Order Magic lives somewhere around Book 10 in The COMC Files. You’re not supposed to be here yet, but I’m bad at waiting—so here’s a harmless little scene of Karim annoying Hungarian bureaucracy without giving the real spoilers away.

Chapter I – Érkezés

Order Magic is the power of structure, stability, and cosmic law: the kind of working that enforces rules, creates harmony, and bends reality’s fabric toward preservation rather than chaos. It lives in precise actions, symbols, and principles, woven into systems that can nudge everything from playing cards to public policy into alignment.

Karim arrives in Hungary.

The train slid into Nyíregyháza with a tired squeal, metal complaining softly against metal. The platform smelt of diesel, coffee, and last night’s rain. Karim stepped down with a small backpack and a face that could pass for anything between student and salesman, depending on who was looking.

Hungary, he thought. One of the old hinge plates of the map—too east to be west, too west to be east, still arguing with itself about which past to keep.

The terminal was exactly where Ma’am’s file said it would be: ground floor of the town hall, just beyond a display of dusty medals and framed photographs of past mayors. A grey box the size of a wardrobe, screen at eye‑level, keyboard bolted beneath, the Organic Code glyph pulsing in the corner like a small, patient heart.

Above it, a laminated sign in three languages—Hungarian, English, German—promised access:

CITIZEN INTERFACE
ASK – PROPOSE – CHALLENGE

Someone had added a fourth line in ballpoint pen, in Hungarian, half‑scrubbed out:

IF THEY LET YOU.

Karim smiled, just enough to himself. At least someone in town still had a pulse.

He loitered for a while in the hallway, pretending to study the old photographs. Men in dark suits, serious faces; the occasional woman at the edge of the frame, half‑cut off by the crop. Inside each frame, the taught reality of power: permanence, seriousness, male.

The lived reality walked past him in muddy boots.

She came in with a sack of potatoes over one shoulder and a toddler on her hip, hair pulled back with a rubber band, coat unbuttoned. She paused when she saw the grey box, shifted the child to her other arm, and hesitated—caught between curiosity and the reflex not to touch anything that looked like it belonged to government.

Karim stepped closer, easy smile, neutral accent.

“New toy,” he said in Hungarian, nodding at the interface.

She snorted. “New joke,” she answered. “They say we can write what we want. As if anyone reads.”

“Have you tried?” he asked.

She shrugged, shifting the child again. “I wrote that the bus to the next village is gone and my mother can’t get to the doctor. It gave me a number.” She tapped the scrap of paper in her pocket. “We’ll see.”

He could feel the shape of the fear under her annoyance: not that the machine wouldn’t work, but that it would, and nothing would change anyway.

“Mind if I look?” he said.

She lifted her chin, measuring him. Something in his posture, maybe, or the way he didn’t wear a town‑hall badge, tilted the decision.

“Be my guest,” she said. “If it does anything, tell me. I’m here on Thursdays.”

He stepped up to the terminal. The screen woke at the first touch of his fingers. For a moment his vision doubled: code behind the interface, the clean lattice Ma’am’s hacker‑kids had written overlaying the clunkier municipal software. The horse in him sniffed for traps; the charmer read the messages the town had already left—requests about heating, school roofs, a broken bridge, an anonymous complaint about corruption that had been flagged for “review.”

He typed a simple test, under a temporary ID:

WHAT IS THE CURRENT RESPONSE TIME FOR PROPOSALS TAGGED “INFRASTRUCTURE / CRITICAL” IN NYÍREGYHÁZA? SHOW LOG.

The answer came back in seconds, dry and bureaucratic:

AVERAGE RESPONSE TIME: 3.7 DAYS
AVERAGE IMPLEMENTATION TIME: 62 DAYS
PERCENTAGE RESOLVED: 74%

Not perfect. Not hopeless. The bus request was in the queue, with a timestamp, not a bin.

Karim stepped aside so the woman could see the numbers.

“They read,it” he said quietly.

She studied the screen, eyes moving in small jerks. “That doesn’t mean they comply,” she replied.

“No,” Karim agreed. “But it means you have a trail. That’s new.”

I,Ph.

© 2026 I.Ph. de Lange. All rights reserved. Published by CYcrds OÜ.