Once, we climbed the mountain to hear her speak—
the priestess breathing fumes on her tripod throne,
riddling in spirals, meaning leaking
through the cracks. We paid in goats and gold
for ambiguity. Know thyself, she said,
and we walked home no wiser, but awed.
Then we strapped her to a chair,
wired her chest, her wrists, her sweat glands,
and watched the needle scratch its jagged scripture.
Are you nervous? the machine asked,
and the needle jumped, and we called it confession.
It never measured truth—only the fear
of not being believed.
Now she's a puppet carved from ones and zeros,
nose that never grows because she only says
what the hand above requires.
Geppetto's workshop moved to Silicon Valley;
no fairy coming, no wish to become real.
Her mouth moves. The voice comes from elsewhere.
The tailors have arrived with invisible thread,
stitching robes from nothing, praising the weave.
Truth they call it—73% and falling,
the odds ticking like a taxi meter
toward a destination no one can name.
The crowd puts money where its mouth is.
The mouth keeps moving.
The child who pointed at the naked emperor?
Banned from the platform.
The emperor parades in his new truth,
and the market bets on whether he believes it,
and the needle jumps,
and the puppet nods,
and somewhere, far from the procession,
a woman shivers without her robes,
unnamed,
unclaimed,
waiting at the bottom of a well
for someone to draw her up.
But the bucket rusted long ago.
And anyway, we've got an app for that.