The great pyramids of Egypt took eighty-three years to build, which was, by any measure, a visa overstay.

Keth-Annu had arrived with the others in the third month of the reign of a king whose name would later be rendered unpronounceable by people who had not been there. The group numbered eleven. They had filed the standard Temporary Presence Declaration — form 7-Sigma, in triplicate, submitted to the nearest Regional Authority, which at that time maintained its nearest office some forty light-minutes away in the direction of what would later be called Orion. The permitted duration of stay: one solar cycle, renewable once upon application.

Nobody had applied for renewal. There had been, it must be said, a great deal going on.

The work itself was not the problem. The Regional Authority had no objection to labour, provided it fell within the scope of activities declared on the original form. Keth-Annu had listed their purpose as cultural exchange and minor geological consultation. This was, strictly speaking, accurate. The pyramids were geological in nature. The culture was being exchanged. The form had not asked them to specify scale.

The Inspector arrived in the eighty-fourth year.

He was not physically imposing, which was intentional. The Authority had learned, over several hundred thousand years of enforcement activity across fourteen galaxies, that physical imposition created martyrs. The Inspector wore instead a quality of presence that made the air around him feel slightly more administered than elsewhere. Forms seemed to materialise in his vicinity. Surfaces acquired the character of desks.

He found Keth-Annu at the base of the second structure, which was nearly complete.

"You are aware," the Inspector said, without preamble, "that your Temporary Presence Declaration expired in year one."

Keth-Annu looked at the pyramid. Then at the Inspector. Then at the pyramid again.

"We were nearly done," she said.

"In year one," the Inspector said, "you were not nearly done. You had, as I understand it, not yet begun."

"We were nearly done deciding."

The Inspector produced a form. It was, Keth-Annu noted, already filled in. This was the thing about the Authority — they did not arrive to investigate. They arrived having already investigated, the form a fait accompli, the visit a courtesy extended to the procedural requirement that the subject be informed.

"The structures themselves," the Inspector said, "present a secondary compliance issue. Permanent installations require a Development Consent Order, filed no fewer than one solar cycle prior to commencement. No such order was filed."

"We didn't know we were going to build them," Keth-Annu said. "It was spontaneous."

"Three million blocks of limestone," the Inspector said. "Averaging two and a half tons each."

"We got carried away."

The Inspector made a note. This was, Keth-Annu understood, not a note toward a decision. It was a note confirming a decision already made, recorded for the file, the file being the thing that mattered most to the Authority — more than the pyramids, more than the overstay, more than the eleven beings who had spent eighty-three years doing something that would confuse an entire civilisation for the next four thousand years.

"You will need to leave," the Inspector said. "The structures may remain as they are classed as abandoned works under Article 9, Paragraph 4 of the Temporary Presence Guidelines, provided no further additions are made and no intellectual property claim is filed against the host civilisation."

"What about the humans?" Keth-Annu asked. "They helped. Some of them."

"They are residents," the Inspector said. "Different form entirely."

He handed her the departure notice. It was, she noticed, already stamped.

The eleven of them left that evening. Not dramatically — there was no column of light, no thunderclap, nothing the humans watching could later describe with confidence. One moment they were there. Then the air lost its administered quality.

The desks became rocks again.

The humans stared at the pyramids for a long time.

Then, because there was nothing else to do, they began telling each other that they had built them.

The Inspector filed his report. The case was closed. The file was retained, per standard procedure, for ten thousand solar cycles.

Nobody ever applied to reopen it.