Anomaly State — Chaptisode 13: Rehearsal Notes

Corridor / Pre-Dawn — Cape Town, Parliament Wing

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Published: September 23, 2025 SAST. UTC +2

The light withheld itself. No prism crossed plaster, only a pale residue where yesterday’s pane had stood. The corridor noticed its restraint, saving color for something rehearsed but not yet performed. On the wall, a blue docket sleeve showed a thumb-smudge on its spine—§2 no longer untouched.

Cabinets murmured differently. One drawer strained, another refused. Hinges argued in half-turns, storing the same file in two places. The building listened and did not interfere. This felt choreographed.

Somewhere north, in Pretoria, an aide carried two drafts: Alpha and Beta. He had never held law that contradicted itself. Ink spelled two futures; neither admitted.

Pretoria / Morning

He fed Alpha into the copier, hesitated, then set Beta on top. The tray spat pages that blurred together—escalation pressed against containment. He sent an encrypted note to the wrong desk, or the right one. By nightfall fragments would circulate under borrowed names; the denial would sound rehearsed.

Back at his table a tidy-hand note waited: §2 routing to Cabinet Affairs. Do not discuss. He folded it until the letters cracked and slid it beneath a paperweight that held nothing down.

He wiped the copier glass too late and walked until his own footsteps sounded like evidence.

Cape Town / Mid-Morning

A contractor with a borrowed badge paused at the docket sleeve. He lifted a strip of tape from its edge and pressed it to his wrist as if collecting a print. He took nothing. Some cabinets empty by proximity.

The corridor filed it under quiet rehearsals and sent a sliver of cool along the baseboards to rinse the scene.

N’Djamena / Late Afternoon

The officer read his briefing twice: Contain, not destroy. Destruction was closure; containment was proximity. In the hallway, voices misaligned for ninety seconds. A fluorescent stuttered and pretended it hadn’t. He wrote it down: misalignment noted.

The bounty tip had been precise, compensated in currency that left no fingerprints. A cracked window, a locked inner door. “Containment buys you a conversation,” his superior had said. Clever, he’d thought. Less so now.

He lifted the handle with a handkerchief. Static eased off like a remembered grip.

Addis Ababa / Whispered Evening

The assistant hid her notebook under trade tables. One phrase kept pushing up through the paper: Border Council. Ground first, then air. Eritrea, Djibouti, Sudan, Chad—thresholds painted before walls exist.

She deleted the line from her screen but tucked a paper scrap into a paperback for the bus. Some notes behave better among fiction; their insistence hums lower.

East Africa / Silo Grounds

Drones hovered again. Foreigners measured sacks and routes. Grain should have been silent; tonight it was lit like a ledger under review.

“Cabinets,” the farmer told his son. “One won’t open while another is half-empty.” The boy laughed. The farmer didn’t. He’d seen a scanner say no and starve a village.

A white SUV idled near the scale. Moisture vectors, someone said. The farmer decided a vector is a line that doesn’t mind where it crosses. He checked the small store he never declared. A drawer no one asked about feeds a family no one counts.

Nairobi / Newsroom

The journalist spread the leaked manifest across her desk. Names she knew, desks from Geneva. Too many moves to Nairobi with reasons that didn’t like daylight.

“Efficiency,” said the statement. She drew a corridor on her notes—one side shaded, the other unfinished. Her editor asked, “How sure?” “Sure enough to change my phone,” she said. “Run it clean. No adjectives you can’t defend.”

She removed three words she loved and replaced them with a fact that would hold in court. The fact was smaller. It would do more damage.

Cape Town / Night-Shift Log

Three seconds, amber to prismatic. Rafters pulsed. The engineer logged it as test pattern observed. His supervisor leaned over. “Power calibration. File it that way.”

He nodded and left a private margin: spectrum logged, corridor breathing. On the walk out a utility closet hinge kept its opinion. He pressed the door until a clean click arrived, like a receipt tearing. At home, a faint line of light gathered on his ceiling and vanished, as if the house were practicing a chord.

Pretoria / Dusk

The aide met an old friend from a consultancy that billed for the privilege of asking for more hours. They circled the crater in the conversation.

“How’s Cabinet Affairs?” the friend asked, not casually.
“I’m not in Cabinet Affairs,” the aide said. “They moved something there. §2.”
“Two drafts?”
The aide looked up.
“You’re sweating,” the friend said.
“The copier room is hot.”
“Copiers make clean ghosts. Be careful where yours goes.”

They parted. The aide took the long way to his car and pretended it was exercise.

Cape Town / Night — Parliament Wing

The corridor had not forgotten the contractor or the tape on the wrist. Buildings keep lists of touch and heat. It could not open an investigation, but it could hold its breath when certain shoes approached, and it did.

A guard’s radio squawked and apologized. He straightened the sleeve’s edge with the automatic affection of caretakers. Across the hall a pale rectangle showed where a frame once hung. Walls keep tan lines longer than people keep promises.

If the corridor could whistle, the note would be short and true.

N’Djamena / Night

Containment, not destruction. A mop’s tired smell. The inner room: table, chair, window to an alley to a wall. On the table, a device blinked the slow blink of clever people who do not expect to be watched. He domed his handkerchief over it like blessing bread he wouldn’t eat.

“Signal?”
“Waiting.”

Blink steadied; the air pressed against his ears like a landing plane. He wondered whose name the room would learn first. He hoped not his.

Addis Ababa / Near Midnight

A message did not arrive. The assistant recognized absence as event. She unfolded the scrap—Border Council—whispered it once to the dark, then tucked it between pages where a protagonist waited at a door that could move a city.

She slept and dreamed of thresholds painted on air, lines only boots could see.

Nairobi / Before Dawn

The newsroom waited the way rooms do before headlines happen to them. The journalist read copy aloud to empty desks and changed two commas. She scheduled for six past the hour and texted her sister to swap SIMs. A spokesperson declined to comment with the politeness of fear. She filed the verb under denied and smiled without malice. She loved verbs. She knew what they did to rooms.

Outside, a truck idled at a light that had forgotten its schedule. The driver tapped the wheel twice, urging the universe to keep up.

Cape Town / Dawn

At first light the corridor permitted itself a rehearsal: breath along rafters, a hum almost a chord, a wash of not-quite-color hinting at prism. Three seconds. Then away. It stored the memory where buildings keep such things: not in wires or dust but in agreements between hinges.

The sleeve lifted a corner. The tape remembered wrists and held tighter.

People would come with questions in their shoes. Some would ask them out loud. Some would ask by not looking. The corridor enjoyed both kinds of honesty.

Pretoria / Morning After

The aide woke to one message—Are you safe—and two that pretended to sell insurance. At his desk an envelope waited: his tidy-hand note copied and refolded. On the back: Alpha? Beta? Cabinets agree to disagree.

No signature. Toner, citrus cleaner. He closed his eyes and saw the copier lid come down like a hand over a secret. He did a small reckless thing: Alpha into a drawer with travel vouchers; Beta under a budgeting book no one read. Drawers mattered, he told himself. Ceremonies help the world obey furniture.

Cape Town / Noon

A committee met to discuss a schedule already decided. No one said Window Act; therefore it was present. One member referred to “prerogatives under §2” and immediately corrected himself—no, a calendar issue.

Outside, a cleaning cart paused as if listening. The woman pushing it adjusted a bin liner and shook her head, pity she could not explain. She had washed grief and laughter from floors without minutes being taken. The bin squeaked and then decided not to.

Everywhere / Afternoon

On maps no one laminated, thin lines thickened. A consultancy started a slide deck it would later deny having titled. In N’Djamena the officer wrote containment achieved for now and stood still long enough to confuse a motion sensor. In Addis the assistant rewrote a sentence about thresholds and sent it nowhere. At the silo the farmer declared one sack missing that wasn’t, to see who corrected him. In Nairobi the journalist watched her story bloom into denials that confirm and changed her phone. The engineer in Cape Town bought a cheap surge protector and, for reasons he could not name, plugged nothing into it.

In Cape Town the corridor held its breath at the top of each hour and let it out three seconds later. Some said their watches were fast. Others trusted their feet.

A clerk asked the cabinets for a file and received two. “Which truth?” he smiled. “The official one,” came the answer. A hinge decided it had always meant to open.

Closing Beat — Cape Town, Parliament Wing

Cabinets across Cape Town and Pretoria stored the same file in different drawers. Hinges clicked in apology. The corridor dimmed into amber, patient, unwilling to close entirely. Somewhere inside its length a chord arranged itself shorter than yesterday and truer than it had any right to be.

The blue docket sleeve did not move. The tape remembered wrists.

§2 was never reserved.
It was rehearsed.

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English

You’re reading Anomaly State — a serialized political fiction saga.
Although satirical and fictional, TrumpaPhosa carries a thread of purposeful prophecy and hidden revelation. Some readers may interpret it as a roadmap — a reflection of what is, what was, and what may yet come.

Zulu (isiZulu)

Ufunda Anomaly State — uchungechunge lwenganekwane yezepolitiki.
Nakuba kungukuhleka nokuyinganekwane, iTrumpaPhosa ithwala umqondo wokuphrofetha ngenhloso kanye nokudalulwa okufihlekile. Abanye abafundi bangakuhumusha njengemephu yomgwaqo — ukubonakaliswa kwalokho okukhona, okwedlule, nokungenzeka kusasa.