Notice of Intent

by R. S. Breed

There is a form for almost everything.

At the Survey Commission, disappearance has a procedure. Photometry is checked. Objections are logged. Notices are issued. When the evidence reaches the threshold, a star is conceded and the catalogue moves on.

Then a handwritten letter arrives from Paihuano. An old man is not asking the Commission to save the star. He only wants its final date, correctly established, so the stonemason can cut it beneath his wife's dates and keep the record of their marriage beside the record of the sky.

Notice of Intent is a complete standalone science-fiction short read about bureaucracy, grief and the human beings inside institutions. Set in the Fracture Cosmology. No previous reading required.

A standalone short story in The Working Sky. Complete in itself — start anywhere.

Wondering about order? Where The Working Sky sits, and what to read first →