The note appeared inside my tongue.
I don’t know when it entered.
Only that it was already being read before I opened my mouth.
“You have been tasting this for four minutes.”
I tried to spit out the meaning.
Nothing came out.
A second line appeared underneath.
The taste does not belong to the fluid. It belongs to the record.
I touched my palate with my tongue.
The flavor did not match anything present.
And yet it was perfectly recognizable.
As if I had learned it before tasting it.
The lime room had no smell.
But the tongue did.
And that was the problem.
There was no difference between memory and chemistry.
Only a mismatch.
I looked for the origin.
The Master’s mouth was closed.
Still, the note kept updating.
You are tasting an earlier version of contact.
I did not understand the sentence.
But my tongue did.
It contracted slightly.
As if it had already reacted before deciding to.
I searched for the first moment of taste.
It did not exist.
Or it had been erased.
Or it had not happened yet.
Then the third line appeared.
Smaller.
Later.
Final.
The palate remembers before you do.
I stopped.
Because that explained everything that was not happening.
And at the same time explained nothing.
My tongue tried to withdraw from the taste.
But the taste was not in the tongue.
It was in the reading.
And that was new.
Until that moment, the problem had been the Master.
Or the fluid.
Or chemical hierarchy.
But now the problem had shifted.
Who is actually tasting?
No answer arrived.
Only an interruption.
The usual closing sentence did not appear.
The one that always stabilized the file.
The one that ended the system.
I searched everywhere.
It was gone.
My tongue searched too.
Unsuccessfully.
Only its absence remained.
Denser than any flavor.
Then the system added a final note.
Unsigned.
Unlocated.
Without texture.
You are beginning to notice that the taste is missing.
And at that moment the inversion occurred.
I was no longer trying to identify the fluid.
Nor the Master.
Nor the chemistry.
I was trying to recover the missing sentence.
But the worst part was not that.
The worst part was that I could not remember when it had stopped appearing.
I have to move my neck the record cannot close I should…
