11.6.583
Part two of the citidenizen test is complete.
It was laughably simple. With my charming cimmerian assistant I overcame the slight hurdle that it represented, to acquire my second silver quarter.
Oh that the second half will be so simple.
Of course it will not be. I hope for naivete in higher stations, but something in the citidenizen masters is cold and brutal. I loathe them. They are but white maggots in a black, black heart. They will turn into smelly old flies, not fine old people.
It infuriates me that I know all this before I have even lived one day as a citidenizen. Is this part of the test? Is the implication that there is no hope part of the process of wearing me down—eroding me!—or do they wish to inform me of the true nature of the citidenizenry? I do not know and I wish that I did.
The second quarter of the citidenizen test related to the concept of law. Nogoth mores are the mores of the gutter—revenge, tough leaders, violence and trickery in equal proportions—but citidenizen mores are finer, working on the principle of justice. I was slighted and I had to take my case to the Forum of Arcadius. In this way I was taught the notion of correct behaviour and correct response. It was not a difficult lesson, but again it brought home the bureaucratic nature of the judicial system, with all its officers and papers and interminable waits, and its twisting corridors. I do not like what I see. It ought to be changed. How come nobody has done it already? Two answers await this question: one, that nobody has thought of such change, which is a palpable absurdity, two, that such change is impossible, which, though absurd, is nonetheless worryingly plausible. I will go with the first answer, since the second is too awful to contemplate.
I, then, am the first person to consider change in the Mavrosopolis. Ridiculous! This means that the doctrine of erasure is anathema to me. I must hold this thought deep and secret in my mind, for if any citidenizen came to know it I would be returned to the gutter.
I am glad that I have no talent for sorcery, since sorcery is the most conservative of the arts. I have heard it said that spells spoken by sorcerers today were phrased in exactly the same words five centuries ago. I have heard that, despite the forward roll of the years and the subtle changes in society, the words, the language, even the intonation of spell casting has not altered. I wonder, is this is the source of the concept of anti-erasure? They are surely linked, even if they are not actually, materially and philosophically related.
Are we, in fact and in ethical persuasion, merely mimicking the extraordinary conservatism of sorcery? Is inhumanity the price we pay for the existence of spells?