Deus est machina (English)

 The first thing that really changes suddenly is that everything loses shape, direction. I wake up two hours before the seminar in the hope of finally assimilating the assigned material and when I sit up on the edge of the bed I don't know if I spent the nocturnal hours with my head on the right side. I sleep on a rectangular mattress, supported on and surrounded by rectangles of fake gray wood. I don't think I've ever read anywhere that rectangles have a direction, a beginning or an end. Having come to this conclusion, I fail three times to open my laptop—also rectangular—because I don't understand, or maybe I don't remember which direction is the right one to lift the screen.

I waste a good six minutes before finally clicking on the files for the seminar. I see them clearly for just a moment, then half my screen goes dark. The black of the letters descends downward in regular lines until it accumulates in a single patch of pixels. Ten minutes have already passed. I restart the computer, huffing and puffing, but nothing: the bottom of the screen continues to blacken. I leave it on the bed and go wash my teeth and face; if I can’t reread the material for the seminar, I might as well use the time to prepare for the diurnal hours. And then it doesn’t matter: I’ve already read everything. All done. I just didn’t understand it well. Now that I think about it, not a single thought to offer the professor comes to my mind, I don’t remember a single note I took while reading. I’ll look stupid; or at least I won’t have anything to prove the contrary.

I press my wet hands to my face and imagine screaming at the top of my lungs while I let out a low groan so as not to wake the person in the next room, since it’s still officially nocturnal hours. Then my gaze falls to the sink and I see large black drops. I look at my hands: they’re also dirty. I must have stained my entire face somehow, but when I look in the mirror the colour is only on my lips and dripping down my chin. I rinse again, then scrub my skin until it hurts; the substance in my mouth is thick, viscous like ink. My tongue is completely black; I brush my teeth brutally and then gurgle for a long time. I wipe my mouth. I don’t remember what I had for dinner, but whatever it was I have to remember that it stains terribly.

I go back to bed and open up the seminar materials again. I watch the words fall apart and the individual letters drip down, until they darken half of my screen. I reload the page and watch the same process one more time. In the end I’m left staring at the piled up words, still not understanding, feeling stupid. Then suddenly I have to get up because my chin is wet. I leave the laptop in bed and quickly go back to the bathroom. Thick black ink drips from my lips and there is nothing else to do but try to wash it off. My skin is still stained and so are my fingers. I have to take the express in fifteen minutes, luckily the anti-smog mask will cover my mouth and once I get to university I will say I have caught some virus.

I get dressed, put my laptop in a bag and go down to the internal courtyard from which, above, you can see the gray rectangle of sky that is now becoming slightly lighter, announcing the diurnal hours. The express arrives immediately and I get in in an orderly line with the other forty-nine people for whom there is space. I sit down and take breakfast from the special compartment on the back of the seat in front of me. Today there is apple juice and the porridge is blueberry, but I don't remember what it tasted like yesterday. Breakfast always goes by so quickly in those six minutes that the express takes from the student residence to university. It is very convenient though: everything is in liquid form because it takes much less time to drink than to chew. It’s a moment.

The express reemerges under the pale gray of the octagonal sky of the campus. The fastest way to get to the building where the seminar will be held is by passing between the dentistry department and the earth maintenance sciences department, then turning right and continuing straight. I measured: it takes less than four and a half minutes. I enter the large central elevator with twenty-four other students and as we go up the anxiety increases. I have absolutely nothing to offer the professor, I will be absolutely useless for an entire hour. What a waste.

I am one of the first to enter the room and would like to use this moment to explain to the professor that I will be wearing the mask because of a virus, but when I try to speak I can’t untangle the words from the ink in my mouth. I gurgle, cough and simply point to the mask; the professor understands me and nods. I sit down and open the assigned material. I watch the black stain gather on my screen and wait anxiously to finally be told what what I see, what I read, means. Because I read it, I remind myself to counteract my feelings of guilt.

Then the room fills up and the professor opens the discussion. I look carefully at the black on my computer and listen to the people talking around me, waiting for the key that will solve the code. I don’t recognize a single word, neither on the screen nor from the comments of those around me. I look up and see the professor say something, move their mouth, yet all that comes out is thick black ink and gurgling sounds to which the students respond by gurgling from time to time. The ink drips from the mouth onto the laptop and at the end of the seminar, when I open the document with the key points we discussed that the professor sent us, for a moment I glimpse “Seminar 3, IV month 2075” on my screen , but then there are so many words that it fills up completely with black, as if it had a technical defect. I still don’t understand anything.

I return to the student residence with the third-hour express train. I emerge into the rectangle of sky in the internal courtyard and return to the conclusion I had four hours earlier in bed: that rectangles have no direction. I don’t know which direction I’m going, which of the four elevators is the right one to get to the housing unit where my room is located. I go to the reception and push the “help” button on the screen to activate the assistance chat.

“Hello,” the monotonous voice of the AI ​​activates, “how can I help you?”

“I don’t remember where my room is.”

“What room do you have?”

It takes me a while to answer and I fear the chat will close. “Uhm… I don’t know. A room like all the others I thin—”

“There are: Standard Room with: bed, wardrobe, bathroom, Standard Plus Room with: bed, wardrobe, desk, bathroom, Deluxe Room with: bed, wardrobe, desk, armchair, bathroom, Deluxe Plus Room with: bed, wardrobe, desk, armchair, TV, bathroom, Maxi Studio with: bed, wardrobe, desk, armchair, TV, bathroom, kitchen top, fridge. Which is your room?”

“Ehh Standard I think.”

“Alright. Proceed to Standard Room on: floor 1 or 2: block A, B, C or D.”

“Yes, but which is my room?”

“All rooms on: floor 1 or 2: block A, B, C or D are Standard Rooms. All Standard Rooms are the same.”

“Okay, sure… So where do I go?”

“Proceed to Standard Room on: floor 1 or 2: block A, B, C or D.”

I collapse onto the rectangular bed of a Standard Room without knowing if my head is in the right direction and fall asleep well before the nocturnal hours.

I wake up with a start to the infernal sound of the alarm on my phone. I frantically look at the bare walls of the room I am in, I have no idea where I am. Then I get a notification on my phone. “Reminder: room inspection 01/19/2025, at 09:00”. I am in my bare room where I have removed all the posters from the walls in preparation for the inspection of our apartment. I find my computer wrapped in the blankets where it has been since last night when I fell asleep while trying to finish reading the material for today’s seminar.

“Good morning” I say out loud to myself and I am glad I am not spitting ink yet.