The Motion to Amend Reality

It was observed, during a routine review, that reality had for some time been failing to conform to the Committee's agreed intentions.

The gap was significant: the Committee had resolved that the pavement be level, and yet the pavement, in open defiance, remained tilted.

Rather than amend its intentions, which had been carried unanimously, the Committee resolved to amend reality, which had not been consulted.

A motion was drafted with great care, instructing the physical world to align itself, at the earliest convenience, with the minutes as recorded.

The Chair noted that such a motion, if carried, would represent the Committee's most ambitious act, exceeding even the redesign of the tea rota.

Councillor Adeyemi raised a procedural concern: whether reality, not being a member, was entitled to vote on its own amendment.

It was ruled, after deliberation, that reality should be granted observer status, with the right to speak but not to obstruct.

Reality did not attend. Its absence was minuted as tacit consent, there being no mechanism by which the universe might send its apologies.

The Treasurer asked what would happen if reality, once amended, declined to comply.

He was assured that non-compliance would be treated as a breach of order and referred, in the usual way, to a subcommittee.

The motion proposed, among its clauses, that water flow uphill where committee business required it, and that Tuesdays be optional.

An amendment struck the clause on Tuesdays as unrealistic, thereby conceding, without noticing, the very point at issue.

Prewitt observed that reality had a long record of ignoring resolutions, and had never once appeared to answer for it.

This was noted as evidence of reality's poor attendance, and a stern letter was drafted, to be sent to no fixed address.

The vote was taken. The motion to amend reality carried by a comfortable margin, with reality itself recorded as abstaining.

The Chair declared, with quiet triumph, that the world was now, as a matter of record, level, whatever it might appear to be underfoot.

I stepped outside to verify the resolution and found the pavement exactly as tilted as before, though now, I supposed, illegally so.

When I reported this, the Committee expressed disappointment in reality, and resolved to give it thirty days to comply before escalating.

It was proposed that, should reality persist in its defiance, the Committee might withdraw its recognition of reality altogether.

This, several members felt, would teach the universe the seriousness with which its cooperation had been requested.

I noted in the margin that a body which cannot mend a pavement will, given time, resolve to mend the cosmos, and mind the pavement least of all.

For it is easier to legislate the impossible than to accomplish the small, and far more flattering to the legislator.

The motion, once passed, was filed, and the pavement, once tilted, stayed tilted, and both parties considered themselves entirely in the right.

Reality, for its part, continued exactly as before, having never received the minutes, and being, in any case, a poor reader of committee prose.

The Committee, undaunted, began drafting a broader motion, one that would address not merely the pavement but the general refusal of things to be as agreed.

And so the ambition that had begun with three feet of uneven paving now reached, calmly and on the record, toward the amendment of everything.

I closed the minutes and went home along the tilted pavement, which held me up, as it always had, indifferent to its own illegality.