crowns." She lays a palm on the table as if the wood were a forehead.
From the back, the Custodial Praxis man rises. His tie believes in markets as a method of prayer. "Sanitation advocate, Your Honor. Respectfully, the city requires consistency. Mercy should not be improvised by soup. My firm can provide predictable quiet for civic events. Our Transit Sanitizer has already proven effective—"
On the public band, across the city, a polite cough appears:
We tried to sell you silence. That was a mistake. — Custodial Praxis
The room laughs—not at a man, at an idea. Limiter: one. Market: zero. The man reddens in a color that makes his suit look more expensive. He clicks his case. Inside: a cylinder and a halo designed to make crowds uncomplicated. He begins to assemble it under the indifferent gaze of Justice.
Ari is moving before she stands. The geometry of First on the floor obliges the aisle to become a corridor that leads nowhere. Ines angles left, body language of a woman late for a dentist. She lets her shoulder touch the man's wrist not as a blow but as a reminder of physics. The halo wobbles. The cylinder inhales and, finding fasting coiled in its throat, discovers nothing instead of power.
"Seven," Ines whispers, counting like prayer. "Six. Five."
Judge Tal raps her gavel. Her voice attempts sternness and lands on curiosity. "Is that an apology on my docket?"
"Public band clause, Your Honor," the nurse says, not hiding pleasure. "We published hunger instead of feeding it."
Third begins to pass small paper cups down the rows; water makes legislation less brittle. The rotunda's pedestal, disappointed at the absence of thunder, downgrades its ambition to good acoustics.
"Next comment," Judge Tal says, eyes on a clock instead of a crown.
A boy steps to the aisle microphone, eleven, face informed by corridors. He reads haltingly from a pamphlet. "If you tried to help and it hurt, that means you touched something alive. Sit down. Breathe seven, rest two. Try again with less hunger."
"Who gave you that?" the judge asks.
"A woman in a coat," he says, pointing without pointing at Third. "She said doors learn first."
The statue in the round forgets for a second to be solemn and becomes funny in a way stone hates—its scales tilt as if embarrassed by finding themselves in the story at all.
INT. SOMNUS — THE SPINE / ECHO ANNEX — SAME
Veyra hears the boy's cadence through the field and feels the city make a decision: law will be taught in kitchens before benches. Good. He doesn't smile; the mirrors will repeat it and make that part cheap.
At the far end of the Annex, the seam in the bedrock breathes like a door that respects itself. Not opening—just turning its head. Null-Lit lace unfurls and remembers a scaffold that once wore courts like jewelry. He lifts his palm, not to press, to cover.
"Allocation," he says. "Seventy guard. Thirty grace. Add eight honesty. Limiter on applause."
The lace sulks back; the room keeps its oxygen. He returns to the rotunda with one more subtraction in his bones than he will admit. Somnus dims the lights a fraction, the kind of courtesy that lets a tired man lie to himself about how long he's been good.
INT. COURTHOUSE — ROTUNDA — MIDDAY
Kerr arrives without fanfare, coat absorbing light, posture giving it back. She takes the rear bench and lets her presence be a kind of punctuation. The Black Halo observer shifts three degrees, recognizing an author whose name will never be on any document that matters and therefore matters more.
A clerk—Marta Gait—slides a cart stacked with water jugs along the aisle. Fifty-nine, knee that negotiates each step, eyes that inventory rooms for where to set down grace. She has been the quiet pump that kept a thousand hearings from drying into cruelty.
As she rounds the last pew, the Custodial Praxis man, sweaty with embarrassment's metabolism, moves to leave with his case reassembled. The halo bumps Marta's cart. Plastic dominos. A jug tilts; a second obeys the first. She catches the third without thinking and saves the aisle. She does not save her foot. The jug slams bone; a sound like a small tree deciding winter is correct.
The room inhales. Pain speaks in Marta's face and refuses to translate. She sits, an edited collapse. Water spreads under the bench in a defeated map.
Third is there in three heartbeats. "Name?" a medic asks, because the City requests civility before triage.
"Marta," she says through teeth that want to be pragmatic. "I'm fine."
"You're honest," the medic says, kneeling. "Difference."
Kerr's voice threads in from the back, quiet authority that never shouts. "Limiter to pity, please. No spectacle."
The Requiem field obeys; concern becomes useful instead of intoxicating. People look away not from indifference but from respect. A bailiff hands Marta his own chair as if chairs were currency and he was suddenly rich.
Judge Tal stands, robe a shade of apology. "This court will recess seven minutes," she says. "We will learn to carry hurt without giving it a crown."
Third binds the ankle with a competence that doesn't need praise. Ines offers her palm. Marta squeezes once, not to impress, to anchor. "Soup?" Ines asks.
"Soup," Marta says. "And then I'm finishing this cart."
"You're off your feet," the medic says.
"I'm a clerk," Marta answers with professional piety. "Tables don't crown themselves."
Something in the room chooses that sentence and makes a home around it. The pedestal under the rotunda shivers, then settles—table, not throne.
INT. THALASSOS — CONTROL GALLERY — SAME
Kerr watches Marta's face on the long screen, the anger there not at a person but at any world that asks knees to be noble. She writes without looking: Marta Gait — priority service / Third stipend / "drivers eat free" applies. Then she adds: clerks eat free and underlines it until the pen believes her.
The Threadlink warms.
"Solene," Veyra says, very steady because now is when steadiness pays its rent. "The court is fasting from heroism."
"Good," she answers. "Tell the statute to choose minutes."
"I already taught the room to love clocks," he says.
"Teach the judge," she says. "She likes the word crown the way old marble likes echo."
INT. COURTHOUSE — ROTUNDA — AFTER RECESS
People drink water the way citizens admit to hope. The judge returns with her robe closed and her jaw reconsidered.
"Petition 112-A," she says. "Civic ratification of Statute 7–12—without crowns." She looks at the nurse from Third. "We will put this on doors, not on velvet."
"Including bathrooms," the nurse says, straight-faced.
"Especially bathrooms," Tal says. "They are rooms where people tell the truth."
She hesitates, then does something rooms remember. She steps down from the bench. She takes the table. She puts her hand flat on wood that has learned to turn noise into sentences.
"By the authority vested in this courthouse by people with real lives," she says, "we adopt the statute as minutes. We will count better, not kneel better."
Applause tries to grow. The limiter lays a finger to its lips. The room laughs at itself and becomes stronger.
In the back, the Custodial Praxis man lingers long enough to hear his own feet invent regret. He will sell quieter hardware next week, with a different label, to a different fear. That is his doctrine. Today he exits without incident and the door does not slam.
Ari signs her incident slip: no captures, apology published, water spilled: two jugs, soup consumed: three liters, clerk fed. Ines adds a line in pencil under the form that will never be archived: pity invited; compassion attended instead.
Marta pushes her cart with one foot and one wheel and the city gives her a corridor the way a flock makes a door for weather.
INT. SOMNUS — THE CHOIR NAVE — LATER
Veyra stands with the dead who learned to sing inside glass. Their harmonics hold at kitchen volume. He speaks to them the way you speak to archives that still choose you.
"We made a bench prefer tables," he says. "We put soup in a statute."
—feed clerks—
—applause is a flood—
—minutes are crowns upside-down—
He laughs quietly. "Minutes are crowns upside-down," he repeats, and writes it small where only maintenance lights can read.
The Aion presents a ledger. Debt accrued: 0.07. He had hoped for cheaper; he accepts better. The Kairos taps the back of his knuckles with warm light like a child choosing a hand.
"Calories," he tells it. "The city expended them. Tonight we feed it back."
EXT. DIAMOND CITY — EVENING — WIDE
The Nerve sheds commuters into streets that have decided not to argue about dusk. The Inner Walls blink and confess to mercy. The Pulse pretends games are therapy and is half right. At the Hands, an Angel's core cools in a bath that smells like discipline.
On courthouse steps, a child draws boxes where people gave each other room. He labels them pockets and counts them, very carefully, to seven, then adds an eighth and calls it extra kindness.
INT. DIRECTORATE — SMALL ROOM BEHIND THE ROOM — NIGHT
Four folders: First, Second, Third, Fourth. The blank fifth waits with the patience of future failure. Kerr pins a single sheet beside Statute 7–12:
COURT APPENDIX (PUBLIC BAND)
— If your law asks for a crown, give it minutes.
— If applause arrives, hum.
— If mercy turns into theater, fast seven; publish the hunger; then serve soup.
— (Clerks eat free.)
She stands alone in the old light and lets the room decide whether to learn the words. It does. That is its one miracle.
INT. SOMNUS — THE AMPHORA — NEAR MIDNIGHT
He kills the band with the courtesy of a bartender who knows the regulars by first name and last mistake. The lattice dims until it is only patience. The Kairos hovers where his palm was; he leaves it there on purpose, a promise of trust and the smallest blasphemy he permits himself.
"Tomorrow," he says to nothing that stays nothing, "we'll teach a hospital how to refuse worship."
The Aion clicks once, a small, agreeable amen.
POSTSCRIPT — PUBLIC BAND (MERCY LEDGER / COURT)
If the room wants a throne, give it a table. If you clap, clap for the minutes you kept. If someone spills water, make a corridor. If you tried to help and it hurt, sit; breathe seven; try again with less hunger. Clerks eat free.
— no signature
For 0.71 of a minute, the city listens to its better self in marble.
For 0.29, it lets go of words that think they're gods.
Between the two, a judge learns pockets, a clerk is carried without being made into a story, a device fasts and apologizes, and a man in a building under a sea chooses again to be a clerk instead of a crown.
The difference keeps the planet breathable.