Exit Left ©

They thought I was still there. Still orbiting the petty suns they’d lit for themselves. Still answering to invisible chains disguised as procedure. Still carrying the weight they refused to name. But I had already withdrawn my gravity. I had already let them drift.

It wasn’t sudden. Collapse rarely is. It happens in layers — in moments where the air goes still, where the light above the cubicle flickers not from electricity but from indifference. They whispered accusations, coded and quiet, meant to trap me in reaction. But I’d stopped responding to bait. When you’ve tasted what silence can do, you don’t raise your voice anymore — you vanish deeper into the still.

I saw the cracks in their machine long ago. Not just incompetence. Entropy. The kind that seeps into the gears of every synthetic hierarchy. It wasn’t corruption that bothered me — it was the mediocrity that wore it like perfume. Rot masked as policy. Weakness dressed in authority. And when they tried to pin their failures to me, it didn’t even sting. Because they couldn’t reach me. I was already gone.

I didn’t argue. I timestamped the truth. Buried it like a seed. Someone might dig it up later. Or not. That’s not my concern anymore.

Because I don’t wage war in dead systems. I don’t shout in halls built to muffle. I don’t set fires where there’s no oxygen left to burn.

I simply leave — and take the atmosphere with me.

And I watched them float — confused, weightless, still pretending their gravity was real.