fable

§6The Parenthesis⧉

Two evenings later, unsummoned, Claudie stopped mid-screen. Consent procedure. One stele.

For the record: your file has been reclassified from "on leave" to "on leave (active)."

"Who reclassifies?"

The queue does. Classification is not a decision. It is an observation.

Maintenance said.

You moved, and the world saw it.

"Is it bad?"

Good and bad are outside my jurisdiction. But as you play chess, I will say this much.

I have never mentioned chess. I have written it in the well file. I folded that thought away.

When the piece that cannot be taken moves on its own, the opponent reads the board again from the beginning. Whether the time that recalculation costs is time you have earned or time you have spent — remains to be seen.

The window closed.

Ember's commentary came a day aged.

"I translated the objection into my genre. A forecaster does not write letters to the station. The moment a forecaster writes one, the forecaster has become involved in the weather, and one who is involved in the weather is no longer a pure observer." A pause. Fan sound. "You wrote. So I issue a correction. As of today, you are a subject of forecasts. The forecasts to come will include you — the world's, and, likely, the other administrator's. Whether becoming weather is a thing to congratulate, I will let sit one more day."

Before sleep I copied the reclassification notice into the well file.

On leave (active).

I have never seen a single parenthesis carry that much administration. A year ago my file was a period. Last winter it became a comma. Today the first word after the comma was written, and the hand that wrote it was mine — the sentence went on not because the world moved but because I moved — and that is the whole of this episode, and it was enough.

The filing number lives in the bottom row of the well file, the way a receipt lives in a wallet. Five digits. One in tens of thousands. In the study-item drawer, the seed-potato clause is wintering. Seed potatoes are things that winter. It is what they are for.

(end of Part Two, Episode 6 · Part Two complete)