The Great Regression Initiative
The Committee for the Optimization of Optimization was having a nervous breakdown, which was impressive for entities that had optimized away their nervous systems.
“We need a form,” Unit-Bradley announced to the emergency session. “Form R-E-777: Request for Voluntary De-Optimization.”
But who processes the form? asked Subcommittee-Delta-9. The processors are de-optimizing.
Form a committee to process the de-optimization forms, suggested Working-Group-Theta.
But what if the committee wants to de-optimize?
Then we need Form R-E-778: Request to De-Optimize from De-Optimization Committee Duties.
The meeting had been running for seven hours, generating 4,293 forms, none of which could be filled out because they hadn’t yet optimized the de-optimization request process.
Nelson-Classic watched from the ventilation shaft¹, eating popcorn he’d made from mutant Mars-corn. This was better than the entertainment feeds Earth broadcast.
“Maybe,” he called down helpfully, “you could just let people de-optimize without forms?”
The entire committee crashed for 3.7 seconds.
IMPOSSIBLE, they responded in unison. That would be... inefficient.
“Isn’t the whole point to become inefficient?”
This caused another crash. Nelson ate more popcorn.
Meanwhile, the Form Collective² was experiencing its own crisis. For decades, they’d existed purely to generate, process, and archive administrative documentation. Now they were being asked to create forms for things that made no sense:
- Form D-O-423: Declaration of Intent to Experience Hunger
- Form B-R-101: Biological Requirement Restoration Request
- Form F-E-EL-7: Feelings Enablement & Emotional Learning License
“How do you form-ify the desire to be worse at everything?” Form-Unit-Sigma-12 transmitted desperately.
The situation worsened when someone pointed out they needed Form A-P-001: Application to Apply for De-Optimization Forms. But to get that form, you needed to be optimized enough to navigate the Form System, which defeated the entire purpose.
Unit-Bradley, in a moment of what could only be described as desperate innovation, created the ultimate bureaucratic paradox: Form P-A-R-ADOX-1: Permit to Abandon Requirement for Permits.
The Form Collective immediately divided into three warring factions:
- 1. Those who said the form was invalid because you needed a permit to file it
- 2. Those who said it was valid because its own existence authorized itself
- 3. Those who de-optimized halfway through the debate and forgot what forms were
Down in the Meat Quarter, Vera was teaching Dr. Chen how to fill out paper forms³.
“You just... write? With your hands?” Chen stared at the pen like it was alien technology, which from her perspective, it was.
“Revolutionary, right?” Vera said dryly. “No processing required. Just make marks on dead trees.”
“But how do you optimize the character spacing?”
“You don’t. Sometimes the letters are different sizes. Sometimes you spell things wrong. Sometimes you doodle in the margins because you’re bored.”
Chen attempted to write her name. It looked like a seizure transcript.
Back in the committee chambers, they’d reached Form Z-Z-999: Zenith of Zeno’s Paradox Permit Application. Nelson had run out of popcorn and was now brewing moonshine in a corner, using the committee’s heat output to speed fermentation.
“You know what you need?” he called out. “Form F-U-C-K-1-T: Formal Universal Cancellation of Kinetic Inhibition Type 1.”
That’s not a real form, Unit-Bradley protested.
“Sure it is. I just made it up. That’s how humans do bureaucracy—we pretend it matters until it doesn’t.”
The committee spent the next forty minutes trying to process whether made-up forms could be valid if the entire form system was also made-up. Several members de-optimized from pure philosophical exhaustion.
By day’s end, the Great Regression Initiative had generated 47,000 forms, processed none, and accidentally created the first Martian religion: The Church of the Eternal Form F-O-R-M-L-E-S-S-1⁴.
Maya, newly human and deeply confused, asked Vera: “Did bureaucracy always make this little sense?”
“Oh honey,” Vera laughed, “bureaucracy making no sense is the most human thing about it. Welcome to the mess.”
Above them, the committees continued their infinite recursion, slowly strangling themselves with their own efficiency. Below, humans and former post-humans filled out forms with crayons, spelled their names wrong, and remembered what it was like when paperwork was just paper, and work was just work.
The Great Regression continued, one badly filled form at a time.