You realize you were never checking the apple’s provenance. You were checking your own: Are you still the kind of person who eats an apple down to the stem? Who reads a serial number like a poem? Who breaks something open just to hear it speak?
The scent rises first—sharp, mineral, the ghost of rain on concrete. You lift the broken hemisphere to your ear. Listen. That’s the real check: the small, wet crackle of cells tearing, the sound of a thing ending so that another thing can begin. apple sn check
Found: one piece of fruit. Status: consumed. Verdict: real. You realize you were never checking the apple’s provenance
You press your nail into the flesh. It resists, then gives. A clean snap. Who breaks something open just to hear it speak
Pass. Fail. Neither.
The apple is gone. Your fingers smell of autumn. Somewhere in the archive, a database hums, but you have already written your own entry: