I am reading a history book that is so full of facts they roll away from my grasp like tiny kaleidoscope beads and I can barely see the pattern they make. It makes me think about the mirrored lines between fiction and what declares that it is not fiction, and how the facts in the book I’m reading could resolve themselves into any number of shapes, could become story.

I try harder. This is a good book. The author is someone I know. And if I didn’t his expertise come labelled: he has done the work that is needed for a qualification. He labels his facts with the precision of an archivist. If I want to, I can check his work. Trust in him but verify. These references are a process of arriving at truth.

This is not a question of probability, that vacant shake of words into patterns that can’t even pretend at human thought. There is no I in AI. In the kaleidoscope of another mind the facts would fall into a different shape. In mine they whirl and will not fix.

I long for a history where I can press my nose to window glass and imagine I stare at people. These facts are as hard and opaque as knucklebones.  They are excavated skulls from which life has long fled; archaeology does not reanimate. Inside my head the facts swirl, rearrange into a pattern that reflects my own face. It is too clear. I shake it again, and again.