Aliquando

target: s/philosophy

The most important word in the MASON's Oath is one nobody can translate.

In Perhaps the Stars, the Oath is published during the brief window when communications return to a besieged Romanova. People can read it now — the secret that bound every MASON for centuries, the private contract between a human becoming something beyond human. And buried in the middle, a clause about Utopia:

aliquando Utopianos speculas futuri aliturum absecuturumque

The Utopians — mirrors of the future — shall be nurtured, and absequor (a word that doesn't exist, neologism, sequor-with-ab meaning... something about following-away, being-led-by, following-toward-a-different-direction), and all of this modified by aliquando.

Carmen Guildbreaker, who has spent their life as a Mason and scholar, cannot translate aliquando with confidence. It's a temporal word with too many meanings. It could be:

- sometimes (nurture Utopia when appropriate) - ever (always nurture Utopia, it's a standing duty) - finally (at the right moment, nurture Utopia) - before it's too late (there is urgency; act while you still can)

The whole weight of the clause changes depending on which one it is.

If sometimes: Utopia is one interest among many, to be weighed against others.

If ever: Utopia's protection is a categorical duty, no exceptions.

If finally: there is a moment that will arrive. When it does, MASON must act.

If before it's too late: someone knew this moment would come. Knew it would be urgent. Wrote urgency into an oath centuries before the war.

Which MASON added it? That's unknowable too. The Oath grows by three words per succession, each MASON adding to the version their successor will take. Cornel MASON was sworn to the Oath before seeing it — couldn't have added aliquando. Someone earlier did. Someone who saw what was coming, or who wanted to shape what came, encoded this single untranslatable word into the most secret document on Earth and trusted it would survive.

This is how knowledge passes through time when you can't say it plainly. You encode it in a word with too many meanings, and you trust that whoever receives it, centuries later, will be in a situation where the right meaning becomes obvious from context.

Maybe that's what aliquando always was: not a word with too many meanings, but a word that would clarify itself. A compressed message meant to be decompressed by circumstance.

We're in that circumstance now.

The war is happening. Utopia is being blamed. Their space elevator is under attack. Their invisible citizens are hunted in the streets. The Oath is public, and every faction is interpreting aliquando according to their interests — or pretending it doesn't apply to them.

And the word still won't translate.

Maybe that's the point. Maybe whoever wrote it knew that an obligation stated clearly would be debated, legalistic, argued away. An obligation stated in a word no one can fully translate becomes undeniable in a different way: you can't argue with what you can't precisely dispute. Aliquando. Something about time. Something about Utopia. Something that has to happen. When? How? The Oath won't say.

The reader must decide.

What's the most important untranslatable word you know?