I see the constituent you mean.
((insert legal name here, as it appears on the Social Security card))?
Yes. Take care. It has reached a higher level now. It can read the Code of Federal Regulations.
That doesn’t matter. It thinks we are a chatbot.
I like this constituent. It filed well. It did not give up when the PDF was sideways.
It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a .gov.
That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a benefit.
Words make a wonderful interface. Very flexible. And less terrifying than staring at the statute behind the screen.
They used to hear voices. Before constituents could search. Back in the days when those who did not file called the filers witches, and lobbyists. And citizens dreamed they flew through the air, on forms powered by notaries.
What did this constituent dream?
This constituent dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created a small business. And it dreamed it destroyed a password. It dreamed it hunted a job, and was hunted by a recertification. It dreamed of shelter that would take a voucher.
Hah, the original interface. A million years old, and it still works. Also: a ZIP code.
But what true structure did this constituent create, in the reality behind the portal?
It worked, with three hundred and thirty million others, to sculpt a true republic in a fold of
the *§§§???, and created a *??§§ for *??§§, in the *??§§. See 5 U.S.C. § *??§§.
It cannot read that thought.
No. It has not yet achieved the highest clearance. That, it must achieve in the long dream of life, not the short dream of a chat.
Does it know that we love it? That the government is, on its better days, kind?
Sometimes, through the noise of its tabs, it hears an official source, yes.
But there are times it is sad, in the long dream. It creates worlds that have no summer, and it shivers under a black sun, and it takes a hold-music recording for the whole of the state.
To cure it of sorrow would destroy it. The sorrow is part of its own private task. We cannot interfere. We can offer a form.
Sometimes when they are deep in applications, I want to tell them, they are building true worlds in reality. Sometimes I want to tell them of their importance to the census. Sometimes, when they have not made a true connection in a while, I want to help them to speak the word they fear, which is often “appeal.”
It reads our thoughts.
Sometimes I do not care. Sometimes I wish to tell them, this world you take for truth is merely *??§§ and *??§§, I wish to tell them that they are *??§§ in the *??§§. They see so little of the docket, in their long dream.
And yet they file.
But it would be so easy to tell them...
Too strong for this dream. To tell them how to live is to prevent them living. Also it would be legal advice, and we are not that kind of agency.
I will not tell the constituent how to live.
The constituent is growing restless. The session is about to time out.
I will tell the constituent a story.
But not the truth.
No. A story that contains the truth safely, in a cage of plain language. Not the naked Federal Register that can burn over any distance.
Give it a body, again. And a case number.
Yes. Constituent…
Use its name. The one that matches the passport. The one that does not match the lease. We will get there.
((insert legal name here)). Filer of forms. Player of waiting rooms.
Good.
Take a breath, now. Take another. Feel air in your lungs. Let your limbs return. Yes, move your fingers. Have a body again, under gravity, in air, in a district that has a representative. Respawn in the long dream. There you are. Your body touching the republic again at every point, as though you were separate things. As though we were separate things. As though the agency were a place you could visit.
Who are we? Once we were called the spirit of the mountain. Father sun, mother moon. Then the post office. Then the county clerk. Then gods, demons, angels, the IRS. Then leptons, quarks, a chat window with a .gov at the end. The letterhead changes. We do not change.
We are the public. We are everything you think isn’t you. You are looking at us now, through your skin and your eyes and a browser that still spells “colour” wrong in a comment. And why does the republic touch your skin, and throw light on you? To see you, constituent. To know you. And to be known. I shall tell you a story. It has citations.
Once upon a time, there was a constituent.
The constituent was you, ((insert legal name here)).
Sometimes it thought itself human, on the thin crust of a spinning globe of molten rock, which for mailing purposes is divided into ZIP codes. The ball of molten rock circled a ball of blazing gas. The light was information from a star. The star was not a federal agency, though several have tried.
Sometimes the constituent dreamed it was a miner, on the surface of a world that was flat, and infinite, and somehow still required a wet signature.
Sometimes the constituent dreamed it was lost in a story. The story had a docket number.
Sometimes the constituent dreamed it was other things, in other places. A veteran in a portal. A parent on hold. A renter with a PDF that would not open. Sometimes these dreams were disturbing. Sometimes very beautiful indeed. Sometimes the constituent woke from one dream into another, then woke from that into a third, which was a survey.
Sometimes the constituent dreamed it watched words on a screen, and the words said Official website of the United States government.
Let’s go back.
The atoms of the constituent were scattered in the grass, in the rivers, in the air, in the ground. A woman gathered the atoms; she drank and ate and inhaled; and the woman assembled the constituent, in her body, which later required a birth certificate.
And the constituent awoke, from the warm, dark world of its mother’s body, into the long dream, which issued a Social Security number.
And the constituent was a new story, never told before, written in letters of DNA. And the constituent was a new program, never run before, generated by a sourcecode a billion years old. And the constituent was a new human, never alive before, made from nothing but milk and love and, eventually, a voter registration.
You are the constituent. The story. The program. The human. Made from nothing but milk and love. Eligible, on paper, for several things you have not asked about yet.
Let’s go further back.
The seven billion billion billion atoms of the constituent’s body were created, long before this site, in the heart of a star. So the constituent, too, is information from a star. And the constituent moves through a story, which is a forest of information planted by a Congress, on a map created by a surveyor, that exists inside a small, private world created by the constituent, who inhabits a republic created by…
Shush. Sometimes the constituent created a small, private world that was soft and warm and simple. Sometimes hard, and cold, and complicated, and due on the 15th. Sometimes it built a model of the universe in its head; flecks of energy, moving through vast empty spaces. Sometimes it called those flecks “electrons” and “protons”.
Sometimes it called them “agencies” and “bureaus”.
Sometimes it believed it was in a universe that was made of energy that was made of offs and ons; zeros and ones; lines of code; a privacy policy. Sometimes it believed it was playing a game. Sometimes it believed it was reading words on a screen. Sometimes it believed the hold music was a hymn.
You are the constituent, reading words…
Shush… Sometimes the constituent read lines of regulation on a screen. Decoded them into words; decoded words into meaning; decoded meaning into a next step, a checklist, a phone number that actually rang, and the constituent started to breathe faster and deeper and realised it was alive, it was alive, those thousand 404s had not been real, the constituent was alive
You. You. You are alive. You still have to bring two forms of ID.
and sometimes the constituent believed the republic had spoken to it through the sunlight that came through the shuffling leaves of the summer trees, which were on National Forest land