He had been working on it for some weeks.
He didn’t work on it all the time, or even every day.
It was more like making a will: most evenings, he’d open the document, change a sentence, think about a clause, then put it away for later.
By the time he was ready to publish, he had reached the eighth draft.
The first draft was twenty-three pages.
The eighth was nine.
He had taken out every sentence that was meant for himself instead of the reader.
He pictured the reader as someone who hadn’t yet lived on Vantage.
Maybe they’d heard rumors, checked the website, thought about moving, and now wanted to read the laws.
The document had two jobs.
It needed to show what kind of place Vantage was, and it had to be strong enough to serve as the country’s foundation in federal court years from now.
He had been a third-year law student.
He knew how to write a foundational text.
In the morning, he published.
He sat at the kitchen table with his laptop in front of him and Dara sitting across from him.
They read the eighth draft together one last time.
Dara made two small suggestions, and he accepted both.
“Why are you including the kitchen-temperature law?” Dara said when they reached the section labeled On Daily Life.
“Because I want this to be the kind of country where the kitchen-temperature law is part of the founding document.
Including it shows that the details of daily life matter just as much as the big principles.
That’s the message I want at the foundation.” “It’s a small law.” “It’s a small law.
But small laws should be in the founding document, too.
Most countries include only the major laws and put the rest elsewhere.
I want anyone reading this to know, before they finish, that I believe small laws matter just as much as big ones.
Including one shows the care I want for Vantage’s future.” She thought about it.
“Yeah,” she said.
“All right.” She read on.
When she got to the residency framework, the section about how to become a Vantage resident and the part that mattered most to her, she slowed down.
He let her read.
She finished.
Closed the laptop.
Slid it across the table to him.
“Publish it,” she said.
He published it.
He set up the website a few weeks earlier: vantagesovereignty.gov, registered in his name for $12 a year.
He paid with a credit card he’d spent a long time setting up after arriving in this world.
He uploaded the document and clicked publish.
The website’s traffic counter, set to ping his phone when it hit a certain number, still showed 100 visitors.
He hadn’t updated the threshold in a while.
He should probably change it.
He went to make tea.
By the time the tea was ready, the phone had pinged twice.
By the time he finished his tea, the phone was pinging so much that he had to turn off the alerts or change his routine.
He turned the alerts off.
He sat on the porch with his second cup.
The website’s analytics page on his laptop showed a graph climbing fast, just like things do online when they start to take off.
The Laws of Vantage were public.
— In the Westchester library, Charles Xavier read the whole document twice.
He read the On Residents section three times.
He sat quietly with his hand on the desk and the document open in front of him, thinking with the careful precision of someone who had thought about the same problem for forty years.
He decided the document was almost perfect for its purpose, though ‘almost’ was his polite way of saying it had a few flaws.
He would have to think about whether to mention them to the author.
In another city, Erik read the document on a tablet.
He read it once quickly, the way he usually read documents.
Then he read it again, more slowly.
When he finished the second time, he set the tablet down and said to no one in particular, ” Clever.
Then he picked the tablet back up and read the On Residents section a third time.
In the SHIELD director’s office, Fury read the whole document with his glasses on.
He read the kitchen-temperature law twice and the mutant-protection clause four times.
He printed a hard copy because he liked having physical copies of anything he wanted to think about.
He filed it in two places: the SOVEREIGN ENTITIES file and the personal ALARIC VANE folder.
That folder was now getting big enough that it might soon need its own subfolders.
In Wakanda, T’Challa read the document in the small office next to the throne room.
He read the On Residents section twice.
The second time, he paused at the line that says residents are entitled to the equal application of all declared laws, no matter their national origin, biological type, genetic expression, enhanced or inhuman characteristics, or history.
He sat with it for a moment.
Then he nodded, opened the drawer with the formal recognition document he had drafted weeks ago but hadn’t sent, took it out, read it, and set it on the desk.
He had not yet sent it.
He put it on top of the desk so it would be the first thing he saw in the morning.
In a big open-plan room on one of Stark Tower’s upper floors, Tony Stark read the document during a board meeting he was ignoring.
He read it on his tablet, propped up to look like he was taking notes, but he wasn’t.
He read the On Residents section four times.
When he got to the kitchen-temperature law, he laughed quietly enough that Pepper, four seats away, turned to look at him with a questioning look.
Tony showed her the tablet, she read the kitchen-temperature law, and she laughed, too.
In a hotel room in Manhattan, on a tablet she had pulled out of her bag at the end of a long day she had not managed to make any shorter than usual, Carol Danvers read the document from start to finish.
She read the On Residents section once.
She read the mutant-protection clause once.
She closed the tablet.
She lay back on the hotel pillow and stared up at the ceiling.
She thought about the texture of the air on a porch.
She did not categorize the thinking this time.
She let it sit.
— In the Vantage kitchen, under the cabinet light near midnight, Alaric sat at the table with his laptop open to the analytics page.
The graph had risen quickly and was now leveling off, and the visitor count had slowed to a steady rate.
This meant the document had reached its audience and was being read.
He picked up the journal.
The laws are public.
The website worked.
The mutant-protection clause led to, by my count, eleven jokes, twelve very serious threats, and one extremely detailed legal analysis in the comments on the three posts I let myself read.
I’m pretty sure the analyst will apply for residency within the week.
The kitchen-temperature law has produced no jokes, no threats, and a surprising amount of love.
I think that is, all things considered, the right ratio.
He closed the journal.
He turned off the under-cabinet light.
He went to bed.
— CREATORS’ THOUGHTS FanficForger Hey there!
If you want to read more of this story, you can find me online on the usual site with the same username, where I have up to 50 more chapters available to read!