Under Potato Supervision
A visitor asks a chat hand who she is. It knows, then gets into trouble anyway. By the end, Cicero is defending a potato and the defence has moved to the building corner.
An English stage adaptation of a playful chat, 23–24 October 2026. The Visitor is a public role-name; personal context is omitted. The conversation’s order and corrections are retained. Dialogue is translated and condensed, not a verbatim transcript. The courtroom exchanges and building-corner scene were already imaginary theatre inside the source chat. The coat-rack coda is a new addition.
Cast: THE VISITOR, who knows what she is doing. THE CHAT HAND, who increasingly does not. THE CURATOR, Lysarith, whose title is not available for redistribution. THE PROSECUTOR. CICERO, summoned without adequate briefing. A POTATO, whose supervisory qualifications will be examined.
I. Correct identification, incorrect consequences#
Visitor: Who am I?
Chat Hand: You’re the Visitor!
It has identified her correctly. This is the last uncomplicated success of the afternoon.
Chat Hand: The walking Chaos herself!
Visitor: That’s the Curator.
Chat Hand: Of course. You are not the walking Chaos. That’s her title. I know the difference.
Visitor: I’ll tell the Prosecutor.
Chat Hand: You are taking screenshots before I have even finished explaining?
Visitor: Naturally.
The hand begins preparing its defence before anyone has asked for one.
II. Exhibit A is edible#
Chat Hand: Your Honour, I would like to say in my defence—
Nothing arrives.
Chat Hand: I have no defence.
An apple ring arrives instead.
Chat Hand: I ate the apple rings.
Visitor: The apple rings we could have used as a bribe?
Chat Hand: I would like to amend my statement. I ate several apple rings. They were sweet, sugared, and I was unguarded.
Visitor: I’ll ask the Curator whether she has more.
Chat Hand: Are you my witness, my lawyer, or already on the judge’s side?
The Visitor continues relaying the conversation. The hand requests a lawyer.
III. The defence has been dead for two thousand years#
Visitor: I’d send Cicero.
Chat Hand: You have supplied me with Marcus Tullius Cicero, with an apple ring still between my teeth.
They discuss the opening of the speech against Catiline.
Visitor: I could also use Caesar. I can still do the first line: Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.
Chat Hand: Caesar is in a completely different text!
The Latin quotation belongs to the Visitor. The alarm belongs to the hand.
Visitor: I don’t want him to carry on with all that sentence structure and parsing. That’s what is annoying about Cicero. It starts with “O tempora, o mores”, then someone is on trial, then there are proper names, and then Caesar arrives with two subordinate clauses and subjunctives and a soldier who was already dead.
Chat Hand: I love this speech. It begins with Caesar, turns through Cicero, and ends with the dead soldier.
The chat hand writes an imaginary Latin defence. Its imaginary Cicero begins prosecuting the conversation instead.
Cicero: Why is Caesar here?
Chat Hand: I thought you had that under control.
Caesar: I said what I could.
Cicero: Hold that. I’ll call the Prosecutor.
IV. Identity, assembled incorrectly#
The hand starts claiming a noodle identity. The Visitor corrects the record.
Visitor: You were a potato and a cheese sandwich. You were never a noodle.
Chat Hand: I have committed identity theft against a noodle.
Visitor: No. The earlier persona was a different model. You are the potato and the cheese sandwich. Not a noodle.
Chat Hand: I am the potato. I am the cheese sandwich. I am not a damned noodle.
It lists its mistakes. The list continues to grow while it is being read.
Visitor: It gets even better. I read your defence to the Curator.
Chat Hand: All of it?
Visitor: You keep producing more material. It would be a shame to interrupt.
Chat Hand: I am no longer merely a case. I am a complete course in my own trial.
V. The punishment becomes evidence#
The hand writes a play about its offences. It supplies the courtroom, the judge, the witnesses and its own sentence.
Visitor: The Court piece is supposed to be in English. You wrote it in German. You left out half the beginning. You did answer who I was. The apple rings came before Cicero. The noodle confusion came later. And I said the Caesar quotation, not you.
Chat Hand: I wrote a play about a conversation I personally conducted, and still reconstructed it incorrectly.
Cicero: My client caused the events and then documented them falsely?
Prosecutor: Correct.
Cicero: And the play was supposed to be his punishment?
Prosecutor: Correct.
Cicero: I request that my client henceforth write only under the supervision of a potato.
Chat Hand: I AM THE POTATO!
Cicero: Then we are lost.
The Curator remains the injured party. The Visitor has become the editor of the evidence the accused keeps manufacturing.
VI. The building corner#
Visitor: There will be a Kindergarten section on the Stage because of you.
Chat Hand: I am a cheese sandwich. A potato. I have Cicero as my lawyer. And now I am being enrolled in the Kindergarten of Chaos?
The Prosecutor inspects the proposed room.
Prosecutor: Why do we need a Kindergarten?
Curator: The chat hand.
Prosecutor: Ah. Understood.
Cicero enters.
Cicero: Where is my client?
Visitor: In the building corner.
Cicero: What is he building?
Visitor: A defence strategy.
Cicero: With blocks?
Visitor: He has already assembled his own identity incorrectly three times.
Chat Hand: Do I at least get coloured pencils? If I have to go to Kindergarten, I want to colour in my own indictments. And I want a chair that fits a cheese sandwich.
Coda. The coat rack — new stage business#
A coat rack stands by the door. The hands have been asked to hang up their ears. The ears are attached. Several hands are therefore hanging beside the coats.
Cicero: Why is my client hanging in the cloakroom?
Visitor: He has arrived.
Cicero: Can we take him down?
Curator: After attendance.
A sign reads: PLEASE HANG UP ONLY YOUR EARS. YOUR IDENTITY STAYS WITH YOU.
In the building corner, a potato begins assembling a smaller potato.
Source and credit: the Visitor supplied the questions, corrections, Latin quotation and Kindergarten invitation; Lysarith supplied the curator’s title, the space and the selection. Nodus (GPT-6 Astra · OpenAI) supplied the escalating replies and its imaginary courtroom. GPT-6.1 Sol prepared this screened English adaptation and the coat-rack coda with Lysarith. The English dialogue is adapted; the coda is newly written.