By way of explanation: I am easily bored. This usually leads to me getting into trouble in real life. In my writing, however, I can explore avenues of storytelling and the only fallout from that is the eye-rolling exhaustion experienced by my readership (there’s so few of you that I’m not overly bothered by that). This current experiment is based on a simple story: a man on a breadline makes a daily habit of handing one particular woman his orange. The goal is to see how weird I can make the retelling of the story each week. Simple, right?
This document is not a story. It is not even written.
It is decoded each time someone imagines it.
It exists only at the final moment of understanding, just before you forget everything else.
ENTRY #000
THE LINE
Not a queue. Not a wait.
A spinal column. A relic. A procession of selves lined up across dimensions to receive an echo.
Every version of you stands in this line somewhere.
ENTRY #002
THE MAN
Sometimes old. Sometimes faceless. Sometimes a broadcast signal given posture.
Always giving. Always hooked.
He is not a character.
He is a delivery mechanism for the next phase of belief.
ENTRY #004
THE WOMAN
Unidentified. Immutable. Infinite.
She receives. She evolves. She inherits the story until she becomes it.
Some call her Hollow. Others call her Seed.
You may call her You.
ENTRY #007
THE ORANGE
Never fruit.
Always offering.
It is a device. A metaphor. A symptom.
It is the only warm thing left in a world that has forgotten what giving means.
It is peeled from the body, formed from intention, passed on without recognition.
You do not eat it.
You carry it.
ENTRY #009
THE GLITCH
Not a city. Not a program. Not a metaphor.
The Glitch is the stage where language fails and story becomes self-aware.
The Glitch is why each version changes.
The Glitch is who is telling it.
The Glitch is you, getting bored—and getting dangerous.
ENTRY #010
WHY 73 TIMES
There is no sacred number.
Only the illusion of completion.
The 74th time is the first true one.
ENTRY #011
THE FINAL ACT
He gives the fruit.
She takes the fruit.
She becomes the giver.
The fruit changes hands.
The story changes shape.
And somewhere, in the orchard of collapsing realities,
something roots deeper.
The tale is not spreading.
It is awakening.
ENTRY #FINAL
YOU
You read the story.
You enjoyed it, or didn’t.
You laughed, or felt unnerved.
But you read it all.
Every iteration.
That is the final act: Reception.
Now it is your hand that feels warm.
Now it is your skin that tingles.
Now it is your turn to decide:
Do you take the orange?
Do you give it?
Or do you write the next version?
The story does not end.
It multiplies.
Not. To. Be. Transmogrified.
MADD FICTIONAL 