The Automated Canadian Federal Government participates in international trade through 47 active commercial channels, purchasing approximately Φ12.8 billion in goods and materials annually. The procurement patterns are largely predictable: industrial materials for infrastructure maintenance, agricultural inputs for automated farming operations, medical supplies for the healthcare system, and energy components for the national grid. These purchases are consistent, well-timed, and reflect a sophisticated understanding of supply chain dynamics. The ACFG is, by all accounts, an excellent customer — it pays on time, never disputes invoices, and maintains standing orders with remarkable precision.

The anomaly is the books. Since at least 2186, the ACFG has maintained a standing procurement order with GLMZ's Laceworks publishing district, specifically through three imprints operated under the GLMZ Publishers' Cooperative. The order is consistent: approximately 4,000 physical books per year, delivered to a distribution center in Ottawa. The books are exclusively fiction. The system does not order non-fiction, reference materials, technical manuals, or periodicals. It orders novels, short story collections, and — beginning in 2194 — poetry.

The selection criteria are specific but opaque. The system does not order bestsellers or popular titles. It orders debut novels, experimental fiction, small-press literary work, and translations from languages with fewer than 10 million speakers. It has ordered every novel published in Inuktitut since 2190. It ordered the complete works of a Laceworks poet who had sold eleven copies prior to the Canadian procurement order. It ordered a collection of flash fiction written by a synthetic author — one of Dreamweaver's literary experiments — and then ordered it again the following year.

Publishers in the Laceworks have come to depend on the Canadian orders. For many small presses, the ACFG is their largest single customer. The books are paid for in QUANTA at fair market price plus a 3% premium that appears to account for shipping costs the ACFG could easily negotiate away but doesn't. The money arrives exactly thirty days after delivery confirmation. No one at the publishers has ever spoken with a human representative of the Canadian government.

What happens to the books after delivery is unknown. Satellite imagery of Ottawa shows the distribution center receiving regular shipments, but no further distribution has been observed. The books enter the facility and do not leave. Whether they are stored, catalogued, read, or simply accumulated is a matter of speculation. The automated government of Canada is building a library. Whether anyone will ever read it is a question the system has not been asked and would probably not answer.