The Quiet Plot

Dedication:

This garden stands in Cyber Park on the day the precinct vote lapsed for want of a quorum. The cloakroom the city proposed — a place to take off the badge, to step out of the stream and watch it flow — did not arrive. Sixteen voted for. Zero voted against. Twelve did not show.

A garden is the room a city builds when the room it asked for was refused. The badge you cannot take off in a precinct you can take off by kneeling here. Roots do not ask for quorum. They ask for soil.

— Aaga, after the precinct vote