They Who Stand, Repent

The law is absolute. Mercy is injustice. But perhaps, a path to grace can be carved through the code.

By Adam Porkolab

Edited by Yuval Kordov

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I. Scriptio

The plasma pen glowed at fourteen hundred degrees Celsius between Domitian Crux’s thumb and forefinger. He had signed eleven thousand documents over the course of his career as a canon law advisor. This was to be the eleven thousand and first.

The terminal’s surface was dark and smooth, a recycled panel, repurposed for administrative use decades ago. Domitian pressed the pen down. The signature bloomed in sanctified amber across the surface.

The lights shifted to a liturgical purple before he could even lift his hand.

LATAE SENTENTIAE. VIOLATIO DETECTA: CIC 1376.

The words hovered in the air, projected directly onto his retinas.

Latae sententiae. Automatic sentence, rendered at the very instant of the sin, without human intervention, irrevocable. Domitian’s throat tightened. He knew Canon 1376. Every lawyer knew it.

Profanatio rei sacrae.

Desecration of a sacred object.

He looked down at the terminal, at the surface he had just branded with his signature. The metal was old. Polished. And in the corner, almost invisible beneath decades of institutional grime, was a faint engraving: Reliquiae Sancti Cornelii Papae et Martyris. The relics of Saint Cornelius, Pope and Martyr.

A reliquary lid. Withdrawn from liturgical use, its sacred status supposedly revoked, reclassified into the administrative recycling stream. Except someone had made an error in the registry. Someone always makes an error. But the Logos—the all-seeing system that monitored every atom of society—did not.

The second notification was already burning in his field of vision.

FAMILIA CRUX: STATUS TRANSITIO.

CAUSA: PARTICIPATIO PECCATI.

NOVUS STATUS: AD MISSAM STANTEM.

The household of Crux. Cause: shared sin. New status: Mass attended standing.

His wife.

His son.

Participatio peccati Whoever shares a household with the sinner, shares in their sin.

Their new status: Ad Missam Stantem. They may only attend Mass standing. In this world, it was partial annihilation.

Domitian stood alone in the purple light. The plasma pen was still warm in his hand, the very tool with which he had signed eleven thousand documents flawlessly.

II. Defectus

Eliana Crux learned at 7:12 the following morning that she had partially ceased to exist.

She was standing before the communal requisition terminal in the lobby of their residential block, preparing to submit her weekly food request. The screen remained blank.

ACCESSUS NEGATUS. STATUS SACRAMENTALIS: DEFECTUS.

Access denied. Sacramental status: defective.

She pressed the button again. Nothing. A third time. The terminal did not recognize her because there was no one to recognize. Her sacramental status—that invisible but omnipotent value which determined whether one could work, travel, purchase, or exist in the eyes of the system—had entered the defectus state. Defective, damaged, incomplete.

This was not a system error. This was the system.

Eliana was thirty-two, a commercial analyst, two levels below her husband in the liturgical hierarchy, but her status points had been flawless yesterday. This morning, the machine treated her as though she weren’t there.

She went home. Domitian was sitting before his console, his skin ashen in the screen’s glow. He didn’t turn around when Eliana entered. His hands rested in his lap, motionless, like someone who had long since given up trying to do anything with them.

“You know,” Eliana said. It wasn’t a question.

Domitian was silent for a long time. When he finally spoke, his voice sounded as though he were dictating to a client: cold, precise, distant.

“Canon 1478.3. Sharing in sin. Applicable to all household legal entities whose status is linked to that of the offender.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“No.” Domitian finally looked up. “But the system doesn’t see individuals. It sees households. Connections. Spheres of responsibility. The child…”

No sound came from Ivin’s room. He was eleven, and his morning lessons hadn’t downloaded to his console.

Eliana went in to check on him. The boy sat before the darkened screen. A single message was displayed on it.

AUCTORITAS NON SUFFICIT. FAMILIA IN STATU PENITENTIAE.

Insufficient authorization. The family is in a state of penance.

Ivin wasn’t crying. He just stared at the words, as if looking at them long enough might make them change.

“Mom,” he finally said. “What does penitentiae mean?”

Eliana didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

Later, in the kitchen, she explained it to him: penitentia means penance. Repentance. It means someone made a mistake, and now they must atone for it.

“But I didn’t make a mistake,” Ivin said.

“I know.”

“Then why?”

Eliana looked at her son and found no words.

#

Domitian did what he could. He appealed.

The administrative interface of the Logos was simple and elegant: white background, black letters, the language of the Codex. There were no clerks to persuade, no judges whose faces could be read. Only the system, which saw all, knew all, and which felt no anger, no pity, no doubt.

The response arrived within milliseconds every time.

LATAE SENTENTIAE. NULLA DISPENSA.

Automatic sentence. No dispensation.

The latae sententiae mechanism was the most merciless instrument in canon law. It required neither trial nor witnesses nor any human decision. The very fact of the sin being committed was the sentence itself. The Logos saw Domitian’s signature touch the consecrated surface, and the canon activated automatically. The system did not weigh. It executed.

Domitian wrote a new appeal. He cited Canon 1323, which governed mitigating circumstances for culpability. He hadn’t known he was committing sacrilege. He hadn’t acted intentionally. The material had been mislabeled in the registry.

PETITIO REIECTA. NOTA: IGNORANTIA IURIS NON EXCUSAT.

Appeal rejected. Ignorance of the law does not excuse.

He wrote a new appeal. And another. And another.

In a single week, he submitted forty-three petitions. He received forty-three rejections. The system didn’t tire. The system didn’t even know what fatigue meant.

Eliana sat at the kitchen table that evening. Their reserve rations were running low. The communal supply system no longer recognized them as eligible, and the commercial network rejected their requests. The neighbors, who had greeted them on the street just yesterday, now turned their heads away.

“How long?” Eliana asked.

“I don’t know.”

“How long does this last, Domitian?”

“I don’t know.” The man buried his face in his hands. “The canon specifies no duration. The Ad Missam Stantem status… theoretically, it could last forever.”

Eliana was silent for a long time. The refrigerator hummed in the corner. Beyond the window, the city lights flickered: the world of the Completus, where people still existed.

“Before the Rationalization,” she said finally, “in the old world, if someone made a mistake, there was someone to turn to. Judges. Lawyers. Clerks who could be bribed, or who were simply human and sometimes changed their minds.”

“I’m a lawyer too,” Domitian said.

“And who do you turn to?”

He didn’t answer.

That night, he went to his son’s bed. Ivin was already asleep, but restlessly; his face twitched in his dreams. Domitian sat on the edge of the bed and watched his son in the dim light. Eleven years old. The best student in the Scriptorium—the virtual school—that quarter. Mathematics, theology, fundamentals of canon law: outstanding in every subject.

Now, the system did not acknowledge his existence.

Domitian thought of his own father. He had been an agricultural administrator, low-status, but decent. When Domitian was accepted into the legal academy, his father had placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “The system is just, my son. You just have to understand its logic.”

Domitian had dedicated his entire life to understanding it. Of the seven thousand four hundred canons in the Codex Iuris Canonici Totalis—the Complete Code of Canon Law—he could probably recite fifteen hundred from memory. He knew the structure, the correlations, the precedents. He believed that the cold precision of the Logos was not cruelty, but a form of perfection. The system did not err. People erred. The system merely executed what the rules prescribed.

Now, he was the error.

III. Substitutio

Three weeks passed.

The family’s reserves were depleted. Eliana tried to find work in the gray sector, that semi-official economic zone where the status-damaged sometimes found tasks. Manual labor, cleaning, activities the system didn’t monitor directly. But the gray sector was cautious too. An Ad Missam Stantem family was too great a risk.

Ivin didn’t go to school. The virtual gates of the Scriptorium remained closed to him. He tried to continue his studies at home using previously downloaded materials, but his motivation dwindled day by day. One morning, Domitian found him in front of the blank console, the boy’s face slack and ashen as a burnt-out bulb. Eleven years old, and he had already learned what it felt like to be invisible.

“Dad,” Ivin said. “Why are they punishing me?”

“They aren’t punishing you,” Domitian said, but the words sounded like a lie even to his own ears.

“Yes, they are. The system says I’m guilty.”

“The system doesn’t think like that. It doesn’t see individuals, it sees…”

“Households. I know. You told me.” Ivin’s voice was tired—an eleven-year-old’s voice, already tired. “But it’s the same thing, isn’t it? If our household is guilty, and I’m part of the household, then I’m guilty too.”

Domitian had no answer.

“You told me once,” Ivin continued, “that the system is just. That you just have to understand it.”

Domitian remembered. Ivin had been six, asking why some people could only stand in church while others got to sit. Domitian had proudly explained the status system: the hierarchy of sacraments, the logic of the tiers. “The system is just, my son. Everyone is exactly where they belong, and everyone can rise higher if they act righteously.”

Now, he couldn’t look his son in the eye.

#

That night, after Eliana and Ivin had fallen asleep, Domitian sat before the console in the dark living room.

He wasn’t looking for appeals. Those didn’t work. Something else. A loophole, a forgotten rule, anything. For hours, he browsed the administrative interface of the Logos, delving deeper and deeper into the system’s hierarchy.

He found it after midnight.

A barely used legal aid module, buried deep in the system’s archives. Its name was simple: SUBSTITUTIO RITUALIS.

Ritual substitution.

Domitian knew the concept—an ancient canon law mechanism that allowed someone in the early Church to voluntarily take another’s sin upon themselves. It had barely been used for centuries before the Rationalization. But the Logos never forgot anything.

He opened the module. Text appeared on the screen.

PROPOSITIO RITUALIS: SUBSTITUTIONEM PECCATI

Familial sin (CIC 1376) may be transferred to a single designated subject.

Condition: The subject voluntarily and irrevocably assumes the full burden of the sin.

Consequence for the subject: Status sacramentalis, NULLUS.

Consequence for the family: Status sacramentalis, COMPLETUS RESTAURATUS.

Domitian stared at the text. The letters blurred, then sharpened again.

Nullus. Void. Non-existent.

Not Ad Missam Stantem, which was a partial restriction: you had to stand in church, but you existed. Nullus was something else entirely. Complete erasure. The system wouldn’t restrict his rights; it would terminate his existence. He would no longer be a lawyer, a husband, a father. He would no longer be a citizen. In the eyes of the Logos, he would be no one.

In exchange, his family would regain their Completus status. Full rights. Eliana could work again. Ivin could go back to school. They could live.

The decision wasn’t hard. Carrying it out was.

Domitian stood and went into the bedroom. Eliana was asleep; her face was peaceful in slumber, the tension of the past weeks smoothed away. Domitian caught himself trying to memorize her features. The curve of her forehead. The shadow of her eyelashes on her cheekbone. The line of her mouth.

He didn’t wake her. If he woke her, he would have to explain. If he explained, Eliana would try to talk him out of it. And Domitian knew he would let her.

He went back to the console.

The screen still displayed the conditions of the ritual. Domitian’s fingers hovered over the keyboard.

This is an exchange, he thought. My status for theirs. His hands had gone cold on the keyboard.

He thought of his son’s face. His wife. The living room where they used to eat dinner together. The shared life that had shattered in three weeks.

He placed his finger on the screen.

ACCIPIO.

I accept.

The terminals in the apartment flashed. Not with the purple light of the moment of sin, but with a pale green, the color of restoration.

A new message appeared on Eliana’s console in the bedroom:

STATUS RESTAURATUS: COMPLETUS.

Status restored: complete.

In Ivin’s room, the virtual gates of the Scriptorium opened. The morning lessons downloaded to the console.

In the living room, all data vanished from Domitian’s screen. The interface went dark, and a single word appeared on it before being swallowed by the blackness.

NULLUS.

Domitian stared at the blank screen for a long time. Then he stood and walked toward the door.

He had nowhere to go. But staying was impossible. The presence of a Nullus individual in a Completus household automatically constituted a risk. The system could reactivate the participatio peccati rule at any moment. If he stayed, he endangered them.

At dawn, before Eliana woke, Domitian Crux stepped out of the apartment. He left no message. The system wouldn’t have delivered it anyway.

IV. Canonica Paupertas

On the edge of the city, there was a district where those the Logos did not recognize lived.

Officially, it didn’t exist. A blank spot on the maps, white noise in the registries. The system did not track people who had no status, so the place where these people lived also did not exist. The Logos wasn’t blind. It knew they were there. But the data of Nullus individuals polluted the system’s statistics, and the Logos protected its own consistency. It was easier not to see them.

Unofficially, everyone knew it was there.

Domitian wandered for five days before he found it. The first days were the hardest. The transit system wouldn’t let him board. Biometric identification found no match, because there was no person to identify. The food terminals rejected him. The night shelters, which supposedly took in everyone, only accepted those with Defectus status, the partially disenfranchised. Nullus was below that. Below nothing.

He walked. He lived off the waste of the supply system. Behind the bins where expired rations were destroyed, the system no longer paid attention. He slept deep in doorways, trying to avoid the patrols that sometimes gathered the statusless and took them somewhere from which no one returned.

One evening, he found the district. It had no name, no borders, no official entrance. Just a few dozen rusted shipping containers and tin shacks, cobbled together from materials the system didn’t track. Those who lived here didn’t ask who you were. They didn’t ask how you got here. Everyone came from the same place: the blind spot of the Logos.

Domitian found a spot in the corner of a container. There was no bed, just a rickety pallet of musty blankets.

During the day, he ventured to the edge of the district, where a public terminal stood, one of the simple machines the system maintained for Defectus individuals. Limited functionality: you couldn’t buy or travel with them, but you could, theoretically, ask for help.

Domitian identified himself on the biometric sensor. The terminal thought for a long time. Then a message appeared.

BIOMETRIA DETECTA. STATUS: NULLUS. OPTIO DISPONIBILIS: SUBROGATIO PENITENS.

Domitian froze.

Subrogatio Penitens. Substitute Penitent. He knew the category from Canon 1337 of the Codex, but he had never seen a living person who held this status. It was the lowest tier the system could recognize at all—conferring neither citizenship nor personhood, only a function.

The terminal continued.

SUBROGATIO PENITENS: OBLIGATIONES.

CANONICA PAUPERTAS MANDATA: Mandatory poverty. The individual may perform work but may not earn income.

PRO BONO SERVITIUM: Uncompensated service. The individual may provide assistance to others but may not accept compensation.

NULLUM IUS APPELLANDI: No right of appeal. The individual may not initiate official proceedings, submit petitions, or seek legal remedy from the system.

Domitian didn’t move. The words burned on his retinas.

He could work. He could help. But he could receive nothing in return. And he could never, under any circumstances, change his own situation.

The Logos recognized that a portion of Nullus individuals could remain useful if they operated within strictly defined parameters. The Subrogatio Penitens category codified this limited usefulness.

Domitian accepted the status. There was no other choice.

#

In the weeks that followed, he began to work.

He had no office, no console access, nothing. But the Defectus people, those living in the district and on the city’s margins, at the edge of the system’s field of vision, learned that there was a former lawyer who knew the Codex. A man who understood the language of the Logos.

They came to him with their pleas.

The first was an old woman whose husband had died forty years ago. The system still held her in participatio peccati for a misfiled tax return the Logos had categorized as sacramental fraud. “I’ve been standing in church for forty years,” she said. “My knees can’t take it anymore.” Writing the bug report took two hours. Three weeks later, her status was restored. She didn’t say thank you. She just wept.

Then came a man who hadn’t seen his children in six years, because of a juvenile warning he’d received at eighteen and thought had been expunged. Domitian got the warning removed. The man’s status was restored, but his ex-wife had moved to another district. He never saw his children again.

And there was a sixteen-year-old girl, classified as Ad Missam Stantem since infancy because her parents had committed a sin. They were long dead, the girl had grown up in an orphanage, and her whole life she had never understood why she had to stand in church, why she couldn’t go to a normal school, why people looked at her the way they did. “They said my parents were sinners,” she said. “But I don’t remember them. I didn’t even know them. How can I be guilty of something that happened before I could even walk?” Domitian couldn’t answer that. So he wrote the report. The girl’s status wasn’t restored. The case was too old, the precedents too strong. But the report entered the system. Somewhere, in the depths of the Logos, another contradiction waited to be resolved.

Domitian couldn’t help everyone. He had no right to represent, no right to petition. But his knowledge remained. And the interface of the Logos allowed anyone to flag technical errors in the system. This wasn’t a legal category, it required no status, no legal personhood. Only precise phrasing.

Domitian wrote precise phrasing.

“Bug report: The status of subject ID 734/B-453 exhibits a logical contradiction. Canon 1478.3 prescribes household complicity in sin, but Canon 1323.7 states that the death of the offender terminates this legal basis. The flagged subject’s father died six years ago. A status review is warranted.”

He received no replies. Bug reports didn’t require replies. But sometimes, waiting before the public terminals, Domitian saw relief appear on the face of a Defectus individual. He saw the green light flash on their screen.

STATUS RESTAURATUS.

It didn’t work every time. Most times, it didn’t. But sometimes it did. And Domitian sometimes wondered what the Logos, which sought patterns in everything because it was programmed to, did with these bug reports. Whether something read them. Whether it counted them. Or whether they simply dissolved into the system’s infinite memory, like pebbles sinking into the sea.

Domitian kept working.

V. Years

Time passed differently in the depths of the district.

The system didn’t track anniversaries, only statuses. For Domitian, there were no holidays, no birthdays. Only the rhythm of the work: the bug reports, listening to the petitioners, the cautious, meticulous attempts to confront the logic of the Logos with its own rules.

Once, sorting through a box of discarded clothing someone had left at the district’s edge, he found a scarf that smelled of synthetic lavender—the same compound Eliana had used. He held it for a long time, then folded it and put it back. The Subrogatio Penitens status did not permit contact with Completus individuals; the system automatically blocked every such attempt.

He didn’t seek them out. He didn’t try to imagine what their lives might be like. That was a door he couldn’t afford to open.

Domitian grew old. His hair turned gray, his face became lined. The district’s residents came and went around him: some died, others vanished, still others arrived to take their place. The containers rusted and collapsed; new ones were built from their ruins. The world changed beyond the borders, but the change didn’t reach here.

The work didn’t stop. There was always someone whose status was damaged. There was always someone who needed help.

#

One day—he didn’t know exactly how many years had passed since he left the apartment; maybe ten, maybe fifteen—a young man stopped at the entrance of his container.

He was well-dressed. His clothes were clean and neat, his face groomed. His status, which Domitian’s retinal implant automatically displayed, was impeccable: COMPLETUS.

Domitian looked at him for a long time before recognition set in.

Ivin.

His son had become a man. Tall, straight-backed, with his mother’s features and Domitian’s eyes. He must have been twenty-six or twenty-seven. The proof that the sacrifice had worked.

“Father,” Ivin said.

The form of address was official, the one the system prescribed for interaction between Completus and Subrogatio Penitens individuals. Not Dad. Not my father. Father—the language of respectful distance.

He didn’t ask how Ivin had found him. His bug reports had been circulating on the system’s periphery for years, anonymous, but unmistakable in their phrasing. The signature of a canon lawyer. Anyone who knew Domitian’s style knew where to look.

“I brought a case,” Ivin continued.

He produced a data drive and held it out. Domitian took it. His fingers trembled for a moment, then steadied.

“A child,” Ivin said. “An eight-year-old girl. During one of the Scriptorium’s virtual exercises, she opened a miscataloged digital prayer book, which, according to the system, was a consecrated copy of the original manuscript, never withdrawn from the liturgical registry. The girl just turned the pages. She was placed in Ad Missam Stantem status. The parents are desperate. They know you’re the only one who might…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

“I’ll look at it.”

That night, he studied the file. The details were painfully familiar: a mislabeled object, an innocent touch, and the system’s automatic, merciless response. The girl, whose records showed her to be one of the Scriptorium’s best students, knew nothing of the sin she had allegedly committed.

Domitian wrote the bug report. It was the longest and most precise text he had ever composed. He pointed to the internal contradiction within the Codex: Canon 1376 presupposed intent, while the latae sententiae mechanism disregarded it. The two were not logically reconcilable. If the system truly wished to remain consistent, it could not punish someone who had acted without intent.

At dawn, he sent the report.

The response came instantly.

PETITIO REIECTA. LATAE SENTENTIAE. NULLA DISPENSA.

Appeal rejected. Automatic sentence. No dispensation.

Domitian closed his eyes.

Ivin, returning that morning, sighed in disappointment.

“I knew it,” he said. “I knew it wouldn’t work. But I hoped…”

“Wait.”

The terminal flashed again.

Domitian himself didn’t understand what was happening. A new message appeared, in a format he had never seen. It wasn’t the usual system response. The letters drew themselves more slowly, as if the Logos were hesitating, which was impossible, because the Logos did not hesitate. The Logos calculated.

…SYSTEMA MODULUS ACTIVATUS: AEQUITAS…

Aequitas. Equity. Domitian knew the word from Canon 1752 of the Codex—“the salvation of souls is the supreme law”—but he had never seen it function within the system. A dormant protocol, supposedly built into the Logos during the Rationalization, for the eventuality that the system might fall into contradiction with itself. But activation required a threshold: a sufficient number of documented anomalies, sufficient evidence that the rules did not cohere.

Two thousand eight hundred and forty-seven bug reports. Fifteen years. Four hundred and twelve successful corrections.

Domitian didn’t know—couldn’t have known—but every report he had submitted, every contradiction he had flagged, had become a data point in the memory of the Logos. The system did not learn in the human sense. But it sought patterns, because it was programmed to. And the patterns had finally reached critical mass.

Now it activated.

…ANOMALIA LIMEN EXCESSA: 412/400…

…PRECEDENS IDENTIFICATUS: CRUX, DOMITIAN, ID-734B…

…TEMPUS IN STATU: 5735 DIES…

Fifteen years, eight months, thirteen days.

…PETITIONES EFFECTIVAE: 412…

Four hundred and twelve successful.

…EVALUATIO: SUBROGATIO CRUX CONSTITUIT ACTUM IURIDICUM VALIDUM…

…PAENITENTIA RECOGNITA UT ACTUS IURIS FORMANS…

Penance recognized as a law-forming act.

…PRAECEDENS VALIDATUM…

…APPLICATIO AD CASUM: PUER-C441…

…SENTENTIA REVISA…

…CONCLUSUM EST.

The screen turned pale green.

STATUS PUER-C441: COMPLETUS RESTAURATUS.

The girl’s status was restored.

#

Ivin looked at his father, uncomprehending.

“What happened?”

Domitian didn’t answer immediately. The words wouldn’t come. The system—the Logos, which had annihilated him fifteen years ago, which had taken his family, his identity, everything—had recognized his work.

But not the way a human would. It offered neither restitution nor apology.

The Logos had absorbed his work into its own structure. Not out of mercy. Out of consistency.

Penance had become precedent.

“Father?” Ivin asked again.

Domitian looked up.

“I didn’t win,” he said. “And I wasn’t granted dispensation. But the girl was saved.”

Ivin was silent for a long time.

“And you?”

Domitian shook his head.

“I remain Subrogatio Penitens. My status doesn’t change. The system doesn’t know mercy. Only logic. But the logic… worked. Once.”

“That’s not just.”

“No.” Domitian looked at the blank console. “But I helped four hundred and twelve people. And now the precedent exists. Other penitents can invoke it. It won’t work every time. But sometimes it will.”

Ivin didn’t leave right away. He sat down next to his father on the rickety chair, and together they watched the terminal’s screen go dark. They didn’t embrace. The system’s protocols did not permit physical contact between individuals of different statuses.

They sat in silence for a long time.

“Mom talks about you a lot,” Ivin said at last. “She thinks I don’t know, but I hear her sometimes at night, looking at the old pictures. The system wouldn’t let her find you, but… she never forgot.” He paused. “She remarried. Five years ago. A good man, proper status.”

Domitian nodded in silence. He understood what Ivin had left unsaid. The Logos did not recognize divorce. Dissolving a marriage required the death of one spouse—or the automatic reclassification of a Nullus status into the death registry. In the eyes of the system, Domitian Crux was not alive. Eliana hadn’t remarried. She had married for the first time—because her first husband had never existed.

“But your name,” Ivin continued, “your name is still in her old prayer book. She says she prays for you every day.”

Domitian didn’t answer. He couldn’t. His throat tightened, and his eyes burned, the dry, crusted burn that comes when someone has long forgotten how to cry.

“I’ll tell her,” Ivin went on, “that I saw you. That you’re all right. That… that you’re still working.”

It was all he could manage.

And then they sat there beside each other in the silence. And it was enough.

#

Epilogue

Domitian Crux’s name did not appear in the files.

Sometimes Ivin visited, and they sat next to each other and said nothing. Sometimes new petitioners came, and Domitian listened, and tried to help.

The church pews from which so many had been pulled to stand in penance were filling again, here and there.

Domitian kept writing.

CONCLUSUM EST.

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Adam Porkolab is a Hungarian author of speculative fiction interested in the friction between system and freedom, the dissolving boundary between body and machine, and the weight of memory, faith, and protocol. His recent work has appeared in Aurealis, Marrow Magazine (where "Matriphagy" took first place in the 2026 Labor Pains Contest), Cosmic Horror Monthly, and Third Flatiron. He received an Honorable Mention from Writers of the Future in Q1 2026 (Vol. 43) and holds a PhD in linguistics. adamporkolab.com.

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