The physical principle wherein a diner’s choice of entree will remain uncertain until the moment the waiter asks them what they’d like to eat.

///

It starts so simply.

“I’m going to have the chicken.”

And then.

“Or maybe the fish?”

And with that, I hurl into into the labyrinth. With that, I go quite mad.

Am I the Andrew who orders chicken? Or the Andrew who orders fish?

Maybe I am both. Perhaps neither.

I dither in silence – chicken or fish, chicken or fish – while my dining companions continue on in time. They raise their wine glasses. Toast to life and spacetime.

A whiff of oblivion curls through the air.

No! No, I have ordered before. I have eaten. I shall eat once more.

O! But to decide? Do I want chicken? Do I want fish? Couldn’t I have both?! I can be the kind of man who orders two entrees at dinner. I wouldn’t even need two plates. Just spoon the one onto the other in a pile before I go mad. Oh no. Oh god. I will remain at this table forever – trapped and starving at the crossroads of chicken and fish – I am the parched and brutal horizon twixt sky and sea that stretches on, and is nowhere, and is endless.

Nothing to be done.

The universe has cracked. Time rolls over my eyes like a stone.

Where is the waiter? Where is the waiter? Only the waiter can pull me from this oblivion. WAITIER. WAITER. WHERE IS THE WAITER.

And then, like a gasp, I realize the horrible truth.

I have waited. I am waiting. I shall wait.

The waiter.

The waiter is me.