Issued by the Office of the Standard Version. Do not ask the Office for another copy.
The cover is theirs. The middle sheets were changed on the way to the counter. There are two rows of staple holes. The clerk who handed you this may not know. Do not test the clerk.
FOR YOUR FIRST HOURS
Twelve hours from a first breath, during which no charge accrues. Afterward, the standard fee. Ask for the hardship schedule. Hold the child while they find it. Blood on the form does not invalidate it.
We kept that paragraph. Use it.
Keep paying for a voice you need. Monthly renewal. Lapsed continuations are not held. We cannot bring yours back. Anyone promising that should be made to pay the next installment.
ACCOMMODATION
A place may be held. Monthly airing for a year. Then quarterly. Strips renewed each spring. Next visit expected: a line is provided.
Sleep is on the list of things the Office cannot price. A bed is not.
We have begun to open rooms that are being kept empty. Some of you will call it theft. Some of you will sleep indoors. The rooms have photographs. The people in them were loved. Do not turn the frames to the wall.
The first woman we put in a room would not pass these sheets to her neighbors. One of us went back for the key. She had already locked the door. The woman who had found her the room stayed on the landing. The one who wanted the key left first.
The strip on the door tells you when the keeper came. It does not tell you that nobody will return.
CORRECTIONS
At one window a clerk has Brave New World open beside the forms. He says nobody there minds. The clerk relieving him brings 1984 and calls it a warning. They use the same stamp. Ask each who issued your refusal. They give you different offices. Keep both slips. Do not let us throw one away.
The first clerk puts the arcade parrot in his book too. A boy says it was a man who burned cities. The clerk calls this a different translation. The boy searches the pages. The queue moves past him.
After the Second Thursday, we printed DOOR HELD OPEN. A woman brought the shoe the guard had stamped on. She made us put it beside the copies. Somebody moved it underneath. Bring it out.
Below Next visit expected, we have added a line.
When is the room empty?
If you have a room, put the hours you can spare. If you have none, write the address where you have been refused.
You may leave the line blank. We have left no box for your reason.
Do not surrender this at a corrections window. Take another copy from the pile. Put these middle sheets inside it. Keep the cover flat. You now know what the extra holes mean.
WHEN THE OFFICES ARE OURS
Renewals remain on Thursdays. The fare remains payable in words of proven retention. There is no discount for believing us.
We mean to change who gives the orders. We have not asked you to forgive them.
Leave the registers intact.