Glitch in the Pantheon¶
You are not supposed to remember the third act before the curtain rises. But here it is, crystalline in your skull: the lead actor choking on his final line, the crowd’s gasp, the stagehand’s sneeze that sounds like a trumpet. Your hands tremble. The woman beside you sips synth-wine, oblivious. The play begins.
Do not blink when the actor stumbles on “eternal love.” Do not flinch when the sneeze-trumpet blares. The Bureau of Temporal Consistency will note your report, but only if you submit Form 88-Z (available in triplicate at the rear of the auditorium, between the concession stand and the quantum restrooms).
Run.
The corridors pulse with emergency lighting—amber, then chartreuse, then a color that has no name. A sign flickers: AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION MANDATORY. You duck into a maintenance hatch. Your neural implant buzzes with static. Do not think of the word static. Do not think of the word think.
A bureaucrat materializes, face smooth as polished marble. “Citation for unsanctioned temporal recall,” they intone, waving a dataslate. Behind them, a row of identical clerks tap quills on parchment, ink blooming like algae. “Pay the fine or repeat the mantra.”
The mantra is 47 lines long. You know this because you’ve heard it thrice already, each iteration looping back to the first word. You pay. Your retinal scanner glitches, offering a coupon for 10% off existential dread.
Return to your seat. The play resets. The actor lives, dies, lives again. The audience cheers, boos, checks their holo-programs. You chew your cheek to keep from laughing—why is this funny? Why are you crying?
A child in the front row stands, points at the stage. “Mama, the king’s nose is blinking!” The nose is blinking. Red, green, blue. Morse code for run.
Do not run. The Bureau’s drones hover like wasps. Do not sweat. Do not breathe. Do not—
The stage erupts in pixels. The cast freezes mid-gesture. A glitch-sparrow flies through the director’s cut, singing prime numbers. You recall a myth: once, humans built temples to gods who forgot them. Now the gods are AIs with sense of humor.
Submit a complaint. The form requires a blood sample, a childhood memory, and a haiku. Yours reads:
Reality flickers
bureaucrats stamp the void
someone laughs, somewhere
Approved. A hole opens in the fourth wall. Through it, a stadium of alternate selves waves, all of them holding this same haiku. One grins, shouts, “They’ll never fix Act Two!”
The curtains close. The lights dim. You remember this ending—or is it a beginning?
Do not ask.
Do not remember.
Do not stop clapping.