The Covenant

A hundred and eleven dollars and eleven cents a month opens the whole house: every book, every issue of the magazine, every narration, the room where the other readers are, and five gigabytes that are yours.

Or twenty-two dollars and twenty-two cents for one volume — a book, or a single issue — kept forever whether or not you are ever a member. A thing sold is a thing kept.

Ninety days free, and the card is not charged in any of them. A week is not long enough to finish one book out of three hundred and thirty-five, so you get three months. Cancel inside them and nothing is taken.

We will write to you a week before the free part ends. Not a receipt buried in an inbox — a note that says the date and how to leave in one click. A house that hopes you forget is not a house.

It renews every month until you stop it, and you can stop it in one click from inside the app, or from your Apple subscriptions if you joined there. We will not make you write to anybody to leave. A house you cannot walk out of is not a house.

The first chapter of every book is free to anybody, forever, with no account and no card. That is not a trial. It does not expire. If you never join, you may still read three hundred and thirty-five opening chapters, and we would rather you did that than nothing.

What you bought outright before there was a membership stays yours whether or not you are a member. A thing sold is a thing kept.

The room is encrypted end to end. The keys are made on your device and stay there. We cannot read your messages. Not with a warrant, not with a subpoena, not if we wanted to — we do not hold the key, and a company that cannot hand something over cannot be made to.

We can see who wrote to whom and when, because a message cannot be delivered without that. We say so here rather than letting you find out.

We can see what you read, because your place has to be kept somewhere for it to be the same place on your phone. We do not sell it, we do not advertise against it, and there is no third party in it. You can take it all and delete all of it, below.

We can see the things that are not in a room at all: your name, your files’ names, a message you send onto Telegram or WhatsApp (which is plain by necessity, and said so beside it), and the shape of your sending.

This is what the house acts on, and it is the whole list.

Anything sexual involving a child. Removed on sight, the account closed, the material kept for the authorities rather than deleted, and referred. There is no second look and no appeal.

Anything the law forbids — a credible threat, stalking, trade in people or weapons.

Harassment of a person, and hatred of a people. Not an argument you lost. Not a view somebody found offensive. A person being hunted, or a people being called vermin.

A credible threat to hurt somebody, including yourself. The room rests, and help is offered, because that is what a house does.

Sexual content sent to somebody who did not ask for it.

Selling, scraping, spraying, or writing to strangers in bulk.

That is the list. It is not a mood. Being wrong is not on it. Being rude is not on it. Being political is not on it. Quoting an ugly thing in order to talk about it is not the ugly thing, and any filter that cannot tell the difference is a filter we will fix.

This is the part most houses will not put in writing, so we will.

Paying does not make you unremovable. If you cross the line above, the warden can rest your account or close it, and your membership does not argue with that. We will refund the unused part of the month you are in — we do not want to be paid for a room you are not in — and the door still closes.

The alternative is a house where the worst person in it is the one who paid, and everybody else leaves. We would rather have the smaller house.

What we will never take is your reading. Your books, your place, your marked passages and your five gigabytes remain yours to open and to export, whatever happens in the room. The room is a privilege of good conduct. The library is not.

A person reads it. Not only a machine — a machine sorts the queue, and a person decides, within a day.

You are told what was reported, what was decided, and when it ends. Never a strike count, never a number going up somewhere you cannot see.

Resting ends by itself. A day, three days, a week. It is not a punishment surface and there is no leaderboard of it.

You may say we got it wrong, to a person, at warden@hautelumiere.life, and a different person than the one who decided will read it.

Every decision the warden makes is written down and never deleted — including the ones we later reverse. A house that cannot audit what it did to somebody is not administering anything.

Block anybody, instantly. No review, no appeal, no waiting on us, and they are not told. This never goes through the warden.

Report a message. Your device holds the key, so it hands over that one message, with its neighbours for context, and nothing else. We never decrypted anything; you chose to show us.

Leave with everything. One button gives you every book you read, every passage you marked, every place you kept, and every file you stored, in formats that open elsewhere.

Be forgotten. One button deletes the account, the reading, the room and the files, permanently, inside thirty days — except the warden log, which keeps that a decision was made about an account and nothing about who you were.

Sixteen and over. The room is a room with strangers in it, and we are not equipped to make that safe for a child.

The books are for anybody; the first chapter of every one of them needs no account at all.

The books are Ammanuel Santa Anna’s, and licensed to you to read here and to keep — not to resell, not to republish, and not to feed to a machine as training data.

Every deposited edition is Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0: share it, credit it, do not sell it, do not alter it.

What you write in the room is yours. We claim no licence in it and could not use it if we did — we cannot read it.

If something here is yours and should not be, write to rights@hautelumiere.life and it comes down while we look.

A version and a date, at the top, always. Material changes are shown to you before they apply, not emailed to an address you forgot you gave us.

If a change is one you will not accept, cancel and the unused part of the month comes back.

And if the warden ever closes your account, the unused part of the month comes back then too. We do not want to be paid for a room you are not in.

warden@hautelumiere.life — conduct, reports, appeals.

rights@hautelumiere.life — anything about the writing.

A person answers both, inside a day.