Opening address (to be read aloud):

The clerk:

Government business matters number 1: Excessive Grounds and Contingent Practices (Seas and Submerged Lands Act).

Appointing Thursday 17th of March, of the year 2022, at 8pm as the day and time for the assembly to gather across distributed geographies, so that the following document may be submitted at that time, day, and place. Open to debate and amendment where required this document takes the form of a bill proposed to your gathered audience in the writing and speaking of legislative speculation.

As of this reading, I, the parliamentary clerk, articulate a proposition from my station in Excessive Grounds—at the ocean floor and seabed—where methodological arrangements of narrative research are written into and through the Spoiled matters of the present.

Desiring your attendance in the confirmation and admission to research, the doing of practice and the required contribution to reformulations of mattered knowledge. A request of your hearing. This Act provides an administrative framework for narrative-to-come.

In descendance to the undersea light dims, long wavelengths of the colour spectrum—yellow, red, orange—losing themselves in the fine particles hovering in the water column. Filamentous algae feasts on bioavailable rubble, as turtles and southern right whales migrate above. A layer of silt settles into position, with the rhythm of currents stimulating the softened grit to create a mist that lingers.

And in this lingering attendance, a reading.