The notice went up three days before.
A single line. Kelvin's handwriting, clean and precise on the paper he used for official postings.
Settlement gathering. Memorial field. Seventh bell. Attendance expected.
That was all.
It was enough.
The settlement had been here long enough that it understood the difference between attendance requested and attendance expected. Kelvin chose his words carefully. He always had.
They came before the seventh bell.
That was the thing Satou noticed first when he walked out to the field at the sixth bell and found a third of the settlement already there. Not assembled in orderly lines — arranged the way people arranged themselves when they wanted to be present for something and hadn't been told where to stand. Clustered near the markers, near the eastern approach, spilling back toward the main building and the construction site.
Over a thousand of them by the time the bell rang.
