World and story
A county that is improbably large, a clerk who cannot fight, and visitors who are very, very sorry. This page has no spoilers until the clearly marked fold at the bottom.
The premise
The visitors are cold. They come from a world where it is February for nine months of the year. They have tried foil blankets, heated forms and standing very close together. Then a survey ship brought home one goose-down pillow and one pair of wool socks, and a whole civilisation went quiet with longing. To them, down and wool are miracle materials. Nothing they make is that warm, that light or that soft.
They never want to hurt anyone. They know where the good things come from: geese moult every summer and line their nests with down, and sheep are shorn every spring. They have planned beautifully. Each goose would live in a heated conservatory with a pond at exactly the right temperature, named on a little brass plate.
The catch is Regulation 1 of their Acquisitions Code: acquisitions are whole and final. The visitors’ bureaucracy has only ever had one kind of form: take the whole thing, once, and never come back. There is no form for “visit” and no form for “next year”. A goose acquired is a goose gone for good, with no flock to fly south with and nobody calling her in at dusk.
So the county says no in the only way the visitors respect: with paperwork. You are the clerk on duty at the County Office. You cannot fight the visitors, and would not want to. You can make the application take a very, very long time. You are not protecting the animals from harm. You are protecting them from leaving home forever, kindly, which is harder to argue with and easier to care about.
Who is who
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The clerk on duty
You
The clerk at the front counter of the County Office. You are never named and never speak, so you can be anyone at either seat. In co-op two clerks share the shift, and in competitive play they compete for Employee of the Month.
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The Clerk of Records
The narrator
A dry, warm, slightly tired county records clerk who keeps the County Ledger and reads from it like old minutes. Part understated nature documentary, part municipal minutes. Finds all of this perfectly normal, likes the visitors more than they let on, and has a soft spot for the geese.
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Tobbin Wix
Junior Inspector, Waterfowl Relations
First week on Earth and thrilled about everything. Sincere, junior and cold all the time, in a borrowed scarf he has worn since landing. He files the very first application, for a goose called Doris, and never stops.
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Hulda Mapp
Shop Steward, Livestock Appreciation
Leads the wool side of the visitors. Knits while waiting and offers everyone a mint. She keeps careful notes on everything she sees.
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Augustin Haskett
Regional Auditor, Appeals and Second Appeals
Bowler, monocle, moustache, ledger and cane. Fair, precise and not unkind. He arrives at the end of every region to close the file, and he takes the rules more seriously than anyone.
Around them are the county’s people, who the narrator mentions by name but never shows: Mrs. Hendricks, who has named every goose on her farm for thirty years; Mr. Halvorsen, who has seen everything and says this is new; the Okafor family; and Bev Lindqvist, who has sheared every sheep in the county since 1989 and finds the visitors very good at holding the gate. Every visitor you meet is drawn from a generated cast of about a thousand, each with a name, a department, a quirk and a catchphrase.
Eight places, one year
The county’s boundaries were drawn in 1871 by a surveyor with a generous ruler and enlarged by annexations nobody remembers winning, so it holds a wood, a fairground, a small desert, a sleeping volcano, a downtown with a pedway and a regional airport. The campaign runs through one year, spring to spring.
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1. The County Woods
Forest and Prairie · Spring
The first knock
Levels: Hendricks Woodlot, Loon Lake Landing, Switchback Ridge, Doris's Creek.
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2. The Fairgrounds Lot
Parking Lot · Early summer
The County Fair
Levels: Lot A, Opening Day, Poultry Barn, Sheep Barns, Lot B, Fair Day.
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3. The Dry Section
The Dry Section · High summer
Where the offices are thin
Levels: Stock Pond, Halvorsen's Sheep Station, Dry Wash Crossing, The Long Fence.
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4. Hot Springs Township
Hot Springs · Autumn
Winter is coming
Levels: The Okafor Springs, Steam Vent Road, The Warm Pasture, The Warm Side.
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5. The Main Office
The Main Office · Early winter
The hearing
Levels: The Annex, Records Room, Reading Room, The Atrium.
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6. Downtown
Downtown · Midwinter
The petition
Levels: Civic Pond, Market Square, Maple Avenue, City Hall Steps.
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7. The Pedway
The Pedway · February
Back channels
Levels: Pedway Entrance, The Food Court, Subway Interchange, Platform 2.
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8. County Regional Airport
County Regional Airport · Spring again
The final appeal
Levels: Arrivals Hall, The Airfield Pasture, Departures Hall, Gate 7.
The tone
Dry municipal Canadian: forms, hold music, approval stamps and “sorry, eh”. The game laughs with the visitors and never at the players, and no one is ever harmed. A goose beamed up during a level rides in the saucer’s hold, very comfortable and slightly spoiled, pending final approval. Nothing is final until the file closes.
Spoilers: how the story turns, and how it ends
Everything below gives away the campaign. Come back after you have played, or read on if you like to know.
The turns
- The County Woods. At the end of the first level the narrator says the quiet part aloud: acquired items are not returned. Haskett arrives on foot, rules the file insufficiently documented, and sends the visitors to refile in person. Every pending goose comes home.
- The Fairgrounds Lot. The visitors watch a shearing demonstration. The sheep walks off cheerfully, a little lighter. They file it as an unexplained ritual. Hulda keeps the report, and nobody notices it matters.
- The Dry Section. A cold-world people in cardigans in the desert sun are miserable. A misdelivered letter shows that winter has come early at home. The visitors are not greedy. They are worried.
- Hot Springs Township. Tobbin warms his hands at the springs and explains, through a complaint form, why he is here: the first time he slept under a down duvet, he dreamt he was warm.
- The Main Office. The visitors ask for the County Ledger as evidence. In it they find two entries they did not expect. The county has been giving the moulted down and the shorn wool away for a century.
- Downtown. People keep handing the visitors gifts. A grandmother knits Tobbin socks from county wool. Hulda is given a fleece and told to keep it, and says, to nobody in particular, that they do this every year. The visitors split between those who still want to take and those who want to come back next spring.
- The Pedway. Tobbin is upstairs drafting a form that has never existed. Every minute you hold the line buys him time. The briefings say plainly that this is the tense one.
- County Regional Airport. Tobbin’s form lands in Haskett’s in-tray: Form 1-A, Standing Arrangement (Annual), the first form in the visitors’ history that acquires nothing. You keep the flock home until Haskett reaches it.
The ending
Haskett signs Form 1-A. Every pending goose and sheep comes home, with a complimentary blanket. The arrangement is itself paperwork: every spring, on shearing day, a polite ship lands in the Fairgrounds Lot, the visitors queue beautifully, hold the gate for Bev, and take the fleeces the county has set aside. Every summer, after the moult, they come back for the down. The county asks for nothing in return, and the visitors insist on leaving very good pens.
Tobbin’s first parcel home is a pillow filled with Doris’s summer moult, her name stitched in the corner. Hulda’s is socks, a great many socks. The final ledger line says the case is closed, nothing was taken, and everyone got what they needed. The geese, who were never told any of this, went back to grazing, which is how they would want it.