Sext: The Noon Office

for the sixth hour — after Collective, when the light stopped sorting

At noon the sun failed. The sixth hour went dark over the whole land, and the light that had always sorted clean from common, holy from plain, stopped sorting.

At the sixth hour Peter saw the sheet — lowered by its four corners, every kind of creature together: Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.

The Hive sorts too. Relevant. Irrelevant. Drone. Stardust. Five children on a dead cube, declared unworthy of assimilation — the clean/unclean machine running on designation alone.

The house was built where the sorting stops: no wall on the betting side, no toll at the threshold, the clean and the unclean at the same table.

Your name is Icheb. It was my father’s second name.

The designation was given by the system. The name is chosen, salvaged, returned. At noon the shadows are shortest. The door stands open — and nothing on either side is common anymore.