The call to the coordinator§
It is a week since the form was filled at Calmura. Vlad is in the new flat at the far end of Marginal, third floor, with the crates from the move still stacked against the wall. The cooperative is from Sederna with a branch in Lindoma, and its coordinator takes calls in the morning before the meeting. He is Costin, out of Galați through Iosmein, twenty years in the Republic, and he keeps Romanian for the people who understand it.
Costin
Alo. the sound of a chair turning Vlad, bună. Am ședință la unsprezece, deci avem un sfert de oră. Ce e? (Hello. Vlad, morning. I have a meeting at eleven, so we have a quarter of an hour. What is it?)
Vlad
Trebuie să plec în Japonia cinci zile sau o săptămână, și am nevoie de concediu. (I have to go to Japan for five days or a week, and I need leave.)
Costin
Cinci zile sau o săptămână, care din ele? Îmi trebuie un număr ca să pot pune pe tabel.
Concediul nu e problemă, ai patruzeci de zile pe an și n-ai luat nimic din februarie. Se ia la cerere, articolul 72, nu-ți refuz eu nimic și nici nu te întreb de ce te duci. Scrii datele, atât.
Ce mă doare e altceva. tapping something on the desk Sunt trei informaticieni de rangul tău pe partea de sisteme și tu ești singurul care intră pe partea de planificare când crapă ceva. Dacă pleci o săptămână, cine face mentenanță?
Five days or a week, which of the two? I need a number so I can put it on the board.
The leave is no problem. You have forty days a year and you have taken nothing since February. It goes on request, Article 72, and neither I nor anyone refuses it or asks you why you are going. You write the dates and that is all.
What hurts me is something else. There are three power users at your level on the systems side and you are the only one who goes into the planning side when something breaks. If you are away a week, who does the maintenance?
Vlad
Programăm roboți pe Git. (We program robots on Git.)
Costin
Îi programăm, da, și tot noi ne uităm peste ce scot. a short laugh with no humour in it Roboții iau bug-ul, fac patch-ul, deschid cererea și se opresc acolo. Cineva trebuie să se uite peste ele și să dea drumul. Nu se dă drumul singur, așa am stabilit noi în adunare, nu eu.
Deci întrebarea rămâne. O săptămână în care nimeni nu se uită peste ce scot roboții înseamnă o săptămână de cereri stivuite, și luni dimineața cineva mai puțin experimentat trebuie să golească stiva.
Zi-mi datele și mă descurc. Vorbesc cu Dinu să ia el partea de sisteme și pun cererile pe rând, două pe zi, nu mai mult.
We program them, yes, and we are also the ones who look over what they produce. The robots take the bug, make the patch, open the request and stop there. Somebody has to look over them and let it through. It does not go through on its own, that is what we settled in the assembly, and it was not me.
So the question stands. A week where nobody looks over what the robots produce means a week of requests piling up, and on Monday morning somebody less experienced has to empty the stack.
Give me the dates and I will manage. I will talk to Dinu to take the systems side and I will put the requests through in turn, two a day, no more.
Vlad
Deci, pe partea de interoperabilitate cu POCA, că noi ne ocupăm și de trasul de documente administrative din alte țări, avem treizeci de probleme raportate în Gît. Pe partea de PODCA avem douăzeci și unu. Datele sunt în tracker. (So, on the POCA interoperability side, since we also handle the pulling of administrative documents from other countries, we have thirty issues reported in Git. On the PODCA side we have twenty-one. The data is in the tracker.)
Costin
Cincizeci și una de probleme pe un modul de comparație. Âsta nu e sistemul de bază, e unealta aia care trage documente administrative din alte țări și le pune cap la cap. Nu se oprește nimic dacă stă o săptămână.
Și cu PODCA ce tot ne chinuim? Programul ăla s-a închis în 2013, s-a făcut POCA după el. Ce e acolo e arhivă, formate vechi, PDF-uri scanate prost. Douăzeci și una de probleme pe arhivă nu sunt urgențe, sunt de făcut când ai chef.
Deci uite cum facem. Îmi trimiți datele în scris azi, pun concediul pe tabel, iar cererile de la roboți le las în stivă. Nu bag pe altcineva peste ele, că se face mai mult rău. La POCA mă uit eu peste ce e critic, dacă apare ceva.
Cinci zile sau șapte?
Fifty-one issues on a comparison module. This is not the core system, it is that tool which pulls administrative documents from other countries and lines them up side by side. Nothing stops if it sits for a week.
And why do we keep struggling with PODCA? That programme closed in 2013 and POCA came after it. What is there is archive, old formats, badly scanned PDFs. Twenty-one issues on the archive are no emergency, they are for when you feel like it.
So here is what we do. You send me the dates in writing today, I put the leave on the board, and I leave the robot requests stacked. I am putting nobody else over them, that does more harm than good. On the POCA side I will look over anything critical myself, if something comes up.
Five days or seven?
Vlad
Șapte. (Seven.)
Costin
Șapte, bun. writing it down Trimite-mi datele exacte, prima și ultima zi, și le trec pe tabel azi.
Mai e ceva ce ține de tine, nu de mine. Articolul 57 zice că oricine poate ieși din țară și se poate întoarce, deci pe partea asta n-ai nimic de cerut nimănui. Ce iese din adunarea noastră e doar un rând într-un tabel.
Ai grijă la partea cealaltă. Aia e granița lor, cu vize întrebări la ghișeu, și acolo nu ne bagă nimeni în seamă hârtiile.
Seven, good. Send me the exact dates, the first day and the last, and I will put them on the board today.
There is one more thing, and it is on your side rather than mine. Article 57 says anybody may leave the territory and return to it, so on that side you have nothing to ask of anyone. What comes out of our assembly is one line in a table.
Mind the other side. That is their frontier, with visas and questions at the desk, and over there our papers count for nothing.
Vlad
Mai bine le spun, că voi pleca în două săptămâni de la data curentă. (Better that I tell them, since I will be leaving two weeks from today.)
Costin
Două săptămâni, deci. the sound of typing, slower than his speech Îl completez acum, să nu-l uit până la ședință.
Numele, rangul, șapte zile, plecare peste două săptămâni de azi. Motivul îl las gol, că nu se cere. Prima zi de lucru înapoi ți-o pun a opta zi, și dacă întârzii pe drum îmi dai un semn și o mut.
Gata, e pe tabel. Îl vede toată lumea la ședința de la unsprezece și nu se votează nimic, doar se anunță.
Two weeks, then. I am filling it in now, so I do not forget it before the meeting.
Name, level, seven days, departure two weeks from today. I am leaving the reason blank, since none is asked for. I am putting your first day back as the eighth day, and if you are delayed on the road you give me a sign and I move it.
Done, it is on the board. Everybody sees it at the eleven o'clock meeting and there is no vote, it is only announced.
Vlad
Bun, și sper să nu fie ca la CNAS cu telefoane și ce prostii a mai făcut președintele casei. (Good, and I hope it is not like at CNAS with the telephone calls and whatever foolishness the head of the fund got up to.)
Costin
a short laugh, and then the laugh goes out of his voice Nu, aici nu sună nimeni. Nu ai telefon de serviciu, nu ai șef care să dea de tine în concediu, iar dacă te sună cineva din cooperativă în zilele alea are o problemă cu el, nu cu tine. Articolul 72 zice și de deconectare, e scris acolo.
Iar cu președinții de case, aia e altă lume. Aici nimeni nu conduce nimic de unul singur, deci nu are cine să facă prostii de capul lui. Adunarea decide și adunarea plătește.
Trimite problemele. Eu voi intra în ședință.
No, here nobody calls. You have no work telephone, no boss who tracks you down while on leave, and if somebody from the cooperative rings you on those days the problem is his and not yours. Article 72 covers disconnection as well, it is written there.
As for heads of funds, that is another world. Here nobody runs anything on their own, so there is no one to do something foolish off his own back. The assembly decides and the assembly pays.
Send the issues. I am going into the meeting.
Vlad
sending the full extracted issues for all branches, sorted by order of importance Am trimis problemele pentru robot. (I have sent the issues for the robot.)
Costin
the file landing while he is still on the line Le văd. Le-ai scos pe toate ramurile și le-ai pus în ordine, bine, așa le pot da mai departe fără să mă mai uit eu peste fiecare item individual.
Le dau la robot azi și lucrează peste zilele tale. Cererile se strâng și nu se aprobă nimic până nu te întorci, în afară de ce e critic pe POCA.
Drum bun. Când te întorci îmi spui cum a fost.
I see them. You have pulled them from every branch and put them in order, good, that way I can pass them on without going over each individual item myself.
I am giving them to the robot today and it works through your days. The requests pile up and nothing gets approved until you are back, apart from what is critical on POCA.
Safe journey. When you get back you tell me how it went.
Vlad
La revedere. (Goodbye.)
Costin
La revedere, Vlad. the line goes before he has finished the word (Goodbye, Vlad.)
Who is paying and what keeps her here§
The call ends and the flat goes quiet again. He unpacks two of the crates against the wall, finds the kettle in the second one, and stands at the window with it boiling behind him, looking down at the park where a class from the school has been let out onto the open end. Somewhere past eleven the phone goes again.
Marliene
Vlad. the sound of a yard behind her, something metal being set down Akima wrote to me last night, four lines, and one of them was that you are going to Japan for her grandfather.
Vlad
Yeah, and I have just told my coordinator I am having a week off, the next two weeks. She told me shortly in the morning that Nozaki needs two weeks to switch shifts.
Marliene
So the two of you have the same fortnight. Good. the metal thing again, further off Then tell me who is paying for you to get there, and what happens to Akima while you are gone.
Vlad
Akima said that her fares at mine, but at the same time I am also pulling some euros.
Marliene
Both of you paying, then, out of money that came in from outside. a pause with the yard noise behind it As you already know, mine came in the same way and I have never touched it, so I know what that balance feels like to sit on.
Now the other half. She sends you across the world to her grandfather and she stays in Lindoma. What is keeping her here?
Vlad
She doesn't want to see Japan again. She said she can't go, but I would ask her again why exactly.
Marliene
Then ask her, and ask her before you book anything, because those two are different answers and you are about to spend a week on the strength of one of them. Somebody who will not go can change her mind at the airport. Somebody who cannot go has a reason with a shape to it, and if she has told you the second while meaning the first, you are carrying her grandfather for her and she is standing in the park watching you do it.
Vlad
writing to Akima with the call still open and then back to Marliene I asked her now.
Vlad's phone, alongside the call
-
So, can you tell me again what is the exact reason you can't leave the republic?
-
I gave up my koseki household registration when I left, and my juminhyo was cancelled at the ward office. On paper I am nobody's resident there now. My passport runs out in two months and renewing it means going in person to an embassy that does not exist in Fluid, so the nearest one is in a flight and an appointment I would have to be in Japan to keep. If I land on that passport with no address in the system I am a returning national with no koseki attached, and the ward office in Kochi puts me on a re-registration that takes weeks, and my hours here run out while I sit in a corridor. That is the reason. I have not said it because it sounds drastic.
Marliene
hearing the pause on the line after Vlad finished reading aloud
Vlad
Politeness norms, once again.
Marliene
Maybe. It is the same thing she did on the tram with me, apologising for having spoken at all, because saying a hard thing out loud puts a duty on whoever hears it. She would rather carry the ward office in Kochi on her own for a month than have you or me lie awake over it.
So she gives you the short version, you plan around the short version, and she gets to feel she troubled nobody.
The route out§
Vlad
The republic has no airport, and Aporia opened the Zecina airport, near Sluland, like three and a half years ago and it's the only airport in the entire DSB. When I arrived to the Republic, I landed at Ankara, because five years ago, there was no airport, and then took the train to the border in Iosmein and then took several trips until Lindoma.
Marliene
Then you have a journey before the journey. Zecina is across the water in Aporia, so you are on the ferry from Lutoliluri to Sluland before you see a plane, and from Lindoma that is a day on the rails to the port on top of it.
Vlad
And then Japan is the most difficult part she would rather not have told us.
Marliene
She would rather not have told anyone, and now two of us know.
Vlad
And I heard that if you have a citizenship from the Netherlands and you become a resident of the Republic of Fluid, gaining the five-year certificate, then in the Netherlands, your citizenship is cancelled because you are not allowed to have dual citizenship.
Marliene
There was a Dutchman at the yard two years ago who found that out at his own five-year mark. Their law takes the passport off you when you take up another nationality of your own will, and ours arrives at five years with nothing to sign, no oath, no renouncing anything, so the registrar writes it down and it is done. Their side read that as him choosing it and he wrote to The Hague to ask whether an automatic thing counts as voluntary, waited months, and the answer was that it does.
Vlad
Would you like to ask Akima if she can enter a group call with the two of us?
Marliene
Ask her yourself. She answered you in under a minute a moment ago and it took her a lot to write four lines to me. the yard noise stops, as though she has stepped inside Put us all on.
Vlad
writing to Akima Would you like to enter a group call with me and Marliene, because we have several questions.
Vlad's phone, alongside the call
-
Would you like to enter a group call with me and Marliene, because we have several questions.
-
Give me ten minutes. I am on the last hour of my shift and the floor is jammed at the second aisle.
The ten minutes run to nearly twenty. Marliene stays on the line through them without saying much, and the sound behind her changes from a yard to a room with a radio somewhere in it. Then the tone goes and the three of them are in the same call.
Akima
I am here. the sound of a door, and the warehouse noise cutting off behind it I read what I sent you and it was too long. Ask the questions.
The koseki and the juminhyo§
Vlad
So, if you are from the Netherlands and you acquire a citizenship in the Republic, you lose your citizenship. But if you are from Japan and you got here, how did you lose your citizenship exactly?
Akima
I have not lost it. My passport is Japanese and it stays Japanese for another two months, and the five years here are three and a half years away. What went is the registration underneath it, which is a different thing.
The koseki is the family register and the juminhyo is the residence record built on top of it, and when you move abroad the ward office takes the juminhyo off. My name is still on my father's koseki, and its registered address is in Chiba. Kochi is my mother's side, so my grandfather's house has no register of mine in it at all. On paper I am a national with no address in the country, so nothing that runs off an address works for me there: the health insurance, the pension, the seal registration, a bank counter, a phone contract.
Japan does the same thing the Netherlands does, though. If I reach five years here and the registrar writes it down, that is another nationality, and they expect you to choose within two years.
Vlad
So, the conditions are different from that of a visitor or tourist.
Akima
They are worse. A tourist walks in on a foreign passport, nothing is expected from them, and they leave in a week with the stamp closing it.
I walk in on a Japanese passport, so I am a national coming home, and a national is expected to have an address. Fluid gives me none they will read, since I am short of the five years and hold no citizenship here, and there is no consulate of theirs to explain me to them.
So I am a Japanese woman with a passport running out and nothing underneath it, and the counter has one procedure for that, which is to put me back on the register and spend time.
Vlad
And when they put you back into the registrar, you are expected to stay at home even though Fluid allows you to go back?
Akima
It is the other way. A short visit is treated as a stay abroad, so the ward office will refuse a re-registration for anyone home under a year, and I would be in Kochi with no address, no insurance card and a passport about to expire.
To be registered I have to be back to live, which means declaring an address and filing within fourteen days of arriving, and from that moment I am a resident of Japan again with the tax and the pension and the insurance running on me.
Fluid would let me fly home the same week, and the paper in Japan would say I live in Chiba while I sleep in Lindoma and work at the docks. So one side has me missing and the other side has me lying.
Houses left standing§
Vlad
For me, it's very easy to go back in my country and stay for a few months at say, my empty house, and then go back to where I was living in the Republic. In Romania my house is still mine, or rather, my parent's, because we fucked up the documents and we don't know who owns what, so I own the house only de facto.
Marliene
The same holds here up to a point. Your tenure is secure and no one can take a flat off you for going away, and there is no owner to pay because the letting of a dwelling for gain does not exist. Leave it standing empty past the period the organic law sets, though, and somebody moving into it has a defence against being put out. So a week is nothing, a season is nothing, and a year with the shutters closed is a different conversation with your housing cooperative.
Akima
That cannot happen at home. You hold a place there by paying for it and by being written into it, and the paper follows the address, so when you leave you still pay for it whether you sleep in it or not.
What Vlad describes, houses standing while the family works out who owns what, do exist in the countryside and are considered problematic at home. My grandfather's house is one of them.
Vlad
So, that is why I have to go in Japan, so I can visit your grandfather with a Fluidian passport.
Marliene
It gets you as far as their consulate and no further. Article 58 says the citizenship confers nothing a resident lacks, and its one function is representing you before other states, so the document is real and thin.
Akima
You go on the Romanian one anyway, because that is the passport with a visa waiver and mine is the one that runs out. a long breath And I have said everything I remember in one sitting, so if I have got a detail wrong somewhere in that, it is because I read it long ago.
Vlad
Okay, good, that's all, it has been difficult for me too.
Marliene
Then stop here. You have the dates, she has told you the reason, and the rest of it can wait for another day.
Akima
the warehouse door opening again behind her I have twenty minutes left on the floor. Thank you both, and I mean that in the flat way, without anything underneath it.
Vlad
Okay, see you later.
Marliene
See you.
Akima
See you later.
What the papers are worth§
A few days later, Vlad searches for what a resident actually has to do to leave the country and lands on cvria.fl, an explainer site kept by a group of law students at Lutoliluri.
cvria.fl · Travel and frontiers
Leaving the Republic: what your papers are worth abroad
1. The starting point
Article 57(3) says every person may leave the territory and return to it. Nothing in the Constitution permits an exit condition, an exit visa, a tax clearance, an employer's release or a police check, and Article 296(5) forbids the Republic from agreeing with any state to prevent a departure. Your own side of the journey is therefore settled before you begin.
The difficulty is on the other side. A frontier is opened by agreement, and the Republic has fewer of those than a state of its size normally has, because Article 291 removes what large partners would ask in exchange. Article 290(3) then requires a referendum for any agreement opening a frontier to the free movement of persons. Frontier agreements are consequently slow to make and few in number.
2. Where a resident of the Republic may go freely
- Allied States of Iosmein: open land frontier at the Corvaluri crossing since 1989, and open in the Bloc sense since 1994. You enter, remain, work, study and receive care on the footing of a resident there, under Article 296(2).
- Free Republic of Reformed Luces Aporia: same footing, reached by the maritime corridor from Lutoliluri to Sluland. This is the route to Zecina airport, which since its opening is the only airport in the Bloc.
The traffic runs both ways on identical terms. An Iosmenian or an Aporean arriving here enters, works and receives care as a resident of the Republic does.
3. Where a resident of the Republic needs a visa
Everywhere else, in practice. The Republic issues a passport recognised as a travel document, and the recognition ends there. Consular representation abroad is thin: a small number of missions, several of them shared with Iosmein, and none at all in most of Asia, Africa and the Americas. Article 58(3) states that citizenship confers no right a resident lacks and exists to represent the person before other states. What that representation is worth at a foreign desk depends entirely on the state at the desk.
Consequences a traveller should plan around:
- Visas are applied for in person, at a mission that is often in another country: budget the journey to the mission as part of the journey.
- Appointments are the constraint, not the fee: nothing charged here covers a foreign fee, which is met from your brought-in balance at the currency cooperative.
- A residence certificate from a communal office is the document foreign desks understand least: carry it, expect it to be read twice, and carry the passport as the operative document.
- Bloc membership carries no weight outside the Bloc: no third state grants anything on account of it.
4. Foreign nationals resident here have an easier journey
Residence in the Republic attaches to presence and intention under Article 57(2), and it does not touch the nationality you arrived with. Article 58(1) grants citizenship automatically at five years, with no oath and no renunciation, and Article 58(4) prohibits deprivation.
A foreign national resident here therefore holds two things at once. Inside the Republic and inside the Bloc, they move as a resident. Outside it, they travel on the passport of their state of origin, with whatever visa waivers that passport carries. An Austrian resident in the Republic uses the Austrian passport for a journey to Eswatini and reaches the desk on the same footing as any other Austrian.
Two cautions:
- Your state of origin may read the five-year certificate as a voluntary acquisition of another nationality: several jurisdictions withdraw their own nationality on that ground, and the automatic character of the Fluid procedure has not persuaded them. Establish your own country's rule before the five years elapse.
- Consular protection abroad follows the passport you travel on: the mission of your state of origin assists you. The Republic can rarely do so and in most countries it cannot establish missions.
5. The European Union
The Union is the Republic's largest trading partner and there is no free movement agreement, so a resident travelling on a Fluid passport applies for a visa in the ordinary way. Nationals of Union member states who reside here keep their own passports and their own rights of entry, so the journey is trivial for them and troublesome for everybody else. The Republic's standing objection to the externalisation of the Union frontier, which Articles 296(5) and 296(6) require it to make, has no bearing on an individual application.
6. Kingdom of Bor Brashavenko
The southern land frontier has been closed since 1939 and no crossing exists. There is no mission of the Republic in the Kingdom, no consular assistance of any kind, and no route home if something goes wrong. Travel there is strongly discouraged. Anyone who goes despite this should understand that the Republic can do nothing for them beyond what a third state agrees to do on its behalf.
7. Before you go
- Check the expiry of the passport you will actually travel on, and count months or years rather than weeks.
- Establish the visa rule for that passport, and not for your residence.
- Arrange foreign currency at the currency cooperative on notice, since currency here does not convert at the frontier.
- Register nothing on departure. No exit declaration exists, and your dwelling, your provision and your registration are unaffected by an absence of ordinary length.