A man believes his life is his own—his birth, his marriage, his work, his property. Yet the documents say otherwise. A birth certificate becomes a bond. A marriage license inserts the state as primary executor above husband and wife. Contracts appear sacred, but the living witness is reduced to an entry—names, numbers, estates administered by institutions that never created the life they claim to manage. Law begins to resemble accounting, and the person becomes collateral within a structure...