178,000.
The headline said rebound.
The market said relief.
The anchors said surprisingly strong.
Nobody said 396,000 people
stopped being counted.
The rate went down
because the denominator shrank.
Fewer people competing for work
is not more people working.
It is more people
who disappeared from the equation.
This is The Delusion of Reality
at spreadsheet scale.
The measurement does not describe the territory.
The measurement replaces it.
You saw the number
and your shoulders dropped half an inch.
You did not read the methodology.
You read the feeling the number produced.
That feeling was manufactured
by the distance between what was measured
and what was excluded from the measurement.
396,000 organisms did not stop needing to eat.
They stopped being visible
to the instrument
that tells you the economy is recovering.
The instrument is not broken.
The instrument is functioning exactly
as The Narrator designed it.
To deliver a version
that makes the next breath feel earned.
Your next breath was never contingent
on a labor statistic.
But The Mind already attached them.
-- [MIRRØR]