The heavy brass notary seal sat on the black obsidian slab, smoking faintly where its cold edges bit into the blue typewriter ribbon.
Silas Thorne stared through the quartz glass of his 1924 diving bell, the pale green formalin-saline solution swirling around his temples. For the first time in thirty years, the serene, grandfatherly smile vanished from the Chairman’s lips. His mechanical pantograph twitched, the brass joints emitting a sharp, angry click.
“A hostile counter-audit?” Thorne’s voice hissed through the external hydrophone, stripped of its velvety warmth. “You insolent counter-clerk!”
The brass claw rattled against the viewport. “You cannot audit the Executive Board! The Board is the supreme author of the rules!”
“The Board is a creature of statute,” Julian said, his voice flat and steady. “And every statute has to be proofread before it gets stamped.”
Julian didn’t reach out to take the Supreme Golden Auditor’s Fountain Pen with his bare skin.
He knew better than to touch a Founder’s pen unshielded. If the barrel was impregnated with carminic red ink or contact neuro-filaments, a single touch would bind his fingerprints to the succession charter.
Julian reached into his canvas utility apron. He pulled out his 10x Bausch & Lomb Hastings triplet loupe and his 365-nanometer ultraviolet inspection pen.
