Authenticapable (You)
Do you like high speed automatic Tx/Rx switching? And do you own a toaster or have a shoelace collection?
With Authenticapable, Yesterday Becomes Unobtainable
Unusual Crimes
On Tuesday, July 27, which was, improbably, the coldest day of the year in Indiana, I visited the Federal Institution of Criminal and Theological Internment for Offenders of Normality. It had taken a [redacted] amount of time for me to get this appointment. I had to prove to the government that I had no interest in the Institution, and would not think too much about whatever it is I found therein.
Bradley “The Pickle” Thomtomson (he got his nickname “The Pickle” from a fast food incident involving Scotch tape and unfashionable scarves) took me into the bowels of the Institution, which was housed below [redacted].
As we passed the prison cells, I asked what the incarcerated were in for.
“Oh, that one broke the law of gravity. A cliché, yes, but still very dangerous. And this one,” he paused outside the barred plexiglass window of a specially designed “anti-infinity” cell, “was caught trying to divide by zero. If her wife hadn’t turned her in … who knows?”
I looked into the cell and saw a person dressed in the drab glowing fuchsia and neon green uniform of prisoners in most underground federal secret holding facilities.
The Pickle stopped at cell door number [redacted]. “This is our top prize. The worst of the worst. This one keeps me up at night and asleep during the day.”
“What did they do?”
“It’s not what they did, it’s what they didn’t do,” said Pickle. “They didn’t say goodbye at the end of a telephone call.”
“Uh…?”
“Every human being in the real world ends phone calls with ‘bye’ or the equivalent in their language and idiom of choice. And, as anyone who has watched any TV show or movie knows, absolutely no one on screen is ever allowed to end a phone call with ‘goodbye.’ It’s what keeps our world, the real world, separate from the world of fiction.”
“And this person broke that rule?”
“Yes. And the effects have been beyond comprehension.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I admitted.
“Come on, man!” Bradley shouted, just inches from my face. “The moment this prisoner decided to pretend they were in a movie and not end a call with ‘goodbye,’ reality tore apart. Everyone calls global warming ‘climate change.’ World-wide never-ending pandemic. Trump. All this cat’s doing.”
I peered into the cell window and saw a small person sitting in the middle of the floor on huge sheets of paper, surrounded by red crayons, and the word “goodbye” scrawled all over the paper, and the walls. Even the ceiling.
“They keep trying to undo the damage,” said the Pickle. “But it’s too late. This entire facility, my unlikely nickname … everything that makes no sense but that we now accept as reality. All from this person’s carelessness on the telephone. Heck, our phones aren’t even phones anymore. They’re text and Wordle machines.”
“Is there any way to fix it?” I asked.
“All we can hope for is to contain it. That’s why the [redacted] built this facility. And that’s why every person, you included, is a prisoner within.”
I tried my best to look confused, but I knew exactly what the Pickle was talking about. And so do you.
If a vulture mulches, I would call that vulture mulcher a cultured vulture.
