Upon whether I know or not know a thing, depends my existence. If I know a thing is to happen, it is my foremost responsibility to see that it happens. This is my Yet, or Required Future, and it is the price I gladly pay to span time. Change of the known is resisted by the Continuum ceaselessly so our greater liberties and lives will be fulfilled.
My elders, or Elder Selves, have been me, and more. I will show them every courtesy, and set aside anything I am engaged in to fulfill their requests. I will speak to them only when spoken to, like the well-mannered child of parents' dreams.
Discipline is the lifeblood of the Continuum. I will know when and where I am and am going, and diligently record where I have been. I will arrange corners, or meeting places, when and where my fellow spanners can rendezvous in safety, and cooridinate our actions.
If a Leveller, or other unfamiliar person witnesses a Spanning event, one of the following must obtain, in ascending order of rarity:
a) The witness is made to forget or never tell.
b) The witnessing was a strike against the Continuum; the witness is made to forget or never tell, and the parties responsible for the breach are sought out and brought down.
c) The witness is to become a spanner, like myself, a part of the Continuum and must be respected.
I will assist my fellow members of the Continuum to fight their fragmentation up to a clearly defined point. Beyond that point I will no longer aid that spanner to repair their fragmentation. Lost Causes are spanners who, through accident or design, through their fault, the fault of others, or no fault of anyone's, have suffered fragmentation beyond all aid, even their own. If such fragmentation ever afflicts me this severely, I will not hesitate to spend my remaining existence in assisting the Continuum.
- -The Five Maxims, frontispiece, C°ntinuum
