Vesherti considers that.

"I think the usual way that we look at things like that is that there are two kinds of situation: the kind where doing one thing is better, and the kind where doing many things is better. And there usually isn't really an in-between; doing two things is usually worse than doing one or doing many," he remarks. "So something like shipping containers — it saves time and effort to have them be all the same. But something like tables — everyone is going to want a different table to fit a different space. Having only one kind of table wouldn't work well. And figuring out which situation is which can be hard sometimes, but generally I think the difference is about whether you want to spend time caring about the details."

"I wouldn't normally think of using shipping containers as being stifling, because I don't really care about the details of how a thing gets shipped as much as I care about the fact that it does get shipped. Of course the details are interesting, and I like learning about them, but I wouldn't want to sit down and design a new box for every thing from another city that I wanted to trade for, if you see the difference? If someone did want to do that for some reason, they probably could — they'd just need to work out the details with someone who would make the box, and a ship that would be willing to take the non-standard box, and the machinery on each end to load and unload it, etc. But most people don't feel that strongly about it."

That does make sense. It's more that he's figuring out for himself what he's going to need, here, and he feels like slotting himself into that kind of system might mean giving up something that's important to him, even though the result is very impressive. He's used to having figuring out what kind of literal or metaphorical box he wants to use be part of the process, even if it's a decision he makes once for a hundred boxes, and substituting in a step where he has to learn what other people are doing is different.

"Oh! Yes, I see what you mean. There is definitely more coordination with other people involved in the way we do things — although we try to make that unobtrusive. It's probably more jarring coming from a place that doesn't have that compared to growing up with it."

Not too jarring yet, but it's definitely noticeable, yeah. He doesn't expect it to be too much of a problem, though, if they really need him to do something a certain way that's fine.

He's curious about what happens in the emergency responders' building.

"So most of the actual emergency response happens from smaller buildings spread out over the place, because you want to be close to where the emergencies happen. The central building is mostly used for disaster planning, stocks of things that are needed infrequently but reliably, training emergency responders, and coordinating different groups of responders," he explains.

"For example, there are some flood barriers up the river that are supposed to prevent any big rain storms in the mountains from flooding the part of the river that goes through the city. So mostly the people in the city don't need to worry about floods. But anything can fail given enough time and a big enough storm, so the emergency responders have people who are good at coming up with plans who have made a plan in case that happens. That way when it does happen, everyone knows what to do. But there are lots of things like that to plan for, and those plans need to be checked and kept up to date as things change, so there is enough to do to keep the planners busy."

"For the coordination — in big emergencies, like forest fires, if everyone just goes to help the people closest to them you might end up with some people being missed by the emergency responders, or some emergency responders all showing up in the same place. There are people in the central building whose job it is to make sure teams are spread out and don't miss anyone, that people with the right training are sent to different kinds of emergencies, and so on. When we get you an emergency alert necklace, pressing it will alert someone in that building, who will look at where you are and where the emergency responders are and send the best person to help."

How do they figure out who's going to be on call when? It seems like it would be tricky to arrange to have people with the right skills there all the time.

Ooh boy this is not how Vesherti thought labor law was going to come up.

"Yes, it's definitely tricky," he agrees. "They use a combination of techniques — the simplest one is just making sure that there are a lot of people available to be on call. The average emergency coordination session is pretty slow and involves lots of breaks and opportunities to read, so that when there is a big emergency or someone doesn't want to do it for a while there are enough people there. Another technique is tying in other cities; they use lightning-based communication so that if all the people here are busy your call will actually go to the next nearest city. The next nearest city won't do quite as good a job because they're not as familiar with the area, but they'll still be able to help. The fallback system is actually worldwide — so something would need to take a lot of cities out simultaneously, or at least cut all our lightning-links, in order to prevent an emergency call from being answered. That's very unlikely, though. This city's emergency lightning-links are designed to keep working during the most serious storm we've had here in the past thousand years."

"A tangentially related part is just reducing the number of emergencies that need sudden attention, such as by requiring that buildings be built out of things that are harder to set on fire, or reducing the amount of coordination necessary in an emergency by spreading out emergency responders, having unique symbols for every building in the city so that you can easily talk about where things are, and so on. Those are things that can reduce the number of necessary emergency coordinators by doing more work ahead of time, when it's convenient."

"The other techniques involve a topic that I haven't really gone into detail yet, because we think you might lack the concept entirely. You shared a lot of vocabulary with us, but none of it was really related to the concept of a job. The idea is that you can trade value-objects for people's time and energy, not just for other objects — that part I expect you to be familiar with — but that you can also trade value-objects for getting someone to do something consistently. So anyone can do the training to become an emergency coordinator, and they can help in an emergency. But the people who do it every day and handle most of the calls, many of them promise to come in at predictable times unless they get hurt or sick themselves. In exchange for the imposition of having to stick to a schedule like that, they get more value objects," he explains.

"There are a few people who make sure the promised predictable schedules all line up correctly to ensure someone is always available. If one of the emergency coordinators needs to change their schedule for some reason, they give them a few days notice, and they arrange to cover the gap in the schedule. Doing something like that does require a certain amount of dependability and willpower — which is why it's also a respected role and worth more value objects. Someone who can't commit to that kind of scheduled-in-advance life would mostly choose to do something else instead."

"Of all the systems I've pointed out to you so far, I think this is the one we're least proud of. It's very common — many projects that need predictable coverage do the same thing — and we do think it's worth it on average, because of the way that it makes some things, like guaranteed emergency calls, possible. But many people find scheduled roles like that stressful, even if they can mostly make them work. As we've learned to build more capable machines, and gotten better at predicting things, we've been able to decrease the number of roles like that over time. But some things just need someone to be there in order to work, and there's nothing to be done about it yet. Maybe in the future we'll be able to figure out a better solution."

Yeah, Crafters aren't very good at that sort of thing either, that's why they have so much automation and so many fewer of that sort of megaproject. Crafters with megaprojects usually live on site with them, which means they're always available if an alarm goes off, but it makes sense to him that it'd help to have people do that work in a shared space, like he mentioned earlier, too.

"If we can get Crafting more widely distributed, I think we'll be able to replace some of our megaprojects with simpler alternatives," Vesherti agrees. "Replacing all the lightning-generators with crafted crank shafts, lightning-links with ansibles, reducing the amount of shipping we need to do, needing less support infrastructure for the fast transport machines, obviating a lot of the emergency plans .... I think it will take us a few decades to unwind everything, but we will probably be able to shift most projects away from that kind of model. That's pretty much why we were so instantly excited — it took a bunch of work that looked tedious but necessary, and showed us that it might not be necessary any more."

"We do have a few people that live on-site at really important projects, but generally people find it more stressful to always have to be available, compared to only having to be available on a schedule. So living in the same city and going back and forth every day is more popular."

He's glad he can help.

And, yeah, Crafters more or less don't have the emergency response sort of megaproject; nobody wants to be woken up in the middle of the night for something that's not their personal thing or, like, one of their neighbors being about to die. The world library is an outlier that way; Crafters like collecting things and sharing their collections and it grew out of that. 

Vesherti nods; that tracks with the impression he's getting of Crafters.

"Are you curious about any of the other buildings we can see from here?" he asks. "There are also some pretty architectural details that are easier to see up close, mostly in the older buildings near the river."

He's interested in seeing some architecture up close! He's also curious about the city organizers, if Vesherti wants to talk about them on the way.

"Sure, I'd be happy to," he agrees.

He directs Traveler down toward a particular section of the river, and begins writing a fairly lengthy summary of city government. It's long enough that he needs to break it up into a few pages and display them in sequence.

"Let me think about what to say ... I guess the first thing to know is that different cities have different ways of picking their city organizers. So when you go visit other places, they'll do this differently. And anyone who doesn't like the way the city picks their organizers can go live somewhere else, so even though our system isn't perfect, it still works pretty well for the people who do live here. In this city, there are two top-level organizers — the organizer in charge of goals, and the organizer in charge of resolving conflicts."

"The organizer in charge of resolving conflicts leads the sub-project dedicated to helping resolve the inevitable issues that come up when people live close together. The members of that sub-project are called mediators or judges, depending on exactly what they do. If you have a conflict with someone else in the city — for example, a neighbor keeps making loud noises at night and won't stop when asked — then you can take the conflict to them and they'll help find a solution. Mediators job is to try and find a solution that works for everyone; so, for example, they might work to figure out how to get you more noise-shielding, or how to rearrange your neighbor's schedule so they don't need to make loud noises at night. If the mediator can't find a solution that everyone agrees with, they take the problem to a judge, who makes a decision about who is acting more in line with the standards for living in the city. If the judge finds that someone is not acting in line with the standards for living in the city, they give them a choice. Typically: accept one of the mediator's solutions, give enough value-objects to the other person for them to be willing to drop it, or leave the city."

"If you think a mediator or a judge is not being fair, you can take the conflict all the way up to the organizer in charge of resolving conflicts for a final decision. But that's generally not needed — in something like three quarters of conflicts, the mediator finds a solution that both people can accept. Of the other cases, about eleven twelfths of the time people agree the judge made the right decision and abide by the choice."

"So that's one of the things that goes on in the city organizers' building — meetings with mediators and judges, plus the people who keep lists of conflicts organized so that one isn't missed, plus the people who investigate conflicts to see whether one of the people is misrepresenting their side, and so on. The other sub-project housed in the building is the one led by the organizer in charge of goals."

That makes sense, more or less. If he lives outside the city and only comes in for visits like this, is there anything he might end up interacting with that system about?

Vesherti considers the question.

"Probably not. In the very unlikely case that someone did something like touch your walker so that you have to abandon it and make a new one, you could go to a mediator to get them to make it up to you or apologize," he responds. "But I think it's unlikely that you'll need to interact with the people in charge of resolving conflict. That's one of the reasons that we wanted to have a guide like me to accompany you, actually — by explaining things as you visit, we're not just being good hosts and getting to show you the cool parts of our city, we're also heading off any unknown potential conflicts caused by not knowing things before they happen."

That makes sense. He'll let Vesherti know if something like that happens, though he doesn't expect it either.

Vesherti nods, and then continues with his explanation of city government.

"The other things that go on in the organizers' building — The organizer in charge of goals works with the people in their project to determine what the goals for the city should be, and then to pick people or projects to carry those out. For example, the city has a goal of having enough lightning generated for everyone to be able to use it. The people who work with the organizer in charge of goals figure out how that should happen, such as by building more lightning-generators, and then find people who are willing to do that. The organizer in charge of goals works with a group of four other people, and three of them need to agree in order to set a new goal or start a new project on behalf of the city. The four people are: two people who represent the general people living in the city, the speaker for tradition, and the speaker for children. The two people who represent the general people living in the city are supposed to make decisions based on what they think the people in the city want, and often meet with people and talk to them to make sure they know what that is. The speaker for tradition is supposed to keep things from changing too quickly, and ensure that the historical parts of the city are preserved. The speaker for children is supposed to look out for long-term problems and consequences that will affect the people living in the city in the future."

"When the sub-project in charge of goals makes a decision, they post a public letter about it so that people can comment or point out problems. But many people don't want to be bothered by dealing with all the details of keeping the city running, which is why the decision is delegated to a specific group of people in the first place."

"Every six years, there's a period where everyone living in the city gets to send a letter to the city organizers' building saying who they would like to be the organizer in charge of resolving conflicts, the organizer in charge of goals, and the two people who represent the general people living in the city. Anyone less than twenty four years old can also say who they want the speaker for children to be. The speaker for tradition doesn't change until the old speaker decides they no longer want to be part of the project, or dies. But when there isn't a current speaker for tradition, anyone more than twenty four years old can also say who they want the speaker for tradition to be. The willing person for each role who got the most letters supporting them becomes the new person in that role."

"So generally, you can pick people who you agree with to be in the sub-project in charge of goals. They do the work of sorting through proposals and figuring out what projects need to happen or what things about the city need to change, and then everyone has a chance to comment if they're interested. Then the projects go ahead, and if this causes problems you can go to the sub-project in charge of resolving conflicts to try and make things better. It's not a perfect system, but it works well enough — people are generally pretty happy to live here, and the city mostly reflects what the people living here want, without needing too much day-to-day coordination between neighbors. There are also smaller projects dedicated to specific areas of the city, but that's the overall structure of things."

Huh. That seems interesting but also kind of overwhelming. He might want to write a book about it, when he's more settled in here.

"We have several books comparing and contrasting the organizers of different cities ourselves, but I think everyone would be very interested to read about your perspective on it," he replies. "If you'd like, I can arrange time for you to talk to the organizers about their projects in more detail."

He was thinking he'd write it for other Crafters, but of course they can have a translation. He'll definitely be interested in talking to them when he's ready to get started on the book.

Vesherti nods.

They're coming up on the historical district now — the streets are laid out based on the curve of the river, instead of a more rigid grid, and the streets are also a bit narrower. The buildings are older, mostly made with stone and brick.

"See that building over there?" he says, indicating a short, square building set a ways back from the river. A round stained-glass window set into the top of the wall shows a stylized sigil that looks something like a book. "That's the city's first branch of our world library. It's not the original building — which burned down, was rebuilt, flooded, and then they rebuilt over here on a higher bit of land instead — but it has been in this same location for a bit more than eight hundred years. The sculpture work on the front of the building, in particular, is still based on the original design — although it had to be refurbished a bit more than fifty years ago because it was starting to deteriorate."

The front of the building, under the eaves, is covered in bas-relief sculpture showing a train of horses making a winding journey through the mountains to a desert.

"The design is a stylized map of the way to the central library. There are specific mountains highlighted to recommend a particular route. The idea is that even if the library falls, and the city is wiped out and forgotten, future people who find the pieces of the artwork should be able to piece it together and find the library."

Oh, that's neat. He wishes he could get a copy to share with people back home.

Vesherti taps his lip in thought.

"We have pictures of it, although that's not quite the same thing," he offers.

It's really not. It's fine, it'd be more of a decoration and a curiosity than anything else.

He nods.

"Down this way there's the old mill building. This area was originally a small farming community — more or less because everywhere was a small farming community at that point — and the old mill building was where they used the river to turn wheels to grind their grain."

He points out a few more historically interesting (or just pretty) buildings as they go.