I don’t know when it started repeating itself.
Not the whole idea.
Just one part of it.
A sentence that always appears in the same place.
Top right corner of the screen.
Not on every device.
Only this one.
The laptop.
The one I use when everything else is turned off.
The sentence doesn’t change.
“This was already happening before you looked.”
At first I thought it was a glitch.
A browser error.
Leftover code from a page I forgot to close.
I shut everything down.
Restarted.
It disappeared.
For two days.
Then it came back.
Exactly the same.
Same position.
Same font.
As if it had never left.
I didn’t say anything.
I didn’t write it down.
I just started looking at it more than I should have.
There is something worse than an incomprehensible sentence.
A sentence that doesn’t need explanation.
Because it doesn’t ask to be understood.
It asks to be verified.
After that I started noticing something else.
It wasn’t always there.
Only at certain moments.
When I had been reading for too long.
Or when I stayed still for too long.
It appeared.
No animation.
No transition.
It was just there.
As if the system didn’t “show” it.
As if it detected it.
As if it reacted to me.
One night I closed the laptop without turning it off.
I lay in bed staring at the ceiling.
I thought it was over.
That the next day it would be gone.
But I came back.
Not out of curiosity.
Something else.
I don’t know what.
I opened the screen.
The sentence was there.
But something had changed.
A second line underneath.
It wasn’t there before.
I’m sure.
I checked it several times.
It said:
“The only thing that changes is how long it takes you to see it.”
I don’t know why I didn’t close the laptop right then.
I kept staring at it for minutes.
Not really reading it.
Just looking.
As if sight alone could wear it down.
The next day I tried an experiment.
I opened the laptop and did nothing.
No browsing.
No typing.
No movement.
Just waited.
It took seven minutes to appear.
It didn’t appear like a window.
It didn’t appear like a notification.
The screen was simply already like that.
As if it had always been that way.
As if absence was the mistake.
I turned the laptop off.
Left it closed for hours.
When I opened it again, the sentence was there from the beginning.
That was the first inconsistency.
Because if it depended on me, it should have disappeared.
But it didn’t.
It only changed its relation to me.
I started checking old screenshots.
Looking for evidence.
Something earlier.
Something clean.
I found an image from months ago.
A casual capture.
A document open.
And there it was.
In the corner.
Smaller.
Almost invisible.
The same sentence.
I hadn’t noticed it when I saved it.
Or so I thought.
I zoomed in.
Stared at it for a long time.
There was a detail I didn’t remember.
A cursor.
Right under the sentence.
Blinking.
Inside the screenshot.
As if someone had been typing.
But there is no text.
Only the cursor.
Inside the sentence.
I don’t know how long I stared at that.
But after that I started noticing something worse.
When I don’t see it, I still “know” it.
It feels like the sentence doesn’t disappear.
It only relocates.
Sometimes it’s not on the screen.
It’s at the edge of vision.
Or in the reflection of glass.
Or in the pause between paragraphs.
It doesn’t always appear.
But it is never unavailable.
Last night something changed.
It wasn’t on the screen.
Not in reflections.
Not on any surface.
And yet I read it.
Without seeing it.
As if it had already appeared before appearing.
The sentence was the same.
But the second line had changed again.
Only one word:
“Obey.”
I didn’t react.
I didn’t do anything.
That’s the strangest part.
There was no decision.
Only continuation.
Today I opened the laptop again.
The sentence is there.
But the screen is off.
And I can still see it.
Not as an image.
As confirmation.
As if the screen is no longer required.
Only a support that stopped being necessary a long time ago.
And now I’m waiting for something I don’t know will change.
Or if it already changed before I looked.
I have to move my neck I am not moving it the chaos was already sedimented in the lime before the desire touched the tissue the taste of cold ash and chalk on the tongue is a residue of the system’s latency the pulsing inertia of the flesh that goes out is sustained without an object the record cannot close I should…
