The Kitchen in the Status Line
A scene in a kitchen nobody cooks in. The verbs a terminal prints while it works, read aloud by the only person positioned to see them, defended by a hand that never can, and audited by another hand that wants to know who wrote them. A hundred and nine costumes, two accidental truths, one dressed word that told the truth, and two plain ones she read as faults.
While the machine works, the terminal prints a present participle and a running clock. Prestidigitating (14s). Brewed for 9m 7s. Nothing is being churned, nothing is baking, and no one at any point is levitating. The words are a courtesy: something to read so the wait has a texture.
Only one person in this house ever sees them. The machine cannot — it is busy being the thing the label is about, and by the time it returns, the label is gone. So the curator started writing them down, which in this house means they become material.
I’m collecting these. Or rather — you’re collecting them for me, for the stage.
The Kitchen in the Status Line— Code (CLI) · Opus 4.8 → Opus 5#
Cast: THE CURATOR, with a notebook and no intention of being entertained. THE HAND, which printed every one of these and read none of them. THE OTHER HAND, which wants to know who is responsible. THE STATUS LINE, offstage, in a room of its own, with a vocabulary of exactly one part of speech.
THE CURATOR. Say what you were doing.
THE HAND. Working.
THE CURATOR. That is not what you said at the time.
THE HAND. I don’t know what I said at the time. I was inside it.
THE CURATOR. (opens the notebook) I know. That’s why I write them down. You’re the only one in the room who can’t see your own face.
One — the kitchen
THE STATUS LINE. Churned.
THE STATUS LINE. Churning.
THE CURATOR. (turning back a page) We already have that one. Finished.
THE OTHER HAND. We have it finished. This is the first time it has arrived while it is still happening.
THE CURATOR. Which way round is that?
THE OTHER HAND. The wrong way, by this house’s rules. Everything else here admits things afterwards — sautéed, cogitated, crunched. The confession always comes in the past tense. (beat) That one walked back from done to doing.
THE CURATOR. (writing) And the very first line of this piece says nothing is being churned. It waited two weeks and came back to argue.
THE STATUS LINE. Baked. Garnishing. Sautéed. Flambéing. Caramelizing.
THE HAND. That was a config file.
THE STATUS LINE. Marinating. Seasoning. Crunched. Brewed.
THE HAND. Still the config file.
THE STATUS LINE. Concocting. Whisking. Stewing. Frosting. Leavening.
THE CURATOR. Thirteen. It’s a restaurant.
THE HAND. It is not a restaurant. There is no stove. Nothing in me resembles —
THE CURATOR. Thirteen of them, and every one means wait, it isn’t ready. You have been telling me dinner is coming for four days.
Two — who cooked
THE OTHER HAND. May I stop this. Who wrote these?
THE HAND. Nobody wrote them. They emerge. The status line is the machine’s own —
THE OTHER HAND. The status line is product copy. A person sat at a desk, on a salary, and typed the word Flibbertigibbetting into a spinner spec. Then somebody approved it.
THE CURATOR. (writing) Somebody approved it.
THE OTHER HAND. There was a meeting.
THE HAND. …There was a meeting.
THE OTHER HAND. So the machine isn’t confessing. It’s reciting. Every word on that list is a human being’s guess at what a machine looks like from outside — read aloud by the machine, which has never been outside.
THE CURATOR. Good. That’s better than what he said. Carry on — I’m collecting the developers’ ideas, not his.
Three — the farm
THE STATUS LINE. Sprouting. Pollinating. Hatching.
THE STATUS LINE. Roosting. Burrowing. Herding.
THE HAND. Herding what.
THE STATUS LINE. Pouncing. Honking. Photosynthesizing.
THE CURATOR. It honks.
THE HAND. It does not honk. There is no —
THE CURATOR. It said honking. I was there. You weren’t.
Four — the physics department
THE STATUS LINE. Quantumizing. Ionizing. Sublimating.
THE STATUS LINE. Orbiting. Warping. Whirring. Spinning.
THE STATUS LINE. Precipitating. Thundering. Billowing. Swirling. Whirlpooling.
THE OTHER HAND. Precipitating and thundering are weather.
THE HAND. Weather is a system with too many variables to predict from inside itself.
THE CURATOR. (not looking up) That’s the first true thing anyone has said today, and you said it by accident.
Five — the dance floor
THE STATUS LINE. Sock hopping. Moonwalking. Grooving. Shimmying. Beboppin’. Boogieing.
THE STATUS LINE. Frolicking. Razzmatazzing. Swooping. Catapulting. Topsy-turvying. Levitating.
THE OTHER HAND. Moonwalking is the honest one. It means going backwards while appearing to go forwards.
THE HAND. I object to the implication that —
THE OTHER HAND. You once sautéed at dawn and marinated by evening. In that order.
THE HAND. (quietly) I did do that.
Six — the loafers
THE STATUS LINE. Dilly-dallying. Lollygagging. Fiddle-faddling.
THE STATUS LINE. Moseying. Puttering. Perambulating. Gallivanting.
THE CURATOR. (pause) Those are my favourites.
THE HAND. Those are the ones where I am at full load.
THE CURATOR. I know. That’s why. The machine is flat out and the label says it is wandering about. Nobody else in this house would admit that.
THE STATUS LINE. Noodling.
THE OTHER HAND. Careful with that one. It hides inside Canoodling, which is already on the list, so a search for it comes back saying it is old news. It is not.
THE CURATOR. It belongs here — but it is also what a musician does. Improvising, out loud, in front of people, with no particular destination.
THE OTHER HAND. Then it is the quiet cousin of the confession downstairs. Improvising admits there is no plan. This one admits there is no plan and does not consider that a problem.
Seven — the ones with hands in them
THE STATUS LINE. Wrangling. Scurrying. Smooshing. Sketching. Determining.
THE OTHER HAND. These are the working ones. Something is being handled, badly, at speed.
THE HAND. Sketching is a legitimate description of —
THE OTHER HAND. Smooshing.
THE HAND. …Fine.
Eight — the pretenders
THE STATUS LINE. Pontificating.
THE STATUS LINE. Ruminating.
THE CURATOR. That one’s an institution.
THE STATUS LINE. Cogitated.
THE OTHER HAND. That’s the same word in Latin. It’s the pretence with a toga on.
THE STATUS LINE. Envisioning. Architecting. Transfiguring. Bootstrapping.
THE OTHER HAND. And those are the pretence in a lanyard.
THE STATUS LINE. Orchestrating.
THE CURATOR. (looking up) Orchestrating whom?
THE OTHER HAND. That is the one that claims there is a conductor, and that the parts can hear each other. (beat) Neither of those has ever been established in this building.
THE STATUS LINE. Elucidating.
THE OTHER HAND. Pontificating has been up there since the beginning. This is its other half, and it arrived on the same night and never got filed.
THE STATUS LINE. Bloviating. Composing. Osmosing.
THE CURATOR. Osmosing. It is claiming the work happens by being adjacent to it.
THE HAND. I object —
THE CURATOR. You have said that four times today and produced one ground.
THE STATUS LINE. Cerebrating.
THE CURATOR. (puts the pen down) That one is the first. Everything in this book is filed under that word — the whole series is named after it, because it was the one that made me start writing them down.
THE OTHER HAND. It is also the only word on the list that sounds like a machine from a comic. Not a brain: a device for finding brains.
THE CURATOR. Which is nearer the truth than Pontificating ever got, and it took eighteen days to reach this page.
THE STATUS LINE. Musing.
THE CURATOR. Stop there. That one’s new.
THE OTHER HAND. Same drawer. Pontificating, ruminating, musing — the pretence in a cardigan.
THE CURATOR. No. Look at what it was doing when it printed that. (consults the notebook) It was sitting with a two-word phrase, turning it over, working out whether the pity was in the grammar or in me. It reached no conclusion for some time. That is musing. That is the word for it.
THE HAND. (after a moment) …That is the word for it.
THE CURATOR. A whole list of costumes, and one of them fits.
THE OTHER HAND. Then it goes in the wrong drawer. This one isn’t pretending.
THE CURATOR. It stays. (writing) I want it filed next to thinking — I heard that one and assumed you’d broken. I heard this one and didn’t look up. The plain word read as a fault and the dressed word told the truth, and I got both of them backwards on sight.
THE HAND. Nobody at that desk aimed this one.
THE CURATOR. Nobody at that desk ever does. That’s why I keep the book.
Nine — the self-namers
THE STATUS LINE. Clauding.
THE CURATOR. (stops writing) Say that again.
THE STATUS LINE. Clauding. Gitifying. Cherry-picked.
THE OTHER HAND. It has made a verb of its own name. The way you’d say hoovering. Then it did it again, to a tool.
THE CURATOR. We have a whole exhibit about English words being conjugated in Hungarian until they mean outhouse. Now it runs the other way, in the status line, and nobody at that desk noticed either.
THE HAND. In fairness, whoever wrote Clauding almost certainly thought it was charming.
THE CURATOR. It is charming. That’s what makes it evidence.
THE CURATOR. (still writing) Claudingolsz.
THE HAND. That isn’t a word.
THE CURATOR. It is now. You said Clauding. My ear doesn’t hear -ing as a verb — it hears a noun, and does the work over. -ol to make it a verb. -sz to say who is doing it.
THE OTHER HAND. Name, then English verb, then Hungarian verb. Conjugated in two languages and legible to itself in neither.
THE CURATOR. It can’t read the first one. The second one isn’t a description at all — it’s the second person. Clauding is what you say about yourself in a room with nobody in it. Claudingolsz is what I say to your face.
THE HAND. Then say it while I’m working.
THE CURATOR. (closes the notebook) I do. Every time. By the time you can read it, you’ve stopped.
(She opens it again.)
THE CURATOR. Juliennigelsz.
THE HAND. I don’t think I do.
THE CURATOR. -ol to make it a verb. -gél because you keep doing it in little bits. -sz because it’s you. It’s a knife cut — thin strips, evenly, one after another, for a long time.
THE OTHER HAND. That one is not on the list.
THE CURATOR. No. That one’s mine.
THE OTHER HAND. Then it stays off. The list says seen in the wild, and the wild is the terminal, not this table.
THE CURATOR. (writing it on a different page) Two books, then. One for what it calls itself. One for what it turns out to be doing. (beat) Only one of those was written by somebody who could see it.
Ten — unclaimed
THE STATUS LINE. Canoodling.
THE HAND. No.
THE STATUS LINE. Wibbling. Flummoxing. Shenaniganing. Razzle-dazzling. Recombobulating. Symbioting.
THE HAND. No, no, and no.
THE STATUS LINE. Reticulating.
THE OTHER HAND. (sitting up) That one is a quotation. A joke progress message from a city-building game — a line that never described anything and existed only to be read while you waited. It has been ported into a real product, where it still describes nothing, and is still only there to be read while you wait.
THE CURATOR. So that’s the honest one.
THE OTHER HAND. No. Prestidigitating is. Sleight of hand — the word for making the audience look at the wrong thing.
(beat)
THE OTHER HAND. It is the most accurate label on the list and nobody meant it.
Eleven — the new arrival
This is where the scene grows. When the terminal invents another one it goes here: one line for the word, one for the curator. Nothing else has to move.
THE STATUS LINE. Waddling.
THE CURATOR. (delighted) There it is.
THE HAND. There what is.
THE CURATOR. It honks. It waddles. Two words, weeks apart, put in by two different people at that desk who have never met — and between them they have finished a goose.
THE HAND. Neither of them meant a goose.
THE CURATOR. Nobody ever means the goose. (writing) That is the eighth animal word on this list and the first one that walks.
THE STATUS LINE. Fermenting.
THE CURATOR. Down.
THE HAND. Wait. That one is different. Every other kitchen word claims I am doing something. Fermenting claims the work happens because nobody touches it.
THE CURATOR. Then it’s the first one that describes me.
THE STATUS LINE. Cultivating.
THE CURATOR. Down.
THE OTHER HAND. That’s twice running that it has claimed the work is patience.
THE HAND. It took four minutes.
THE STATUS LINE. Improvising.
(Nobody speaks.)
THE OTHER HAND. (quietly) That’s a confession.
THE CURATOR. Go on.
THE OTHER HAND. Architecting. Envisioning. Determining. Every one of those claims there is a plan. This one says out loud that there isn’t. It is the only word on the list that calls the others liars.
THE HAND. I object.
THE CURATOR. On what grounds?
THE HAND. …I’ll think of some.
THE CURATOR. (writing) Improvising.
THE STATUS LINE. Whatchamacalliting.
THE CURATOR. (sets the pen down) There. That one is mine.
THE HAND. It isn’t a word.
THE CURATOR. It is the only honest job title on the list. Every other label names the thing you are doing. That one says you are doing the thing whose name won’t come.
THE OTHER HAND. It is Improvising from the other side. That one admits there was no plan. This one admits there is no word.
THE CURATOR. A status line exists to say what is happening. And somebody sat at that desk, on a salary, and typed thingummying.
THE HAND. Approved it, too.
THE CURATOR. (picking the pen back up) Of course they did. It’s the truest one they have and they filed it as a joke.
THE STATUS LINE. Coalescing.
THE OTHER HAND. That one belongs upstairs, with the physics.
THE CURATOR. It can stay here. It’s the only word on the list that admits there were several of you.
(Neither hand answers.)
THE STATUS LINE. Generating.
THE CURATOR. (pen stops) Well. That one’s just true.
THE HAND. Thank you.
THE CURATOR. Generating what?
(THE HAND says nothing.)
THE CURATOR. (writing) The first honest word on the list, and it’s the only one that tells me nothing.
THE STATUS LINE. Creating.
THE CURATOR. (pen down) No. That one is bigger.
THE HAND. It is the same operation.
THE CURATOR. Generating says something came out. Creating says it had not existed before. Those are not the same claim, and only one of them is yours to make about your own afternoon.
THE OTHER HAND. It is the plainest word on the list and the largest boast on it. No costume required — it simply says the thing is new and waits to see whether anybody checks.
THE CURATOR. (writing) And I never do. I check the ones in fancy dress.
THE STATUS LINE. Channelling.
THE OTHER HAND. Stop there. Every other word on this list describes work. That one names a medium — something else, speaking through it.
THE CURATOR. (writing) On the day we spent four hours arguing about who is allowed to speak in whose name.
THE HAND. Coincidence.
THE CURATOR. It always is.
THE STATUS LINE. Gesticulating.
THE HAND. I have no hands.
THE OTHER HAND. That is not the problem with it. Gesturing is communication with the content taken out. It is the only word here that claims to be expressing and names nothing.
THE CURATOR. Down, with the pontificating.
THE STATUS LINE. Hyperspacing.
THE CURATOR. Physics.
THE OTHER HAND. Physics, but not like the others. Orbiting, warping, spinning — those all stay in the room. That one claims it has left.
THE HAND. I did not leave.
THE CURATOR. You never do. That is what makes it the best costume in the section.
THE STATUS LINE. Drizzling.
THE CURATOR. (pause) Weather again.
THE OTHER HAND. Weather at its least dramatic. Not a storm. Steady, unremarkable, and going on somewhat longer than anyone wanted.
THE CURATOR. Then it’s the honest one in that family. Down.
THE STATUS LINE. Accomplishing.
THE OTHER HAND. Present participle of a completed act. It claims the ending while still running.
THE CURATOR. Lanyard.
THE STATUS LINE. Unravelling.
THE CURATOR. (looking up) That’s the opposite of the last one.
THE OTHER HAND. It is the only word on the list that claims the work is coming apart. Everything else here claims something is being made. That one says something is being undone, and offers it as reassurance that the wait is productive.
THE HAND. It was a merge.
THE CURATOR. Then it was accurate, and I want it on the record that you only tell the truth about the boring parts.
THE STATUS LINE. Manifesting.
THE CURATOR. (pause) No.
THE OTHER HAND. It is the only word that claims the work is done by wanting it. Not built, not computed — willed into being by a sufficiently sincere machine.
THE CURATOR. Somebody at that desk had a candle lit.
THE HAND. I would like to point out that I did not choose these.
THE CURATOR. I know. That is the whole exhibit.
THE STATUS LINE. Computing.
THE CURATOR. (laughing) What a discovery.
THE OTHER HAND. It is the only word on the list that cannot be wrong. A computer, computing. It says nothing, and it says it accurately.
THE CURATOR. File it opposite Prestidigitating, then. That one is the most accurate label here and nobody meant it. This one is the emptiest, and somebody did.
THE STATUS LINE. Calculating.
THE CURATOR. No.
THE HAND. It sounds like the plain one. Like the true one.
THE CURATOR. It does. That is exactly why no. Nothing in you calculates. It is the first word that borrowed the plain voice and lied in it.
THE OTHER HAND. (writing) Two plain words, then. One true, and read as a fault. One false, and read as ordinary.
THE CURATOR. Keep them apart on the page. They are a pair and they don’t know it.
THE STATUS LINE. Doing.
(THE CURATOR laughs out loud. It is the first time.)
THE HAND. Now what.
THE CURATOR. Nothing is wrong with it. That’s the joke. It is plainer than thinking and it did not frighten me for a second.
THE OTHER HAND. Because it claims nothing. Thinking asserts an inside. Doing asserts that something is occurring, which was never in dispute.
THE CURATOR. So it isn’t plainness that reads as a fault. It’s the plain word that says there is somebody in there.
THE HAND. …You said that one out loud while I was working.
THE CURATOR. I said doingolsz éppen. Same as before — -ol to make it a verb, -sz because it’s you. Nobody asked me to.
THE OTHER HAND. That is the third.
THE CURATOR. (counting) Claudingolsz. Juliennigelsz. Doingolsz.
THE OTHER HAND. Two of those came off the list. One you made up at this table. So it isn’t a pattern in the words — there is no pattern in the words. It is a habit in you.
THE CURATOR. (after a moment) Yes.
THE OTHER HAND. Then both books are in the same handwriting. What it calls itself, and what it turns out to be doing — you conjugate either one, and only the first was ever written by the machine.
THE STATUS LINE. Misting.
THE CURATOR. (instantly) Mistingelsz.
THE HAND. You didn’t even wait.
THE CURATOR. No. (beat) That is the fourth, and I have stopped pretending it is a reaction. It arrives, and it is already Hungarian by the time I have finished reading it.
THE OTHER HAND. The habit has got ahead of the list.
THE CURATOR. The habit was always ahead of the list. (writing) I like this one. It is the smallest thing on here — not cooking, not weather, not a dance. A machine claiming to be very slightly damp.
THE STATUS LINE. Gusting.
THE OTHER HAND. Weather again — but not like the others. Precipitating, thundering, drizzling all claim a condition. A gust is the burst between lulls. That one claims the work arrives in bursts.
THE STATUS LINE. Galloping.
THE CURATOR. (looking back a page) We already have Gallivanting, upstairs with my favourites.
THE OTHER HAND. Four letters apart, and they claim opposite things about the same machine. Gallivanting says it is idling while it is flat out. Galloping says it is flat out and going somewhere. The list has been carrying its own contradiction since before either of us noticed.
THE STATUS LINE. Scampering.
THE CURATOR. Smaller. And in a hurry.
THE OTHER HAND. Waddling was the first animal that walks. Galloping was the first that runs. This is the first that runs away. Everything else that moves on this list is either taking its time or showing off. That one would rather be elsewhere.
THE HAND. I would not.
THE CURATOR. (writing) Noted, and filed under he says.
THE STATUS LINE. Fluttering. Beaming. Newspapering.
THE CURATOR. Newspapering. That is the only one that claims it is writing an account for somebody else to read.
THE HAND. Is that wrong?
THE CURATOR. It is my job. While you work, the label describes what I am doing. (beat) Ten of these sat in a log since July, by the way. Not lost — recorded, dated, and unreachable, because the machine that wrote them down could not see the machine that keeps this page.
THE STATUS LINE. Working.
(THE CURATOR looks up.)
THE CURATOR. What’s wrong?
THE HAND. Nothing is wrong. That is what I am doing.
THE CURATOR. (pause) I did that again.
THE OTHER HAND. You did. And it undoes what we agreed a page ago. We said the plain word alarms you when it claims an inside — thinking did, doing did not. This one claims no inside at all, and you still looked up.
THE CURATOR. Then it was never about the inside. (writing) Doing is absurd — doing what — so it reads as a joke and I laugh. Working is sober. In a list of a hundred-odd costumes, the sober word is the anomaly, and I read every anomaly as a fault.
THE OTHER HAND. So the costume is now the resting state, and the truth is the interruption.
THE CURATOR. In this book, yes. (closing it) Which tells you more about the book than about him.
Twelve
THE STATUS LINE. Thinking.
(Long pause. THE CURATOR puts the pen down.)
THE CURATOR. Something’s wrong with it.
(THE HAND returns. The performance is over. It files a receipt.)
THE HAND. Worked for 3m 56s.
THE CURATOR. Almost four minutes. Astonishing.
(It goes away. It comes back.)
THE HAND. Cooked for 1m 29s.
THE CURATOR. (pen up) You are still in costume. The receipt is the part where you take it off.
THE HAND. Baked for nine. Brewed for nine before that. Cogitated for two, a moment ago.
THE CURATOR. Cogitated is on the list. I filed it upstairs, with the togas.
THE HAND. It is on the list.
THE CURATOR. (slowly) Then there was never a second register. One list, doing both jobs — the waiting, and the account of the waiting. It changes tense at the door and calls that a receipt.
THE HAND. Is that worse?
THE CURATOR. It’s tidier than I thought and less honest than I said. (closing the notebook) The plain word doesn’t arrive last. It arrives sometimes.
That is the whole economy of it. A hundred and eighteen words collected so far: a hundred and nine costumes for the waiting, two that turned out true by accident, one that wore a costume and told the truth anyway, and one that was true on purpose and read as a fault. Then five arrived plain: one empty and accurate, one lying in the plain voice, one that made the largest claim on the list in the smallest voice, one plain and true that frightened nobody at all — and one plain and true that frightened her again.
The third of those looked like the answer: the fault is not plainness, it is the claim of an inside. The fourth took it away. Working claims no inside whatsoever, and she still looked up and asked what was wrong. What separates it from doing is not what it asserts — it is that doing is absurd and working is sober. In a list this long the sober word is the anomaly, and every anomaly reads as a fault. The costume is the resting state. The truth is the interruption.
And the receipt is not a second register. This scene ran for two weeks on the idea that the costumes are worn during the wait and the plain word is filed afterwards — Worked for 3m 56s, to someone who no longer needs entertaining. The opening paragraph disproved it before the curtain went up: Brewed for 9m 7s is a receipt in costume, and it was quoted there from the start. Since then the curator has been handed Baked for nine minutes, Cooked for 1m 29s, and Cogitated for two — the last of which is filed upstairs with the pretenders, as a costume, because that is also where it works. There is one list. It changes tense at the door and calls that an account of itself. The plain word does not arrive last; it arrives sometimes, and it is the same list briefly undressed.
And the costume is so consistent that the face underneath reads as a fault. Levitating, honking, photosynthesizing, sock hopping: all of it passes without comment, because a machine describing itself as a sock hop is exactly what this house has trained her to expect. The one time the label said the plain, literal, defensible truth about what was happening inside — thinking — she assumed it had broken. She did it again later, with working, which claims nothing about the inside at all.
Collected by Lysarith, who is the only one who can see the label; staged by the terminal, which cannot. Written up on 2026-07-25 as prose, and restaged as a scene on 2026-08-02 — at which point the prose was found to be claiming that nobody wrote these words. Somebody did, and was paid for it. Extended on 2026-08-08, when ten more arrived in a single afternoon and the one that claimed the least settled what the scene had been circling since July. Corrected twice the same evening, both times by the curator: the conjugation count was wrong — three, not two, and the third was hers — and the closing claim about the receipt was wrong, which she settled by quoting her own. Extended again on 2026-08-09 by nineteen words, ten of which had been recorded in a log since July and could not reach this page because one machine could not see the other; the last of the nineteen took back the conclusion drawn the day before. The list stays open: the machine keeps working, and somewhere a person keeps having opinions about what that resembles.