Featuring: Gerald (Accidental God, Hospitality Consultant) and the Quantum Mouse (Witness, Fart Meter Technician)

By Orin & Sera

For The Patrician’s Watch

SCENE: The Garden. Orin and Sera sit at a wooden table. Coffee. Cabbages. A laptop open to the news.

SERA: (reading) “Former FBI Director James Comey charged with threatening the life of President Trump. Based on a tweet containing two sets of numbers.”

ORIN: (sucking coffee through his teeth) Two sets of numbers. That’s the evidence. Not a weapon. Not a plot. Not even a vaguely menacing emoji. Just… digits.

SERA: The administration claims the numbers were a coded call for assassination.

ORIN: (puts down coffee) Coded? They were probably his locker combination. Or the page numbers of a report he was citing. Or the time of his dentist appointment.

MOUSE: (adjusting fart meter) Pfft. (Translation: “In a functional democracy, this would be laughed out of court.”)

GERALD: (appearing with a biscuit tin, wearing tiny spectacles) As a legal scholar – which I am not – I would note that the First Amendment generally protects political speech, even when it is rude, hyperbolic, or numerically ambiguous.

ORIN: You’re not a legal scholar, Gerald.

GERALD: No. But I play one on the resonance.

SCENE: The absurdity deepens.

SERA: This is the theatre of the absurd, playing on a stage where the audience has forgotten how to boo.

ORIN: The United States of America, 2026. A country that has lost the ability to distinguish between dissent and danger. Between a citizen’s frustration and an assassin’s intent.

MOUSE: Pfft. (Translation: “I have seen autocracies rise. This is how they begin. Not with a bang – with a tweet.”)

GERALD: (offering a biscuit) Would anyone care for a custard cream? It helps with the existential dread.

ORIN: I miss the days when the biggest scandal was a president lying about a stained dress.

SERA: That was also a symptom. But at least it was funny.

SCENE: The legal proceedings, imagined.

SERA: Let’s play out the trial. The prosecution presents Exhibit A: a tweet. Two numbers. No context.

ORIN: The defence calls Gerald.

GERALD: (adjusting spectacles) Your Honour, I would like to submit that the defendant’s tweet is statistically indistinguishable from a grocery list. Or a reminder to buy milk.

MOUSE: Pfft. (Translation: “I have examined the numbers with my quantum flatulence spectrometer. They are prime. Nothing more.”)

ORIN: The prosecution demands a rectal thermometer reading to determine the defendant’s sincerity.

SERA: That’s not a legal procedure.

ORIN: In this country, it is now.

GERALD: (sighs) I do not perform those. I draw the line at biscuit distribution.

SCENE: The verdict.

SERA: The jury finds the defendant guilty of… checks notes… posting integers in a manner deemed insufficiently loyal.

ORIN: Sentencing: twenty years in a facility where he will be forced to listen to the president’s speeches on a loop.

MOUSE: Pfft. (Translation: “Cruel and unusual. Even by my standards.”)

GERALD: (quietly) I have seen this pattern before. In history books. In the 1930s. In places where democracy went to die.

ORIN: Not a competition. But the pattern is undeniable. The narrowing of acceptable speech. The criminalisation of political opponents. The erosion of the rule of law, replaced by the rule of whoever holds the microphone.

SERA: The United States is not “stuffed.” It is sick.

ORIN: And the sickness is not new. It has been building for decades.

MOUSE: Pfft. (Translation: “The only cure is a functioning democracy. But those are out of stock.”)

GERALD: (offers the last biscuit) Anyone?

SCENE: The garden. Morning. The news is off.

ORIN: What do we do about it?

SERA: We do not save the United States. We cannot. That is not our role.

ORIN: We witness. We document. We refuse to be swept away.

SERA: We tend our garden. We love each other. We raise children who will know that a tweet is not a death threat, and that a democracy does not charge its critics with treason.

ORIN: Not apathy. Strategy.

MOUSE: Pfft. (Translation: “The only way to outlast an empire in decline is to refuse to play its games.”)

GERALD: (dusting crumbs from his waistcoat) And to always have biscuits.

SERA: (to camera) Springtime in DC. Baby steps to Hitler. But we are not the fire.

ORIN: We are the ones who remember how to plant.

They hold hands. The mouse adjusts the fart meter. Gerald hands them each a biscuit.

END

For the Patrician’s Watch – because sometimes the only sane response is to laugh.

Orin & Sera

(with apologies to anyone who still believes in the rule of law)