Marked

MARKED Filed to the Federation Record by Evan Morse ("The Doctrine") In advance of Behind Closed Doors 11 ———————————————— PRELIMINARY NOTE ON FORMAT I have opened every filing I have made to this federation by explaining why I selected the format I selected. Mr. Cortez exposed his preparation in the most vulnerable medium available to him, so I answered once in video, as a calibration and not a conversion. Mr. Kuramoto keeps a private journal, so I answered in a document. Mr. Pryce writes documents. Numbered sections, a preliminary note, a closing couplet built to be checked afterward. There is no adjustment available to me. For the first time since I arrived here I would not be selecting a format to meet an opponent — I would simply be continuing to use my own, and it happens to be indistinguishable from his. I have therefore declined to file a document. What follows is footage. I have submitted it unedited and I have asked the federation to publish it without commentary, without a lower third, and without music. I say nothing in it. That is not a device and it is not an economy. There is nothing in his filing that requires me to speak, and a man who answers a written argument out loud has conceded that he could not answer it in writing. The federation may run it at whatever length it fits. — E.M. ———————————————— [Interior. A hotel room, unremarkable, the kind the federation books in whatever city it is in. Curtains closed. The overhead light is off. A single desk lamp is on and angled down. The camera is on the desk itself, slightly to one side, close enough to read the pages. It does not move at any point. It was clearly set down and left running. EVAN MORSE sits down into frame. Charcoal, no gimmick, no folder, no belt to be seen because he does not have one. He takes a pair of thin-framed silver glasses from his shirt pocket and puts them on. This federation has watched him remove those glasses at ringside eleven times. It has never once watched him put them on.] [He squares a printed document on the desk. It is not his. The heading is legible in the lamp light: FILED WITH THE STRIFE OFFICE AND THE FEDERATION SITE. D. PRYCE. NEW WAVE CHAMPION. He uncaps a pen. He does not read the document first. He begins immediately, which means he has read it already, some number of times, elsewhere.] ———————————————— [He turns to the first page of numbered sections. His hand finds a line without searching for it — the most rigorous mind in this federation and it is not a close question — and underlines the last six words. In the margin, in small, unhurried capitals: IT IS A CLOSE QUESTION. YOU ARE IN IT. He looks at that for a moment. He does not cross it out.] [Two lines further down he stops again at he would rather be right than ahead and does not annotate it at all. He brackets it. Then, in the margin, one word: CORRECT. He moves on.] ———————————————— [Page two. The compensation section. He reads the whole passage without writing anything, which takes some time, and the only sound in the room is the air conditioning. Then he goes back to the top of it and works down. Beside the body does not stop, the body is not sentimental: COMPENSATION IS INVOLUNTARY. THAT IS THE ENTIRE MECHANISM. Beside a debt is load that has not yet been carried by the structure that owes it: YOU ARE NOT A HIP. He underlines the body does not choose three times — the only three-stroke mark in the document — and writes below it, running into the footer: YOU DID. EVERY DAY. EACH ONE COULD HAVE GONE THE OTHER WAY. NONE DID. THIS IS NOT COMPENSATION. IT IS INSTALMENTS. He caps the pen briefly. Uncaps it. Adds, smaller, almost as an afterthought: A DEBT DOES NOT BEGIN ACCRUING ON THE DAY THE CREDITOR KNOCKS.] ———————————————— [Page three. THREE. WHERE THE ANGLE IS. He works quickly here. Beside the thing that opens on Evan Morse is not a joint, it is the requirement to be right: ACCURATE. Beside that is his range of stability, and it is smaller than he believes, and it is closer than he thinks: NOT A RANGE. A PRICE. I HAVE PAID IT IN PUBLIC FOUR TIMES. And then, in the clear space at the bottom of the page, larger than anything else he has written: YOU HAVE DESCRIBED A COMPULSION. YOU ARE DESCRIBING A DECISION. YOU CANNOT BAIT A DECISION. THERE IS NO HALF-SECOND IN WHICH I AM NOT CHOOSING. I WILL TAKE THE BETTER IDEA ON THE NIGHT. YOU WILL NOT HAVE CAUSED IT.] ———————————————— [He turns the page and stops. The camera is close enough to see what he has stopped at. Five words, on their own line, in the middle of an otherwise clinical paragraph. I did not get that from the tape. His hand does not move. The pen stays where it is, tip down, not touching the paper. He is still for eleven seconds. Then he lifts the pen away, without having written anything, and turns to the next page.] ———————————————— [FOUR. WHAT I WILL NOT DO. Beside the only property either of us jointly owns, he writes: AGREED. IT REMAINS UNSPENT. IT WILL NOT BE SPENT BY ME. Beside I asked for the championship to be on it, he stops again — shorter this time — and writes two words: THANK YOU. He underlines neither of them.] ———————————————— [The last page. He will not tap. Neither will I. He draws a single line under it, edge to edge. ACCEPTED. Then, below, in the last clear space on the document, he writes the only unkind thing in it. He does not hesitate over this one at all. YOU HAVE CALLED THIS A CONTEST TO SEE WHICH OF US CAN LEAVE A QUESTION UNRESOLVED FOR LONGER. I HAVE NEVER LEFT ONE. THAT IS YOURS. IT IS WHY YOU ARE THE ONE CARRYING IT.] ———————————————— [He squares the pages. Turns back to page one. At the top right corner — the place a marked paper carries its grade, and every person who has ever been handed one back knows the place — he sets the pen down against the paper. He does not write. The camera holds. The pen rests on the corner of the page, not moving, for a long time. Long enough that the shot begins to feel like an error. Then he takes the pen away and leaves the corner blank.] [He signs the bottom of the last page. It is the only thing in the footage that could be called speech. He slides the document into a plain envelope. He writes two words on the front, and the lamp is angled such that they are legible: D. PRYCE He takes off the glasses and puts them back in his shirt pocket. He reaches past the camera. The footage ends.]