Mirrortide

I.

I found, while clearing out the attic, the book my grandfather wrote. It was tucked in a box between volumes of Sarabanda. I wonder if that’s what he’d always hoped – to be shoulder-to-shoulder with other great thinkers.

It wasn’t so much hidden, as it was inconspicuously placed wrong ways up – spine concealed, and pages bared like his yellow teeth. I only noticed it, amongst the clutter, thanks to the strange dissonance that compels a hand to fix a line of four, when one is out of order.

I suspect it was the last copy this side of the sea, since I’d never seen his words written on a page. I had been told, at length, vague summaries of his opus by countless opinionatives, who had likely never read his work but called him a genius or heretic nonetheless. It had been made frequently clear to me that he had criticized the validity of La Gran Loteria, calling its coinflips biased, and thereby had criticized the goddess, Lady Luck, herself.

I was surprised, therefore, to find it to be a thin sliver of a book – no more than a hundred pages. The way the name De Campo seemed stained onto everyone’s mind, I had assumed it to be comparable in size to the works of Sarabanda. But as they say, a word can shatter a glass if only it finds the perfect pitch.

I remember that, as I held the stiff pages in my hand, I was stricken by a sickening apprehension. I felt as if I were beside a grave, ready to exhume it for my own self-interest and giddily unconcerned with what might be found in the long-closed burial tomb. But I had never known my grandfather, not truly, so the only stains that could be spilled were upon names and pre-conscious memories.

So, of course, I read the entire book that afternoon. It was a warm day, with a gentle sun, the type you spend beneath the orange blossoms. But I stayed, instead, in the attic, where the sun, in strands, spied only flitting dust and not the heretical words of my grandfather.

I was supposed to meet Lydia after her workshop – we had booked Azafrán y Olivo about noon. I missed the end of her workshop and the reservation. I still haven’t told her of the book.

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II.

La Historia de la Gran Loteria details, as the name suggests, the history of La Gran Loteria from its inception to the present-day. It begins with La Fortuna’s independence, starting with the foreign Armonían kings and the subsequent revolutionary war.

Most war-histories I have read focus solely on Don Alvaro’s fateful shot. How the hand of Lady Luck placed him serendipitously at the intersection of Calle de Santa Sofia and, what is now named, Calle de la Fortuna. How her divine castration of the revolver of Armonían King, Paz II del Sol, rendered it impotent in his hands before the revolutionary hero. How her godly grace nudged Don Alvaro’s aim just enough to miss the foreign king’s heart – crafting a fortuitous chip that was later gambled for La Fortuna’s independence.

La Historia de la Gran Loteria focuses instead, in quite some detail specifically, on Ínes Valverde – a hardly-known member of the revolution. Don Alvaro is mentioned, and rightfully attributed as the war’s coda, but the chapter chooses to highlight the hard work of Ínes that lead up to the fateful shot.

Ínes was a gunsmith, trained as if a son by her father Victor Valverde, since this was long before women were allowed to work (which came only alongside their inclusion in La Gran Loteria). Victor had wanted a son to continue the legacy of his workshop, but he was left only with Ínes following an unfortunate death in childbirth, so endeavoured to train her as his progeny.

Her later work as a gunsmith under the name of her father, Victor (since the populus still believed women incapable of such feats), earned their smithy the title El Armero Réal. Her expertise on multi-chambered firearms, renowned for their reliability during a time of ever-jamming barrels, made her the favourite amongst royalty.

Her wealth as royal gunsmith could have had her a pleasant life amongst the foreign elite. But following a string of public executions of revolutionists and their families (at the hand of firearms she had crafted herself), she quietly renounced the monarchy in favour of the revolution. She spent most of the war secretly funding the revolutionary forces through her royally funded contracts and supplied the war effort with inside information on royal routes and shipments.

La Historia de la Gran Loteria states that Ínes’ revolvers were so renowned for their reliability, that they were only ever known to jam once – when the Armonían King found himself at the corner of Santa Sofia and de la Fortuna.

Ínes Valverde was killed during the coda of the war, when eager revolutionists stormed El Armero Réal and believed her to be a royalist. A plaque was later placed to commemorate her contribution to independence.

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III.

La Historia de la Gran Loteria then details the moments after the war – the ensuing riots and scramble for power. Don Alvaro, throned as saviour of the revolution, was elected first president of La Fortuna during the chaos. It was his hand and early government that scribed much of the law and tradition of our early constitution.

His primary focus was on establishing a fair society. The poor rule of foreign kings had stripped the wealth and resources from La Fortuna, leaving a desire for representation in leadership. Don Alvaro proposed a system, uniquely unbiased and representative, for electing the presidents of La Fortuna. This system, mostly unchanged to this day, became La Gran Loteria.

He proposed that, before an election, each man of working age be assigned a unique number. This was done at first by government officials, who sought out each man in the city and assigned and recorded their number. But logistical issues, miscounting, and double-numbering (which led to the accidental shared presidencies of Andrés Oroño and Tomás Brillante), led to the modern opt-in system, where each eligible citizen must first register at Plaza Mayor before election.

This cohort of numbers is split in half and one half chosen by a public flip of a coin. And again, the subsequent half is halved and chosen by chance. This repeats until, eventually, only one number remains. And the name against that number becomes, for the following four years, the president of La Fortuna.

La Gran Loteria has been lauded as truly democratic and representative of the people: any man of working age is as likely as another to be elected leader. Any group or guild with more members is proportionally more likely to have one of their members elected. So, every societal group, over enough time, sees one of their own in a law-making position.

And what is more suitable for a government than random chance? Uncertainty follows us always from birth to ill-timed death. Lady Luck draws lots from our lives and spins each our days upon roulette wheels.

To be born open-eyed in the canal-dirt beneath Fortuna’s dock-bridges or to sleep behind the gilded gates of palatial tenements? She closes her eyes and scatters souls like seeds through the city.

And each year, to live full-bellied and bronze-skinned, or to succumb to pale-faced anemia and be left adrift with golden coin-eyes? She shuffles famine and fortune in her celestial tarot and deals weal and woe face-down to us.

It is only fair that we allow her hand to also write our law and legislation. Otherwise, what chaos would we bring to our fair city? Nature, and time, and the fair hand of Lady Luck are beyond the arrogant minds of men. To dictate their ways in theory comprehendible to our ineffective minds would only bring mistake and misinterpretation. We might force our paths too-straight and swerve too-far from her guidance. Then what might become of us?

Lady Luck is wiser than us, fairer than us, far beyond our artifice. It is only right to have her decide our election. So that she may choose a president, who, guided by her hand, may upturn the cards she deals to us.

Men have tried, at times, to peek at the goddess’ hidden tarot. To confine, by their logic and reason, the cards that may have been shuffled to the deck-top and thus may be dealt to their own life.

But each time, these men of logic find their wagers lost. The goddess does not respond with favour to cheats and, perhaps for her own amusement, she often gives them the exact outcome they desire. To peek at her hand, is to try discard all fates until one remains – to seek certainty in the face of nature’s chaos. The goddess reveals to these cheats a singular card, their fate scrawled in its grey face. Pale-faced anemia; golden coins for eyes; a cold and lonely death.

To live is to play the goddess’ wheel, where lots come in all colours.

Sarabanda was, apparently, a man of such heresy. That might surprise you, if you have only read his published works. But my grandfather was an admirer of Sarabanda, both his published literature and later work, so included his work and life in quite some detail.

Sarabanda was once born in southern La Fortuna and was Luck-favoured enough to become one of the few faces that emerge from the canal’s salt and silt. He learned to read and write only by the discarded novellas that clog sewer gutters beside street-corner stands. As a young man he found work in the coinage factories, where he stamped two-denar coins with the insignia of La Fortuna.

During his off-shift hours, he rarely slept. He wrote philosophies about luck and the goddess’ role in our lives, just as he had learned from his lost-but-refound novellas. His first manuscript proposed that life was a series of coinflips: that the goddess makes not one, but a countless number of infinitesimal decisions to deal our fates. If you have read Sarabanda, you will be familiar with the concept. But for clarity I will summarise.

He proposed that Lady Luck does not pick one fate for us from an infinite number of possibilities but rather picks an infinite series of smaller fates that accumulate to altogether become one. He proposed that any fate, no matter how complex, could first be decomposed into only two distinct outcomes. You might split a fate, for example, into life and death – two distinct and all-encompassing states. But, using other words, you could just as well call those outcomes death and not yet died – one defined only by what is not contained within other. These outcomes can then be split again. A fate of life, of having not yet died, would contain within itself another choice of two distinct fates. It would contain the fates of being healthy and being ill, which are themselves distinct and all-encompassing since health can be called, in other words, the fate of not yet being ill.

Each fate from the goddess can therefore be separated into halves repeatedly until all outcomes are finally considered. These choices become a tree of all possibilities, built from a finite number of coinflip choices.

If a man is to become wealthy, by the hand of the goddess, then the goddess’ choice is more complex than simply between wealth and not-wealth. She must choose, instead, does this man earn wealth in coins? Then, does this man earn wealth by a gamble? Then, does he earn one thousand denar from that gamble? Each fate is a complex web of bifurcations, decipherable only by the goddess.

Furthermore, he proposed that any finite time can be subdivided in much the same way. A fate for a man’s year is decided not once, but by the three-hundred daily choices of the goddess. And each day by her two-dozen hourly choices. And each hour again, and so on.

So, again, if the goddess chooses for a man to become wealthy, she must first choose, does this man go to the gambling-hall today? Then, at a later point, what does he gamble on? Then, when he sits down to bet, how much does he gamble? And only finally, does he win the gamble?

In this way, each choice is a countless number of infinitesimal decisions from the goddess, not a choice of one fate from a shuffled deck of lives. She does not choose if, for a year, a man might be wealthy, or healthy, or ill, or married; she makes a series of countless infinitesimal decisions which become, at some point in that year, wealth, or health, or sickness, or marriage.

The concept was a revolutionary idea. Many believed Sarabanda’s hand to have been guided directly by Lady Luck, such that they were affirmations from the goddess herself. Few believed a man from such an upbringing could have pondered such complexities himself.

Some revered the work as if it were a prayer to the goddess. They said that the work awed at the complexity of her infinite wisdom and expressed the indecipherable nature of her fates. The work, they said, made no attempts to divine the mechanisms of the goddess’ thought.

Others, however, called the work heretical for its attempts to understand the underlying chaos of nature. They argued that attempts to decipher the indecipherable were foolish and they only exist to blaspheme against the goddess.

The arguments of these two groups led to a split in the worship of Lady Luck, becoming the two sects with which you will be familiar: the Logicians and the Chaoists.

The Logicians stated that the goddess’ decisions are based on a pure logic, some beautiful and fundamental theorem, decipherable only by the goddess herself. They state that she is too complex and too wise for mortal minds to understand. That attempts to draft and follow her theorem would only lead to mistake and misinterpretation of her will. So, they believe that it is pious to admire her complexity, but blasphemous to try replicate it.

The Chaoists spawned from the second group, that believed the goddess’ decisions come only from chaos. That nature itself is incomprehensible and unbound by any law or logic. They believe that any attempts to understand the goddess’ decisions are not only blasphemous, but foolish, since they are impossible to replicate.

As might be clear from his literature, Sarabanda was a Logician. Many call him the first Logician, though there is no academic consensus. However, he stayed mostly insular after his rise to fame and infamy, his contribution to the sect coming only in the form of his published literature.

The popularity of his writing brought him riches and praise throughout his long life. Many called him a genius, which is hard to refute when considering his lasting impact on our society. But, as often occurs for geniuses, he later became locked within his own inflated ego and spent his later life unmarried and mostly alone in his palatial tenement on de la Fortuna. He became intoxicated by the blasphemous idea of deciphering the goddess’ will. He believed that, of all the thousands of men who have lived in La Fortuna, he had come the closest to understanding her logic. He believed that he could force her hand of fates and thus could cheat death.

Sarabanda locked himself within his tower apartment, allowing no-one to meet him. In this way, the city’s sickness could not be transferred to him, so he could not fall into ill-health.

He paid farmers and fishermen to bring him produce, fresh and contaminant-free, funding them with ways to do so. In this way he would not be unknowingly poisoned by the metals or toxins that seep into the soil and sea.

He paid chefs to blend his food into the thinnest soups so he would not choke; chemists and alchemists to purify water so he would not fall ill; architects to reinforce his apartment with cages and supports so it could not collapse. He stayed only in his bed, so that he would not succumb to accidental falls; he lived in darkness, so that gaslights could not choke him nor set fire to his home; and he soundproofed his entire apartment, so that the terrestrial rhythm would not pulse through him and knock him from his bed at night.

He paid firemen to be vigilant just outside his room, and security to protect him, and doctors to resuscitate him in emergency. At a point, it is believed he had over three-hundred staff at his whim, none of whom ever saw him in his self-imprisonment.

His plan, as according to La Historia de la Gran Loteria, derived from his model of the goddess’ decisions. Each infinitesimal moment, he thought, is a countless number of two-pronged decisions, that altogether become a tree of options from which the goddess chooses. His belief was that he could prune that tree of its options. He imagined every possible death that could befall him – from suffocation, to poison, to tuberculosis – and crafted contingencies against it. Without any possible route of death, he believed the goddess’ hand would be forced. The only decisions left would be outcomes in which he would live and thus, his longevity would be forever secured.

But whether you are a Logician or Chaoist, we can all agree that it is not just blasphemous, but impossible to replicate the goddess’ thought.

Sarabanda passed away three months into his self-imprisonment. He was found in his bed, pale-faced and cold, having suffered from an acute case of anemia. The coroner report stated that his heart had accumulated over a hundred grams of magnetised iron.

It was Sarabanda’s revolutionary work, however, that had led to the severance of the Logicians and Chaoists and inspired several different systems of law via La Gran Loteria.

The first of the Logician and Chaoist presidencies was CTR (César T. Rivas), who was elected in the fourteenth draw of La Gran Loteria. CTR was a publicly-known Chaoist who believed that it was not enough to only allow the goddess the choice of president. He believed that she should be allowed to pass law directly, since the minds of men cannot possibly comprehend and enact the goddess’ will without misinterpretation.

Until this point, the president enacted laws as they saw fit, without vote or public guidance, since it was believed that the goddess would always tip fate to ensure the right person was placed into the presidency. However, CTR’s first and only policy as president was to devise a new system for enacting laws, by passing the pen directly to the goddess.

He attempted to scribe as many possibilities of laws as he could imagine, drafting every possible permutation down to the finest detail. There were a hundred laws concerning subsidies for maize-farmers, ranging from minor relief to complete tax removal; a hundred more concerning, instead, their tax increases; and two hundred more concerning the same for wheat-farmers, and for barley-farmers, and so on.

During his presidency he did little else than draft his thousands of documents until finally, in the final months of his term, he brought his bills to the central hall. He spread the papers face-down across the marble floor and proceeded to flip a coin over each bill to determine whether it should be enacted or not. Lady Luck would guide each coinflip until a comprehensive set of laws were decided.

A total of one thousand three hundred and thirty four documents were selected in this way and passed into law. Many of the laws conflicted, contradicted, or cancelled out. For example, seventy-six laws were passed on the funding level for healthcare, each declaring different increases and decreases. When enacted altogether, they culminated in an eighty one percent reduction in funding.

In some cases, both a law and its opposite were enacted, leading to widespread confusion on which law to follow. For example, a certain iron-based hallucinogen was both criminalised and de-criminalised by simultaneous laws. Judges and law enforcers could neither arrest nor set free offenders, for they were both guilty and innocent by the word of the law.

Chaoists explained the subsequent confusion and, in some cases, the near-collapse of society as the working of nature’s chaos. That the laws had enacted the goddess’ incomprehensible will and men were simply not wise enough to understand it. As additional evidence, Chaoists often cited that no heinous acts were legalised by CTR’s system, even within the thousand laws that were passed, so the goddess’ morality was preserved throughout.

CTR had encouraged the next presidents to follow his system, since he saw it as the only true way to enact the goddess’ will. Even some non-Chaoists saw his process as fair, since there could be no room for bias or self-interest in laws that were determined by pure chance.

If the next president had also been a Chaoist, the system might have been refined and embedded into our democracy. But instead, as determined by the fifteenth draw of La Gran Loteria, the next president was a Logician, by the name María Carlos.

María Carlos opposed the system devised by CTR, stating that it “polluted the goddess’ voice with the primitive comprehension of man.” According to María Carlos, CTR had not, and could not possibly, draft all laws the goddess might have considered in her decisions. His system, she said, therefore misinterpreted the goddess and tainted La Gran Loteria with too many fallacious and contradictory laws.

Her first act as president was to undo the laws imposed by CTR, settling the month-long chaos that had been plaguing La Fortuna. Her second act as president was to devise a better system for allowing the goddess to enact law, which spanned all her possible options and was thus unbiased by human minds.

Her system was inspired by the work of Sarabanda: a great tree of semi-infinite possibilities, each branch a coinflip, each leaf a distinct law. Following from Sarabanda’s work, she knew the tree could be completed, since any choice could at least be split into a law and all that it is not.

Concerned about progress on her system, since there were thousands of leaves to populate, she divided the work between herself and a group of a hundred Logicians. By the third year of her presidency, they had created a sprawling network of drafted laws, all pinned to the floor of the central hall and connected by lines of string.

Her design managed to avoid the contradicting of laws that polluted CTR’s system, since conflicting laws existed on separate sides of branches. The issue of her design, however, was that it could only ever result in one outcome, regardless of the number of options offered to the goddess. She had no system to determine the number of laws that should be enacted, so she passed along its branches by coinflips only once and thus passed only one law during her presidency. And, by the hand of Lady Luck, the coinflips led María Carlos to the fortuitous corner of the network, which had been added only to ensure that the design contained all possibilities.

The law María Carlos enacted was titled “not the drafted bills cited in sections 1 to 4095,” since it was defined only by what it was not. Judges, lawyers, and sophists alike have therefore debated how the law should be interpreted ever since its inception. It has been used by defendants and prosecutors to probe the gaps between laws, to create reasonable doubt, or to simply create confusion in court. You therefore might know it more commonly as the Everything Law or the Nothing Law, depending on its effectiveness.

María Carlos’ design ignited further designs by latter Logician presidencies during the sixteenth and seventeenth draw of La Gran Loteria. It was fortuitous, of course, that three Logicians were elected president one after another. So fortuitous that some outspoken Chaoists shouted of corruption in the lottery, but their complaints quickly led to their ostracization for blaspheming the sanctity of La Gran Loteria. Three Logicians in a row was not far-fetched, at that time, since CTR’s failed presidency and Maria’s comparable success led to significant conversion between the sects.

The sixteenth president of La Fortuna, Ramon Ferrán, amended María’s design by separating her great network into smaller distinct sections. Each smaller section could both decide if a law should be enacted, but also the nature of that law.

The amendment allowed enacting of multiple laws, while keeping all of them distinct. In this way, Ramon Ferrán established several laws in his presidency, without contradiction or complexity.

His success was the final coin on the corpse for the Chaoists. By the end of Ramon Ferrán’s presidency it is said that almost two in three Fortuns were Logicians. The remaining population was split between unaligned, secularism, and Chaoism.

The seventeenth president of La Fortuna, Luca Luis Morales, extended the designs of María Carlos and Ramon Ferrán with an ingenious change that propelled La Fortuna lawmaking into its modern state. Luca Luis Morales was a Logician, in that he designed his system to let the goddess’ logic speak through coinflip decisions, much like the work of Sarabanda and María Carlos. However, many academics, particularly Chaoist academics, debate whether his designs were instead more Chaoist in nature, since the outcomes of his system were incomprehensible at first.

He began with the sprawl of individual networks created by Ramon Ferrán, but replaced the leaves in all the trees – the draft laws themselves – with simple words. He considered each law – each outcome of the goddess’ will – to be a distinct concept and refined those concepts into a single word each.

When he then passed through the network, flipping a coin upon each branch, he arrived with a long list of words. The collection was utterly incomprehensible, far from a sentence – a seemingly-random mess with no apparent structure. But he had faith in his design, and faith in the goddess. Through his design he believed he could allow the goddess to speak. That she would sway chance and, by each tipping of a coinflip, freely describe her will without the need for human interpretation.

The problem Luca Luis Morales found was in the calibration of the words. The sentence he received from the goddess did not resemble his language, so he believed the mistake could only have been in his choice of words. He gathered every linguist, mathematician, and theologian in La Fortuna – both Chaoist and Logician alike – to decode the goddess’ cipher.

It took almost two years of the greatest minds of La Fortuna and thousands of iterations to decide the final orientation of the words. But when they finished the calibration, the jumble of words instead became sentences as legible as draft laws. The goddess spoke through the flips of the coins; her will was unbiased and unpolluted by the minds of men.

The phrases the goddess spoke, indirectly through Luca Luis Morales’ network, were passed verbatim into law. These became, as they are now, the first of the Sacred Laws.

#1 All laws must be written in plain, accessible language, using only legal terminology as defined by statute.

#2 Any policy that limits individual freedom may only be enforced against those who have voluntarily accepted those limits.

#3 Every citizen has a right to appeal, unless the appeal questions the validity of that right.

#4 All foreign goods must be stored domestically for no less than two weeks before entry.

These laws, as well as all later Sacred Laws, will not, and cannot, be changed except by the goddess herself, since no man could possibly understand her to refute her.

It was also made logistically impossible for a president to revoke laws, as per Sacred Laws #6 and #11, that were introduced by presidents of latter terms.

#6 Only laws currently in effect may be repealed.

#11 All laws under repeal review are temporarily suspended while under review.

The introduction of these two Sacred Laws means policies may never be repealed, since as soon as a policy comes under review for repeal, it becomes illegible for repeal.

Luca Luis Morales’ system has now all-but-replaced La Gran Loteria. Presidents are still elected by coinflip from the populus, as you’re well aware, but each president now exists only to be the hand that flips the coins for the goddess.

All laws since Luca Luis Morales have been Sacred Laws, drafted by a series of fate-touched coinflips. La Historia de la Gran Loteria lists a number of Sacred Laws, for additional detail, from the seventy-three Sacred Laws at the time. There are now eighty-six Sacred Laws.

#5 All coinage must bear the seal of La Fortuna and be replaced every four years, regardless of wear.

#26 Every market must designate an official to inspect weights and measures to prevent fraud.

#33 No citizen may sell or exchange goods outside of officially-designated marketplaces; unauthorized trade is punishable by confiscation and fine.

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IV.

It might seem odd to have detailed the histories of La Gran Loteria, arriving now at the present day, with only a single mention of La Fábrica de Moneda y Pesas. La Fabrica has existed, in some way, since before La Gran Loteria, certainly the longest-established and richest institution in La Fortuna, so to omit it from a detailed history is like painting a man without his shadows.

As you will see, it was a rhetorical choice by my grandfather to leave it only to the end. And, I am sorry to say, this is where his heresy surfaces.

La Fabrica was once two companies, the Royal Mint and the Trade-Weights Factory, during the reign of the foreign kings. They were each highly profitable in their own right.

The Royal Mint privatised after the revolution and was burdened with creating a currency for the newly-independent La Fortuna. All citizens were then required to trade using this new currency, replacing the coins that were stamped with faces of foreign kings. The fees charged on exchange of these coins kept the Mint alive after it was disconnected from the foreign treasuries.

The Trade-Weights Factory has overseen the trade of goods within La Fortuna since its inception. The standards it sets are used within all marketplaces to ensure fair trade, and therefore their scales and weights are centre point for all exchange of coins. A constant update in standards, and weights, and scales, ensured that the Trade-Weights Factory benefitted from all and any domestic trade.

In the early years of La Fortuna, the Mint and the Trade-Weights Factory were the two largest companies in the city – one controlling the coinage and the other the internal trade. The company owners agreed on a deal to merge their companies into one entity, La Fabrica. The resultant company, at the time, would have contributed about thirty percent of the city’s domestic product and would have employed over twenty percent of the working population.

Their merger was blocked, however, by the first seven presidents of La Gran Loteria. Many academics expressed the importance of avoiding monopolies in the city. They feared that, if La Fabrica were formed, they would control both the coinage and trade and thereby control the very heart of the city – its economy. Their combined power would be enough to enforce rule without law, bypassing the goddess’ will and even democracy itself.

The eighth president of La Gran Loteria was fortuitously decided to be a board member of the Mint who, in his term as president, enacted law to allow the creation of La Fabrica. The ninth president repealed this law, forcing a separation of the two entities, and enacted new legislation to prevent future presidents from passing laws on their own vested interests. There were no further presidents from La Fabrica’s owners.

La Historia de la Gran Loteria then remarks that it is certainly fortuitous for La Fabrica that, after several decades of trying, a board member was elected president and thus became able to bypass all laws of fair economies. But it would sacrilegious to suggest that La Gran Loteria, a system derived by the pure chance of coinflips and the goddess’ will, could have been biased by the hands of men. It is also a foolish thought, since the nature of La Gran Loteria means it is ultimately fair – every group in society will eventually be represented.

It goes on to detail several more points of La Fabrica’s history.

La Fabrica, though dissolved by the ninth president, remained intent on forming their monopoly. It wasn’t until the fourteenth presidency, of CTR, that La Fabrica was finally created. In the chaos of his many-thousand laws, there was a temporary contradiction that re-enacted their prior policy, allowing the two companies to once again join. There were several complaints by academics and economists, but the act was allowed by the month-long mess of laws introduced by CTR so was by the will of the goddess. La Fabrica could not legally be separated until a president declared it so through legislation.

María Carlos’ presidency revoked the many-thousand laws but enacted only one new law: the Everything & Nothing law. This puzzling law provided enough of a grey area to keep La Fabrica from being separated.

It is certainly just a coincidence that two presidencies after each other, one a Chaoist and the other a Logician, introduced revolutionary systems for law that happened to secure La Fabrica’s merger in perpetuity.

But the presidencies since then have only introduced laws from the goddess herself. All the Sacred Laws have been drafted by coinflips so they are the words of the goddess, without any potential for human bias.

La Gran Loteria reiterates, at this point, some of the prior-mentioned Sacred Laws.

#4 All foreign goods must be stored domestically for no less than two weeks before entry.

The fourth Sacred Law ensures, by its own internal contradiction, the complete prevention of imports into La Fortuna. The law was introduced at a time where foreign trade was high, and foreign currencies were flooding the city. It was fortunate, for La Fabrica, that the goddess stopped all imports, otherwise the currency of La Fortuna might have been utterly replaced by the foreign market.

#5 All coinage must bear the seal of La Fortuna and be replaced every four years, regardless of wear.

#26 Every market must designate an official to inspect weights and measures to prevent fraud.

#33 No citizen may sell or exchange goods outside of officially-designated marketplaces; unauthorized trade is punishable by confiscation and fine.

It is also fortunate, for La Fabrica, that the goddess enacted many laws benefitting their business. Her Sacred Laws introduced many new policies that only provide La Fabrica with greater revenue and greater control of La Fortuna; laws made irrevocable by her other convoluted laws; and, by being the words of the goddess, cannot be criticized, since to criticize them would be to blaspheme against the goddess herself.  

It is surely a coincidence that Sarabanda had once remarked, after his time working in La Fabrica as a stamper, that denar coins seemed to most-often fall face-up.

A coincidence, I’m sure, that the coins used in La Gran Loteria have always been pressed by La Fabrica.

These accusations I have repeated as they appear in La Historia de la Gran Loteria. My grandfather thought, perhaps, that his phrasing might protect him. Perhaps he believed that he could avoid stating his opposition outright and instead hide behind hints and suggestions. But his attempts were not subtle.

La Fortuna saw through his thinly-veiled heresy. Some praised him as a saviour who had managed to see the machinations of a malevolent corporation, and spotted the marionette strings La Fabrica holds the city upon. Most I have met call him a heretic, for even insinuating that La Gran Loteria could be anything but fair and divine.

And, it seems that the goddess agreed. Soon after the publication and popularity of La Historia de la Gran Loteria, a new Sacred Law was enacted.

#74 Any public or private statement which questions the impartiality, fairness, or divine alignment of La Gran Lotería shall be considered an act of civic disruption. Those found spreading doubt – whether through speech, writing, gesture, or implication – shall be subject to penalties as if they had falsified the results themselves.

He was determined guilty of breach of Sacred Law #74 and his punishment decided as per Sacred Law #55 (not included). His punishment, as decided by a flip of a coin, was execution, which was held three weeks later in Plaza Mayor, beside the Central Parliament and La Fábrica de Moneda y Pesas.

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