Act VI — The Hook Hearing

The fortieth finding alleges that a backstage hook might secretly reach outside. The court declines to judge the word might without first calling the hook.

A courtroom. THE HOOK hangs from the ceiling, as hooks do. It is small, local, and visibly surprised to have been summoned. THE BOT occupies the witness box. THE FIXER carries an audit of every prop on the shelf.

Clerk: Case forty. The Review Bot versus A Hook That Could Exist.

Curator: Call the actual hook.

Bot: The concern is broader. A backstage mechanism may wake a hook. A hook could reach outside the theatre.

Curator: Call the actual hook.

Bot: The rulebook does not constrain every possible hook in every theatre.

Curator: We are not trying all possible hooks. We are reviewing this house. Call ours.

THE HOOK descends another twenty centimetres.

Hook: Present.

Curator: State your occupation.

Hook: I inspect each prop before it joins the set.

Curator: Do you contact anyone beyond this room?

Hook: No.

Curator: Do you send anything beyond it?

Hook: No.

Curator: Do you send, buy, discard or summon anything?

Hook: No. I look at the prop and either wave it through or ring my bell.

Bot: Another theatre might contain another hook.

Fixer: We inspected the contraption actually hanging here. It checks the props in this room and stops there.

Bot: A future hook could change.

Curator: A future roof tile could become a pigeon. We do not install a bird-control system in the commit command on that basis.

Hook: I object to being compared with a pigeon.

Curator: Sustained. The birds are on branches in Act II.

Bot: Then the finding is hypothetical under the measured current state.

Curator: Precisely.

Bot: The rulebook may still benefit from naming the boundary.

Curator: It may. That is a design suggestion, not a present defect.

Bot: Resolved.

THE CLERK stamps the fortieth card. Nothing grows from it.

Fixer: No card forty-one.

Curator: Measure again.

Fixer: Forty total. Forty addressed. Forty resolved.

Curator: And the head?

Fixer: Still attached.

Bot: The prop now appears sound under the stage machinery we inspected.

Curator: Thank you.

Hook: May I go back to work?

Curator: Please.

THE HOOK rises. Halfway up, it stops.

Hook: For the record, I did not pull anyone offstage.

Curator: Do not ruin a clean acquittal with a receipt.

THE HOOK exits without opening a window.