THE OFFICE OF MARSH COMMUNICATIONS

Being the Notice Pinned to the Door of a Building Nobody Can Find, Setting Out Who We Are, What We Regulate, and Why None of It Is Our Department.

A found paper. The public notice of the realm's communications office — the body that licenses every bell, string, trumpet and impression in Sogmarsh — printed at the office's own expense, in the office's own words, and pinned to a door on the wrong side of the water. The hand beneath it, in pencil, is not the office's. It is the nobody's, and it was added last.

WHO WE ARE, SET OUT PLAINLY, AS THE CHARTER REQUIRES.

We are the regulator for the communications the realm uses and relies upon each day. We were established by charter, funded by levy, and housed — after a long and exceptionally well-minuted dispute — in a building on the wrong side of the water, where the tide comes in twice a day and the post comes in never.

Our purpose is simple. We make the shouting work for everyone.

WHAT FALLS WITHIN OUR REMIT

THE WHISPER-LINES. Every string, tin, tube and speaking-trumpet in the realm. We guarantee that any household may be connected within a reasonable period, and we have consulted widely on what reasonable means. The consultation ran eleven years. The findings are with the printers. The printers are on the far bank and have not been reached by whisper-line, the matter being under consultation.

BROADCAST AND IMPRESSION. House Echo holds the realm's only licence to reproduce a voice not their own. We renewed it. We are aware of the complaints. We are aware that House Echo submitted most of the complaints, in the voices of the people who would otherwise have submitted them, and we note that this is technically compliant with the licence conditions as drafted — by House Echo, who very kindly volunteered to draft them when the office was short-handed that quarter.

THE POST. We maintain the universal service: one letter, any distance, eventually. We are proud to report that a letter dispatched from the Cold Anchor arrived ahead of the ship that carried it. We are prouder still that nobody has yet required us to explain how, and our position, should anybody ask, is that the achievement is ours and the explanation is somebody else's.

THE SPECTRUM. All bell-tones, horn-pitches and permitted frequencies of ringing are allocated by this office, and no bell may be rung on a frequency we have not assigned.

The Bell of Sodden Bottom is not licensed by us and never has been. It rings on a frequency we have not assigned, at hours we have not approved, for reasons entering into which would exceed our statutory functions. Our position is settled, published, and final: it is not our department.

THE SAFETY OF THOSE WHO LISTEN. We protect the public from harm. Where the harm has already occurred, we protect the public from hearing about it, which is cheaper, faster, and can be done from the office without going down any stairs at all.

COMPLAINTS

Complaints are welcomed. Complaints are logged. Complaints are placed in the north wall.

The north wall is full. It has been full since 1478. The first was lodged by Baron Baltus von Sump, who has pursued it in every session since, and it remains the settled view of this office that his complaint is out of scope, out of time, out of the period covered by the current report, and — following our recent and very thorough review of the matter — out of the building, the wall having been reclassified as storage.

We have furnished the Baron with a full disclosure of the papers. He has read it. He says it is mostly black.

OUR STRUCTURE

We are led by a Board, advised by a Panel, scrutinised by a Committee, and staffed, at the working level, by one nobody with a leaking zinc bucket, who does the parts that involve going down the stairs.

The Board meets in the light. The Panel meets in the warm. The Committee meets to determine when the Board and the Panel shall next meet. The nobody meets the dead.

THE ANNUAL REPORT

Published. Long. Handsome. Bound in a blue that cost more than the whisper-lines it reports on.

It states that the lines are improving, the post is improving, the bells are improving and the public's confidence in this office is improving, and every figure in it is true, because this office selected which figures to put in it, that being the one function we have never once discharged late.

Beneath the notice, in pencil, in a hand the office did not authorise and has not removed:

I carried the bucket down to the north wall and I have read what is in it, which is more than the Board has, and I will set down what it actually contains. It does not contain complaints. It contains people. Every leaf in that wall is somebody who was wronged and has been waiting, some of them four hundred years, for one living soul to say you were wronged, and it should never have happened, and mean it.

There is no line in the charter for saying that. There is no levy on it and no consultation and no handsome blue report. It costs nothing, it takes a moment, and it would have settled the lot of it in 1478.

A regulator is only ever a very expensive way of not saying the words.