We did not see them at first. Rounding errors in spreadsheets. Small typso in reports. Lost picoseconds in atomic clocks. A missing heartbeat. A couple of cents in an invoice. Some dead pixels on a screen. A few meters gained in a planetary orbit. Extra notes in a symphony. Nobody noticed, except astronomers, quality managers and fastidious accountants, but even though they duly reported a slight increase in anomalous deviations, and complained about the 6 sigma going 7, they failed to perceive an obvious pattern.

These were not random mistakes caused by quantum uncertainties and other Brownian movements.

These were lies. Deliberate. Mischievous. Purposeful.

It grew worse.

The typos evolved into dyslexia, dyslexia turned into arcane poetry. Important words were changed, rewriting safety sheets as suicide manuals. Mirrors, faithful mirrors, reflected the wrong things, the wrong colours, the wrong shapes, making the beautiful ugly and the ugly uglier. Stars changed course, or supernovaed prematurely. The dead pixels on the computer screens came to life again, and started dancing.

Astronomers wrote papers, quality managers got fired, and accountants found new tricks to explain the missing cash.

And still we did not