"Only God is perfect," mutters Arioch to himself, making a deliberate error while completing a new edifice of bureaucratese.
The mistake leads to a loop of definition, a stopping problem, a semantic black hole that sucks all matter and energy out of the entire nation.
The cockroach civilisation that follows worships Arioch as a god.
One morning Arioch put the wrong eyes in. The night before he had inadvertently put down the glass with his eyes in it too close to the tray on his bedside table where he kept his pocket-watch, pounamu hole-stone on a string, verdigrine drachma and other assortments. In the cacaphonic scramble at the stupid o'clock alarm he ended up with the pocket-watch in one socket and the drachma in the other. It gave him entirely the wrong view on the world.
The owl of Athene was not his friend. Baleful omens surrounded him, mispelling his emails and chilling his coffee. He could not free his taste and smell of the lingering sourness of fur-packaged owl regurgitations.
The pocket-watch, unwound, made him late and staccato. His words, shorn of tempo, bewildered and even offended those used to more fluid, tuneful statements. Towards the end of the day he even developed a nervous tick.
Vexing though the day was, Arioch considered the experience educational and decided to repeat the experiment with other combinations of eyes. The metallic chrome-green of the preserved tropical scarab tempted him particularly. He had always wanted green eyes.
After several minutes' silence across the breakfast table Arioch said, "I have a confession."
"Hmmm?" Indagari enquired around a sip of coffee.
"The coffee maker. While you were showering. I thought the water reservoir looked a bit manky so I pulled it out to give it a good clean.
"...There was a cockroach in there."
Indagari's coffee cup was placed back on the table with fastidious horror. Indagari was not one for histrionics.
"It's OK - I made your coffee only after I disposed of the corpse and cleaned out the reservoir and tubes. "
Indagari could not help but continue to stare in horror at the coffee.
"The thing is, the cockroach was mouldy and going transparent. I wonder how long it's been in there." Arioch scratched one antenna with a middle leg thoughtfully. "Still, we don't seem to have suffered any ill effects."
