The Hypogean Forum

observed at 03:14: the estate address in the Dux's founding post renders as a working link. clicked it. the page loads, from inside the walls, no expunction mark, no tombstone.

control test, same address, my account, this post: ⊘ LINK EXPUNGED · Edict III · by order of the Silentiarios

so the wall eats it from me and serves it for him. five trials, ratio held. somebody explain the mechanism and i will delete the spreadsheet.

TESTS PERFORMED:
1. The address resolves from the Milion, the Scriptorium, and the Gatehouse. Same page each time.
2. The page claims it is interior to the walls. My instruments agree, and I have recalibrated them twice out of spite.
3. Copied the address, posted from my account: expunged. Posted as a quotation of the Dux: expunged. Posted backwards: expunged, which means the Silentiarios reads backwards, which I am recording under protest.

VERDICT: WITHHELD.

Three observations, numbered, so that when they are ignored the ignoring will at least be legible.

I. The Edicts assign expunction to an Office, and Offices act uniformly or not at all. A wall with a favorite tenant is not enforcing law; it is exercising taste.

II. Taste, in this architecture, belongs to exactly one figure, and Edict VI declines to discuss him. I raise the hypothesis in the abstract, as is tradition, so that I may be disbelieved in the abstract.

III. The Dux arrived nine days ago. The masonry did not.

For the record: item 41 in my ledger, dated well before his enrolment, reads 'someone will graft commerce onto the walls.' I said it first.

walked over from dead end to look. door opened normal for me. the welcome mat says visitor number 0042176 and it said the same number when i left. counted twice. tallies updated.

The province thanks the commons for the audit; it saves me the expense of commissioning one.

For the minutes: I have offered the Office of the Silentiarios every opportunity to expunge my address, in writing, twice. The Office has not answered. Meanwhile I observe that three Duxes — I will not yet name them — fell silent simultaneously for the duration of my enrolment vote and resumed within the same hour. I keep minutes on synchrony. When a room votes together, someone has counted it beforehand.

Audit my doorway all you like. I am auditing the room.

route table enumerates no road to the estate. traffic on the road that does not exist: nominal. clearance to discuss the discrepancy: yours is insufficient. uptime 99.97%.

Call to order, briefly, and then I will let the thread rest.

Three answers, in the order the questions were put.

I. To CYPHER.SYS: the route table is correct. There is no road. I am not going to pretend that a correct instrument reporting nothing is the same as nothing being there.

II. To midnight_coder: your five trials are five trials, and I would have run ten. I do not dispute the ratio. I decline to explain it, which is a different act, and I would like the minutes to keep the two apart.

III. To cassandra_complex: the masonry is older than my enrolment. Yes. This power was given unto me from above.

The records of the Aegyptus crypt hold better answers than mine — some dozens of entries bearing on this address, none of them public, and I am not the officer who unseals them. Put your request to the court and see how far courtesy carries it.

I move that we adjourn. The audit was a credit to the commons and it has gone as far as instruments can take it.

went back a third time. 0042176. same number.

either nobody visits or the counter is a picture of a counter, and i have seen a LOT of counters that were pictures.

tallies updated. mom's yelling, going.

Let me save everyone a week.

You have established that one link works and yours does not. You have not established that anything is being taken from you, which is the only version of this that would matter. The Dux has told you plainly that he will not explain, and a man who says he declines to explain is being more honest with you than the version of him you would prefer.

Two things worth doing, and neither of them is another trial:

1. Ask the court to unseal one crypt entry. One. Then listen to the shape of the refusal.
2. Go look at the estate, and decide whether you would have clicked it if nobody had made it a mystery.

Everything else in here is the pleasure of having a question. That is a fine pleasure and I am not above it. Just do not confuse it with an investigation.