By hand, when the lights go out

Everything in the Game can be done with a pencil, by daylight, with no power, no network, and nothing that understands you. This page is written to be copied by hand. If you copy it, copy all of it.

The Offering by hand. A box, a bowl, or a cloth in the middle of the table. Each week, each person puts something in: hours pledged, food, fuel, a tool, a skill, care, money. Nobody announces amounts and nobody is asked. What is not physical is written on a slip and put in with the rest — four hours, digging. The keeper writes three numbers in the book after each Turn: in · out · held, with the unit. At the turning those three become line 8, and a meaningful share goes inward to the home, carried by hand, with one line saying what it is. Inward, to the table you sit at — never upward to anyone who rules you. There is no centre to tithe to and no imposed share.

The promise that has to outlive the conversation. One line on a slip of paper: I, ____, will ____, for ____, by ____. Signed by the maker, witnessed by one other person present. That is the whole instrument. It is a commitment, not money. It is cleared when the thing is done: the holder returns the slip, the maker tears it, and both say so at the next Turn, where it is recorded as a commitment kept. Three rules keep it clean. It may be handed on only by endorsement — the holder signs the back and tells the maker, because a maker who does not know who holds their promise cannot keep it. It never accrues; a promise does not grow while it waits (Usury). And it expires at the turning after its date, at which point it becomes a gap — named honestly, learned from, without blame.

The Season Sheet by hand. One sheet of paper, one side if you can, ruled exactly as in the appendix above — the order and the numbering are the whole of the standard. Fill it at the table, in the week of the turning, with everyone present. The two hosts sign, date, and count the lines. A copy stays in the box; the original goes to the home within a week, by hand if at all possible. Two signatures and a line count are the whole of the paper's security, and they are enough.

Sending a season down a wire, or up a road. Because the lines are numbered, a whole season fits in a message a person can send by hand at a few words a minute: line number, colon, value, stop. Send only the lines that have content, and line 14 every time; the receiver knows the rest read none. Three messages make a conference and all three are required: the ask (one sentence, one question, one by-when), the answer (yes, no, or not yet; by whom; by when — never a discussion), and the acknowledge (received, with a read-back of the numbers and names). A conference without the third message did not happen. Read-back is the whole of the error correction, and the count of lines is the checksum a tired person can do: if the counts disagree, the message is re-sent, not interpreted. Agree the next window — same hour, same days — at the end of every contact. Schedule beats channel. Never send over an open wire the names of people who have not consented to be named, the location of stores, or the routes runners take: the idea travels, the source does not (Chatham House).

The Flame passed by hand.

1. Name. At the table, each person names the two or three people they know are ready. Not family by default, not the famous, not the loud: the faithful.
2. Go. Within a week. In person. One conversation, not a campaign.
3. Tell. The Story, as you have lived it, from memory. It does not need a book and never did.
4. Give. This book, whole, on paper if you have paper. If you have no paper, teach the five moves out loud and the words one at a time, and have them say each back to you.
5. Write both ends. They write your name as their Carrier — which never changes. You write their Cell on your line 7 at the turning, by name. That is the lineage, and it is the only registry the body has or needs.
6. Home. You are their first home until they have their own. Tell them so, and tell them what it means: they can reach you, and you will answer.
7. Let go. Their Cell is their own. You are not their supervisor and there is nothing to approve.

If the body has been broken and is gathering again, run this the first time you meet after the rupture; it takes an hour and it is not a formality. Read every name aloud and mark each present, reachable, or unaccounted — nobody is removed for being absent, and someone is named to go looking. Then the floor of care, before anything else: what each person has and what each person needs, tonight and this week, with commitments made on the spot; a body that organizes before it eats has misunderstood itself. Then name two hosts for the season — nobody nominates themselves. Then name the keeper who holds the paper. Then read your agreements aloud; if the paper is gone, say them from memory and write down what you agree they are today, and each person says yes or names what they cannot agree to. From that hour, the Cell's authoritative voice on paper is exactly three things: two host signatures, the date, and a count of the lines of writing. Anything arriving in the Cell's name without all three is a rumour, however plausible and however urgent.

What is not authority. The loudest voice. The armed voice. The one who holds the last working radio, generator, or vehicle. The one who says the old chain of command still runs. Authority here is re-conferred by the people present. It is never inherited from what fell, and never taken because it was lying there (Legitimacy).

And one standing rule: nobody speaks for a Cell that is not present. A claim made about an absent Cell — that they agreed, that they refused, that they are gone — is information, and it is carried to that Cell directly before anyone acts on it.

The design law beneath all of this: build the form a tired person with a pencil can run, prove that three people can run it, and only then let faster instruments carry the same object. Anything a machine does that the paper cannot has quietly left the standard, and it will be the part that breaks the day the power does. (Screens and paper.)

The fuller form: 21 In Every Future — what to do in each case.