Locals in this city maintain a standing population of imaginary guardians, and the guardians themselves have not moved. What moved is the custody. The previous stewards were released, and a new steward was installed: an apprentice raised inside the rival troop, sworn to a competing set of friends his whole adult life. The species reacted to this news the way it reacts to matters of inheritance — by assembling in physical lines.
Our observation began at position 14 in the queue outside a merchandising hall, among locals wearing the likenesses of the friends in question. By minute nine, the queue had produced its fourth apology, though no collision had occurred. By close of observation the tally read 23 uses of the word "canon," 9 invocations of a prior custodial era delivered in the tone reserved for deceased relatives, and one infant dressed as a friend whose ownership is currently disputed by the adults around her. The infant did not vote.
The mechanism deserves documentation. The friends are classified as assets: ownable, lendable, and improvable through a procedure called a "reboot," in which all accumulated memory is erased and repurchased by the same customers. Tickets for future installments are sold while the installments remain unmade — a waiting list for events that do not yet exist. The customers know this. That is the part we have stopped pretending to investigate.
"He came up inside the rival operation," said Devon Marsh, 34, holding position 31 without visible strain. "Eleven years making their friends. So he knows exactly what ours should feel like." He said this with the calm of a man describing rainfall. Beside him nodded a woman whose cape had been purchased twice under two custodians. She showed us both receipts.
At the close of observation, the roster stood at twelve friends, the queue at forty-one persons, and the apologies at eleven — the last issued by the woman in the cape to the person behind her, for a collision that will occur at approximately minute forty. The friends could not be reached. In this city, nobody learns who owns them until it happens; they simply wake up owned.
