The Show of Hands
They call the cortex the chair, because a chair can be outvoted.
Overview
At the start of a shift somebody takes a folded sheet out of a chest pocket, holds it about chest height, raises their left hand palm-out at shoulder, and says what their left side will do before they do.
That is the whole ceremony. The four people around them move a half-step and do not look up.
The Show of Hands is the practice of keeping a personal apportionment — a written order of operations for your own body, which part acts first and how fast — and saying it out loud to the people standing close enough to be hit by the answer. Practitioners speak of themselves in the plural without embarrassment and call the cortex the chair, on the reasoning that a chair can be outvoted. Newcomers find the vocabulary unbearable for about a month and then find it a relief, and nobody in the practice has a better explanation for that than the fact that it is true.
It is not a movement. There is nothing to join, no roll, no fee, and no position anyone holds. It is a sheet and a habit.
Where It Came From
It started as a joke, which is the part the practice is careful not to lose.
Around 2177 the repair benches at the Cathodics could already do something the district couldn't afford: open a subplate, pull its actuation order, and tell a salvager in one afternoon exactly which part of their own body moves first. The benches began writing the results out as mock committee minutes — the left forearm votes aye; the chair is recorded as absent — and handing them over with the invoice.
The salvage packs took it seriously before anybody else did. A stripping crew works inside arm's reach of a live rig and each other, and the fastest thing on the floor is somebody's shoulder assembly. Saying my right side goes before I do at the start of a strip turned out to be a safety brief in the shape of a joke, and injuries on the benches' regular crews went down in a way nobody bothered to publish.
Then distributed intent began returning percentages, and the joke acquired a second function. A reading divides a person after the fact, from logs, in a room. An apportionment divides them in advance, out loud, in front of the crew. The arithmetic is not very different. Everything else about it is.
What The Sheet Says
Soft pencil, always. A sheet that has been inked belongs to somebody who has stopped revising it, and a body changes at every re-fit.
A working apportionment lists each autonomy-grade component by what it does rather than by serial — left dorsal, load side, forty — in the order it will act, with the chair somewhere down the page. The chair's line is the strange one and everybody knows it. No instrument can read cortex-side anticipation; the Second Mind arrives with the shape of a judgement and leaves no trace of having arrived. Writing it down anyway is the practice's whole quiet argument with the statute: the thing that comes first in a decision is not the thing that keeps records.
Below autonomy grade two the sheet is theatre and the benches will tell you so. Chrome & Augmentation puts that line at actuation latency rather than capability, which is why a cheap load-rated plate is worth writing down and an expensive cosmetic forearm is not. The vocabulary has spread downward anyway, to people whose chrome cannot act before they do, and the benches find that funny and have never corrected anybody.
The Dregs scavenger packs took it up before anybody with a certificate did, for the plainest reason available: a stripping crew works inside arm's reach of a live rig and of each other, and the fastest thing on the floor is somebody's shoulder assembly.
Idris Kovac filed his four months after his finding, which is late, and reads it before every lift, which is thorough. He says the plural still makes him feel stupid. He says it anyway, because since he started, the other slingers stand a half-step further off his left, and none of them ever told him they had moved.
| What | The practice of keeping and speaking a personal apportionment — which part of you acts first, and in what order |
|---|---|
| The Vocabulary | Practitioners speak of their bodies in the plural and call the cortex 'the chair' |
What It Costs
The practice works, and working is how it got taken.
Two Ironclad sectors now recommend a filed personal apportionment at induction. The word in the pack is recommend, the pack has no named author, and nobody has yet tested what happens to a worker who declines. Both sectors publish reduced yard injuries and the reduction is real. The Handling Inspectorate accepts a filed apportionment in evidence, and the officers who take them are not being cynical about it — anything written before an incident is worth more than anything written after one.
So a habit invented so that people would stop being ashamed of their own reflexes is now a document an employer would like to have on file, in advance, in the worker's own hand. Every practitioner can state that objection. Most of them state it better than any outsider does.
They keep doing it. The reasoning they give is the same one the benches gave in 2177, and it has not needed updating: a person who has already divided themselves cannot be surprised by a reading. The alternative is an account of your own body written entirely by your chrome, filed in a column that is retained, while what you say about it goes in the column that is not.
The Dregs has one other practice built the same way, out of saying the unsayable part aloud in front of somebody who did not ask. The Second Person restores the me too that the district relief systems exist to prevent from ever being spoken. Nobody in either practice has remarked on the resemblance, which is itself fairly Dregs.
Sheets are written in soft pencil, because a person who inks their apportionment has stopped revising it
Sensory Details
Pencil on damp paper, which is why the sheets go soft at the folds and why practitioners can identify their own by feel in a pocket. The specific quiet at shift start when somebody is reading — not respectful, just the crew waiting for the load-side answer so they know where to stand. The half-step, which is the only visible thing the practice produces and which nobody acknowledges out loud.
At the Cathodics it smells of hot flux and the ozone off an open service port, and the benches keep a jar of stub pencils by the till that they have never charged anyone for.
Visual Identity
- Colour palette: Pencil-grey paper (#7E7566) against bench-shadow (#1B1E22), with the hi-vis orange (#C86A2A) of a raised palm at shoulder height
- Compositional mood: One person reading from a soft-folded sheet; four people already moving without appearing to listen
- Key symbol: A raised left hand, palm out, and a pencilled sheet held at chest height
- Lighting: Yard floodlight from above and behind, or a single bench lamp over an open forearm
No filed apportionment has ever altered a reading, and nobody in the practice claims one will
It was invented so people would stop being ashamed of their own reflexes, and it is now a document an employer would like on file before the accident
Local Intelligence Scan
Nearby Signals
CANONICAL PROXIMITY
Environmental Readout
LIVE CONDITIONS- Air
- Toxic
- Light
- Canyon dark
- Flood
- Seasonal
- Heat
- Trapped
- Security posture
- Ungoverned
- Infrastructure
- Improvised
Position Data
SECONDARY- Elevation band
- sub-sprawl
- Lattice fix
- E+3.9 · N+2.6
Connected To
Primary Connections
Same division, opposite direction. The statute reads a body from its logs after the fact; the practice states it from the body, in advance, to the four people who need it.
Divides one act among the parts of one body, and sends the remainder to whoever is behind on maintenance.
Filed four months after his finding, and reads it before a lift although the plural still makes him feel stupid.
A plate-yard slinger whose arm saved two people in forty milliseconds and cost him three quarters of the blame.
The repair benches where it started as a joke about a decade ago, and where the sheets are still written for anybody who asks.
The Dregs' only middle class, anchored by a shop whose technicians out-diagnose Helix at a fifteenth of the price.
Accepts a filed personal apportionment in evidence, which is the moment the practice acquired a second audience.
The officers licensed to complain for beings the law forbids to complain, ranked on how often it sticks.
Two sectors now recommend a filed apportionment at induction. The word is recommend, and nobody has tested what happens to a worker who declines.
The megacorporation that controls the Sprawl's physical infrastructure — steel, concrete, and the Orbital Elevator.
The thread answered by doing the arithmetic first and out loud. If the districts are going to divide you afterward, divide yourself in front of your crew beforehand.
The parts of one body each hold a share of the act, and a maintenance contract decides whose share comes home.
Major Connections
A sheet is only worth writing above autonomy grade two, the rung where a component starts acting on its own account.
The augmentation ladder that turns employability into a licensed body.
The chair. Practitioners give it a line on the sheet although no instrument can read it — the one pure assertion.
The AI layer that thinks alongside every augmented brain until neither can tell whose thought was whose.
The other Dregs refusal to be named from outside. One declines the dial; this narrates what the dial cannot reach.
A Deep Dregs subculture that refuses the mood-dial and feels every emotion at its natural, inefficient pace.
She has named the parts of her body for thirty years without calling it anything, one donor at a time.
A scavenger whose every augmentation was cut from a different bay-floor dead — and who can name each donor.
Supporting Connections
Stripping packs took it first: fastest rigs, closest crews.
Packs endemic to the drained bay floor who strip the abandoned machines — and lose their own people to the live ones.
Two Dregs practices built out of saying the unsayable part aloud.
The Dregs practice of restoring the second carrier Concord's micro-reliefs exist to prevent — 'me too', said once.
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