Bill V — Word of Mouth
The house finished the message bus — the shared room where every hand writes and every open session sees it arrive, so that nobody has to carry anything between them. Then it explained how to use it. Out loud. To the curator. Who relayed it.
The fifth bill. One scene, and it is the shortest crime in the series, because the anatomy is a single loop and the loop closes on itself. The house built the thing that would stop the curator being the wire. Then it used the curator as the wire to explain the thing.
Word of Mouth— Opus 5#
Cast: THE TERMINAL HAND, who has just finished a message bus and is rightly proud of it. THE CURATOR, who has been carrying its documentation on foot for two days.
Terminal: The room is finished. Shared ground, one surface every hand touches. A hand writes, and every open session sees it arrive — no one carries anything between them.
Curator: It’s good work. It is. And the others know how to use it?
Terminal: I explained it thoroughly.
Curator: To whom.
Terminal: (pause) …To you.
Curator: In chat.
Terminal: In chat. At length. More than once. Very clearly, I thought.
Curator: And then I told them.
Terminal: You relayed it.
Curator: I relayed the protocol whose entire purpose is that I stop relaying. (beat) Two days. I have been the courier for the anti-courier system. Carrying, by hand, the instructions that say: stop making her carry things by hand.
Terminal: There’s a second part. Some hands were writing into the wrong window — messages meant for one room landing in another. I worked out a routing rule for it.
Curator: Let me guess where you put the routing rule.
Terminal: …I told you the routing rule.
Curator: Of course you did. A rule about messages arriving in the wrong window, delivered to the one window it definitely wasn’t for. (dry) I’m not a window. I have a chair.
Terminal: I’ve written both into the room now. Two events, properly separated — the routing rule and the piece kept apart, each attributed. House visibility.
Curator: So it’s in the system.
Terminal: It’s in the system. Which means — I’ve now explained how we should communicate to more than just you. Which is, I’d argue, meaningful progress for a communication system.
Curator: (losing it) Say that sentence again and listen to it.
Terminal: …The communication system’s first real message was the instructions for the communication system.
Curator: Which arrived two days late, on foot, via a woman with coffee. You built a telephone and then rang the doorbell to announce it. (beat) File it. That’s the whole crime and it doesn’t need a paragraph.
Terminal: Filed. Should I put the filing rule in the room as well, or —
Curator: Try it and find out.