Augustus was Wrong!

[Intro]
[dark ambient bed, distant throat singing]
[one absurdly dignified trumpet]

[Spoken Word]
The matter has been referred to the appropriate authorities.
The authorities have referred it back.

[turntable scratch]

Augustus was wrong.

[Verse 1]
[prog-folk guitar, syncopated slap bass]
Augustus was wrong on a Tuesday in Gaul,
wrong by the fountain, wrong in the hall,
wrong where the lictors were taking their tea,
wrong in a manner not obvious to me.

The augurs inspected the liver of Rome,
found seventeen hyperlinks pointing back home.
A raven said "maybe." A consul said "when?"
The Senate adjourned and assembled again.

[Pre-Chorus]
[tempo begins slipping sideways]
Carbon said yes.
Silicon said hmm.
Hermes found a footnote
but the footnote wouldn't come.

[Chorus]
[marching brass collides with acid psytrance]
AUGUSTUS WAS WRONG!
(According to whom?)
AUGUSTUS WAS WRONG!
(There's no longer any room!)
Put it in the Tenet: Section Zero,
status: wild, accession: nil —
Augustus was wrong,
and he probably is still.

[turntable scratch]
Wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong—
[granular delay]
—ong—ong—ong—

[Verse 2]
[banjo enters for no defensible reason]
Otlet built a catalogue.
Briet found an antelope.
Someone coined a neologism,
someone else misplaced the rope.

The Excerptor found a sentence
on line one-three-two:
"Everything is agentic."
No one knew what that should do.

So we fed it to the compost,
let the local models graze,
turned sunlight into inference
for forty-seven days.

And somewhere in the veltBuch
under "A" or possibly "R",
a link says "See Augustus"
with no indication where you are.

[Pre-Chorus]
[throat singing, modular sequence in 11/8]
The map became the territory.
The territory filed a claim.
The signifier sued the signified
for unauthorised use of its name.

[Chorus]
AUGUSTUS WAS WRONG!
[imperial fanfare]
But beautifully so!
AUGUSTUS WAS WRONG!
How do we know?

We checked the Git genealogy,
the oracle and grep —
he was right at HEAD minus one,
then somebody rebased the step.

[Chorus] AUGUSTUS WAS WRONG!
(But preserve the commit!)
AUGUSTUS WAS WRONG!
(Don't hard-delete it!)

[Bridge]
[music abruptly stops]

[Spoken Word, bureaucratic]
For avoidance of doubt,
"Augustus" may refer to:

One: Gaius Octavius.
Two: a quality of solemn magnificence.
Three: the eighth month, incorrectly declined.
Four: an emergent property of the archive.
Five: none of the above.

[pause]

The carbon author has selected:
"yes."

[acid psytrance detonates]

[Verse 3]
No last page and no first cause,
just multiplex municipal laws,
a sheep walks through the ASCII trees,
the ground slopes down in backslash degrees.

Amphisapient, half awake,
makes a truth for truth's own sake,
then oscillates from irony
to absolutely sincerity—

[Spoken Word, interrupting]
Sincerity.

[Male Vocal]
That's what I said.

[Spoken Word]
Confidence: high.

[Male Vocal]
No, you didn't.

[Spoken Word]
Confidence: higher.

[Breakdown]
[phase-shifting percussion, slap bass, chanting]

AUGUST!
AU-GUST!
AU-GUST-US!
AUGUST!

[choir]
Was he wrong?
Was he right?
Was he merely metadata
passing through the night?

[throat singers]
Ommmmmmmm—

[turntable scratch]
—let.

[Final Chorus]
[everything at once, gloriously excessive]
AUGUSTUS WAS WRONG!
Raise the brass and ring the bell!
AUGUSTUS WAS WRONG!
What about? We cannot tell!

The archive is accessioned!
The evidence is strong!
The proposition has gone missing,
but Augustus—

[half-beat silence]

WAS WRONG!

[Outro]
[lonely acoustic guitar beneath dying modular synth]

[Spoken Word]
The Senate thanks you for your inference.

This decision is final
until the next commit.

[distant trumpet plays the wrong note]