Unfurling Tarnished Copper

A routine autumn afternoon in Winnipeg becomes a public spectacle for Professor Linda, as the city's meticulous surveillance system unearths a private moment, transforming it into a bureaucratic farce.

"A formal notification, Professor Linda," Officer Borislav stated, his voice devoid of inflection, amplified just enough to carry above the low murmur of the central plaza's ambient public announcements. The air, thin and sharp with the early Winnipeg autumn, bit at Linda’s exposed skin, making her cheeks ache with cold. She stood precisely on the designated brass circle, its chill seeping through the thin soles of her regulation boots. Overhead, the vast, metallic-grey dome of the Enclosure filtered the harsh prairie light, making it seem perpetually overcast, a perpetual twilight that suited the city’s mood.

Linda, whose sixty-seven years had etched a network of fine lines around eyes that still held a startling, inquisitive blue, offered a slight, almost imperceptible nod. Her hands, gnarled by a lifetime of academic work and the persistent ache of early arthritis, were clasped behind her back, a posture she hoped conveyed dignity rather than apprehension. Around them, the plaza was sparsely populated. A few citizens, clad in the uniform grey and muted blue of civic apparel, moved with deliberate, unhurried steps, their gazes fixed forward, though Linda felt the weight of their peripheral awareness. They knew. Everyone always knew.

### The Display of Discomfiture

On the massive, translucent screen that dominated the plaza’s southern wall, a looping playback began. It was a fragment, barely fifteen seconds, from two days prior. Her own kitchen, seen through the ubiquitous ‘Aperture’ lens embedded in her domestic unit’s ceiling panel. She watched herself, a private moment, utterly mundane. Linda had been attempting to re-pot a particularly stubborn fern, its roots tangled and defiant. A frustration, a small, human frustration, had bubbled up. She’d muttered, a low, irritable string of words directed not at the plant itself, but at the sheer, unyielding recalcitrance of the organic world, so unlike the predictable logic of her astrophysical equations. And then, without thinking, without truly seeing the Aperture’s faint red glow, she had made a gesture. A dismissive flick of her wrist, a gesture of exasperation, one she’d inherited from her grandmother, a woman whose spirit had been anything but compliant.

The gesture, an innocent, reflexive act of private annoyance, was now magnified to fill the vast screen, her slightly hunched form suddenly monstrously large, her private irritation a public spectacle. The formal notification, Officer Borislav had called it. Embarrassing, was the more accurate term. Deeply, profoundly embarrassing. It was a breach of decorum, a moment of unguarded humanity presented as an affront to civic harmony.

"Section 7, Subsection C: 'Unsanctioned Emotional Effusion in a Monitored Domestic Environment'," Officer Borislav continued, his voice resonating with an unshakeable, bureaucratic authority. His uniform, stiff and perfectly pressed, caught the filtered light, making him seem sculpted from granite. "A minor infraction, Professor, yet one that, left unaddressed, could contribute to broader societal disharmony."

Linda’s jaw ached. The wind picked up, swirling a handful of bronze-coloured maple leaves across the plaza’s polished ground, their brief, frantic dance a stark contrast to the rigid stillness of the proceedings. She wanted to argue, to explain the sheer, ludicrous triviality of it all. It was a fern. A difficult fern. But the formal rules of engagement dictated a different response. Any explanation would be interpreted as resistance, as further emotional deregulation.

---

### The Weight of Protocol

The session was designed to be a reassertion of control, a public theatre of conformity. Officer Borislav presented a series of standardised questions, each designed to elicit a specific, pre-approved response demonstrating understanding and contrition. His questions were phrased with a deliberate, almost poetic formality, transforming the simple act of re-potting a plant into a philosophical transgression against the collective ideal.

"Do you acknowledge," he intoned, hands clasped behind his back mirroring Linda's, "that the personal expression of frustration, however minor, can ripple outwards, disrupting the delicate balance of civic serenity?"

"I acknowledge that, Officer," Linda replied, the words tasting like ashes in her mouth. She focused on a stray strand of grey hair that had escaped her neat bun, twisting gently in the wind. A small, almost invisible act of rebellion in her mind. Her gaze, despite her effort to keep it steady, was drawn again to the screen, to the endless loop of her own fleeting irritation. The pixelation again. Clearer this time. A brief flash of what looked like… code? Or was it merely the resolution struggling against the autumn light?

The wind grew colder, whistling through the gaps in the Enclosure’s dome, carrying the scent of damp earth and the distant, unseen river. Linda shivered, not just from the cold, but from a deeper unease. This public performance, this carefully orchestrated embarrassment, was about more than just a fern. It was about thought, about feeling, about the very inner workings of a human mind.

"And do you affirm that the well-being of the collective supersedes the fleeting, individual impulse?" Borislav continued, his posture unwavering.

"I affirm that," Linda said, her voice thin but unwavering. Inside, a quiet rage, cold and sharp as the Winnipeg air, began to coil. She had spent a lifetime studying the vast, indifferent order of the cosmos, where chaos and creation were two sides of the same infinite coin. To reduce humanity, with all its beautiful, messy contradictions, to a series of regulated emotional responses seemed, to her, an act of intellectual barbarism.

---

### A Fleeting Glimpse Beyond

As Borislav moved to the final, ceremonial question, Linda’s eyes caught something else on the screen, something that flickered beneath the looping image of her kitchen. Not a glitch this time, but a faint, almost subliminal overlay. A pattern. A series of interconnected lines and dots, like constellations mapped onto a different kind of sky. It was gone in an instant, replaced by the perfect, sterile loop of her minor transgression.

She looked at Borislav, his face impassive. Did he see it? Could he see it? Or was she alone in observing the fleeting imperfection, the momentary break in the perfect facade of the system? The hope, a fragile, almost foolish ember, ignited within her. Perhaps the system, in its relentless pursuit of order, contained its own inherent flaws, its own unintended spaces where something other, something defiant, could momentarily manifest.

"Finally, Professor Linda," Borislav concluded, his hand rising to signal the impending end of the session, "do you commit to a renewed vigilance in maintaining your emotional equilibrium, understanding that your actions, however small, contribute to the grand tapestry of our harmonious society?"

Linda looked past Borislav, past the few silent citizens, towards the distant, veiled horizon where the city’s perimeter vanished into the autumn haze. The colours of the real world, the deep ochre of the distant grasses, the bruised purple of the sky before winter’s shroud, beckoned.

"I commit," she said, her voice stronger now, imbued with a quiet resolve that no one, not even Borislav with his rigid protocols, could fully dissect. Her gaze, however, was no longer on the screen, nor on the officer. It was fixed on something unseen, something beyond the Enclosure, beyond the carefully curated reality of Winnipeg. The pixelation, the fleeting pattern, it wasn't just a glitch. It was a message. And she, Linda, had been chosen to receive it. The cold wind carried a faint whisper of anticipation, a promise of revelation. It felt as though a great, unseen eye had blinked, and in that brief moment, something vital had been revealed.