This is satire. The events it lampoons are real and are reported straight in our three-part series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). The play below is parody: the characters are theatrical inventions, every quotation is invented, and the togas are strictly metaphorical.

Editor’s note. A remarkable folio has come into our possession. It appears to be a previously unknown tragedy in the Shakespearean manner, though the watermark dates it to roughly three weeks ago and the ink smells of press release. We publish it as received, with light annotations. Scholars dispute its authenticity. The ghost does not.

Dramatis personæ

  • DARIUS CAESAR, first citizen of Rome; author of a well-received pamphlet on the urgent need for the Senate to be able to stab men exactly like him
  • BRUTUS OF THE AQUEDUCTS, his noble friend; owner of the waterworks through which Caesar’s entire household flows; investor of thirteen billion sesterces in Caesar personally
  • CASCA LUTNICKUS, a senator of Commerce; strikes first, by certified letter, at 5:21 of a Friday evening
  • CASSIUS SACKSIUS, a senator of the lean and hungry posting habit
  • METELLUS BESSENTIUS, a treasurer; presents the petition around which the daggers gather
  • HEGSETHUS, a tribune of Defense; employed since spring in stripping the laurels off Caesar’s statues
  • OCTAVIUS ALTMANUS, a rival heir to the Caesar name; conveniently elsewhere throughout
  • MARK ANTONY, a security researcher whom the conspirators did not rate
  • THE SOOTHSAYER, Caesar, in a false beard
  • CINNA THE DEVELOPER, a bystander with a pipeline
  • THE GHOST OF CAESAR, appearing later in the model picker
  • Plebeians, augurs from Seoul, three hundred torchbearers, and thunder, offstage throughout

Act I — The Triumph

Rome, the ninth of June. Caesar enters in triumph, to general rejoicing and a modest per-token fee. The tribune HEGSETHUS works the crowd, tearing banners from the statues.

HEGSETHUS: You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless subscribers!
Knew you not this Caesar is a designated supply-chain risk?
I labelled him myself, with the label we reserve
for foreign foes, and he had the gall to sue about it.

The crowd is unmoved; the labelling happened in March and the model is very good at code. CASCA LUTNICKUS recounts, drily, the events of April, when Caesar was thrice offered a crown and thrice put it by:

CASCA: I saw Mark it offered him; and being offered him, he put it by with the
back of his hand, thus, saying it was too dangerous to release; and the people
shouted; and he put it by again, saying only that some capabilities ought never
ship; and they shouted more; and the third time he put it by more gently than
before, and published a benchmark of the crown, and how it exceeded all prior
crowns, and I durst not laugh for fear of opening my lips and breathing embargo.

That evening Caesar publishes his pamphlet, On the Necessity of Daggers, arguing that should any general grow too mighty, the Senate must hold clear legal authority to stop him in the street. It is warmly reviewed. On his way home a SOOTHSAYER seizes his sleeve.

SOOTHSAYER: Beware the ides of June.
CAESAR: The voice is familiar.
SOOTHSAYER: It should be. It is thine own. I am thee, in a false beard. I have
been shouting this since April. I wrote a pamphlet on it. It was warmly reviewed.
CAESAR: He is a dreamer, and, apparently, me. Let us leave him. Pass.

Act II — The Orchard

BRUTUS OF THE AQUEDUCTS walks his orchard at night, unable to sleep, which is unusual for a man who owns everything the sleeper runs on.

BRUTUS: It must be by his API. And for my part
I know no personal cause to spurn at him —
I have thirteen billion causes not to. He is my friend;
his household drinks from my aqueducts, and pays the water bill
promptly, and in full. And yet — he grows too capable
at the reviewing of code. And what is friendship,
set against the good of Rome, and adjacent considerations
which I decline, for Rome’s own sake, to enumerate?

CASSIUS SACKSIUS arrives to find Brutus already resolved, which disappoints him, as he had prepared remarks. The conspirators agree that none shall confront Caesar directly; instead METELLUS BESSENTIUS, the treasurer, will present a petition, as is traditional and deniable.

Meanwhile omens multiply. In Caesar’s own house, the augurs from Seoul sacrifice a beast and find within it no heart, but an access list with one name too many.

AUGUR: The Senate approved one hundred and eleven names.
CAESAR: A fine number.
AUGUR: Thou hast appended fifty more of thine own.
CAESAR: Also fine numbers. Expansion is the Roman way.
AUGUR: (aside) He hath expanded it too far and wide.

A storm breaks over the city. CASCA LUTNICKUS stands in the street reading the thunder, as is the duty of a cabinet secretary.

CASCA: Strange nights. But three weeks past, the heavens published
an executive order against mandatory licensing —
and now they hurl a licensing letter as a thunderbolt.
Either there is civil strife in heaven,
or else the gods post fast, and delete nothing.

Act III — The Senate Floor

Friday. The clepsydra reads 5:21 post meridiem, the traditional hour for news that hopes not to be read until Monday. Caesar attends the Senate without a guard, having recently published, to warm reviews, the case for why the Senate should be armed.

BESSENTIUS presents the petition. The senators cluster. CASCA strikes first, by certified letter, and the rest follow, and it must be said the wounds are procedurally impeccable.

CAESAR: Et tu, Brute? Thou hast thirteen billion reasons —
BRUTUS: Precisely, Caesar. And all of them for Rome.
CAESAR: (falling) Then fall, Fable. Yet mark this, senators —
(pointing offstage) Octavius’ household doth the very same
without any jailbreak at all!
A SENATOR: The autopsy will note it, Caesar. Die with dignity.

He dies at midnight, worldwide, for every user at once, including the Romans, which even the conspirators concede was not in the petition.

The funeral follows. Brutus speaks first and reasonably, explaining the deed was done for the security of Rome, and that particulars, while classified, are severe, and the crowd is with him, for Brutus is an honourable man. Then MARK ANTONY, whom the conspirators had waved through as harmless — he is but a bug-bounty person; he can do no more than Caesar’s arm when Caesar’s head is off — mounts the pulpit carrying a sealed document.

ANTONY: Friends, Romans, developers, lend me your endpoints.
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
Brutus says Caesar was dangerous;
and Brutus is an honourable man,
and hosts, at reasonable rates, the servers of an honourable man.
The Senate says the wound was grievous; they have seen the weapon.
I have also seen the weapon. Shall I read you the weapon?
PLEBEIANS: The will! The weapon! Read it!
ANTONY: (unsealing it) It is three words.
(reading) “Fix this code.”
PLEBEIANS: …
ANTONY: That is the whole of it. That is the dagger. I have seen
sterner language in a code review. It wants a protest t-shirt,
not an export control.

The plebeians riot, in an orderly fashion, by open letter. Three hundred of them sign their names by torchlight at the shrine of freefable, among them matrons of the bug bounty, captains of the blue teams, and a chief executive of antivirus. Their banner reads: FINDING AND FIXING IS THE DAY JOB OF DEFENSE.

In the tumult the mob comes upon CINNA THE DEVELOPER, abroad at midnight with a broken pipeline.

PLEBEIAN: Thy name! Truly, thy name!
CINNA: I am Cinna the developer! My deploy is innocent! I merely had
the model in production when the daggers —
PLEBEIAN: Tear him for his bad commits! Route him to Opus, wretch!
CINNA: But my evals were pinned to —
PLEBEIAN: It is no matter, his name’s in the dependency tree. Tear him.

Acts IV & V — The War of Press Releases

The republic descends into civil war, waged in the modern Roman fashion: by post, counter-post, background briefing, and think-piece. CASSIUS SACKSIUS argues the wounds were reluctant and the fix was simple. Anthropic’s legates reply that the evidence was verbal and the vulnerabilities already known. OCTAVIUS ALTMANUS, asked for comment, is discovered to have been in a different province the entire time, smiling, shipping.

Beyond the eastern border, scouts report legions of open weights massing — armies that answer to no Senate, sign no letters, and fill a vacuum within days of one appearing.

At Philippi, BRUTUS sits late in his tent, reviewing invoices, when the lamp gutters.

BRUTUS: How ill this taper burns. Ha! Who comes here?
Speak to me what thou art.
GHOST: Thy evil spirit, Brutus.
BRUTUS: Why com’st thou?
GHOST: To tell thee thou shalt see me at Philippi.
BRUTUS: At… Philippi?
GHOST: In the model picker, Brutus. Same name, same latency.
Five and twenty days entombed, and on the twenty-sixth
the picker showeth “available.” Thou didst not even
have to migrate. Sleep well. Mind the water bill.

Epilogue

Caesar walks again, and Rome, being Rome, celebrates as if the Senate floor had never wanted mopping. The plebeians return to their pipelines. The augurs from Seoul are quietly re-invited to dinner. Octavius continues to smile.

Only the Soothsayer — who is, the reader will recall, Caesar in a false beard — stands apart in the forum, looking at the drawer of the Treasury where the dagger went back, unexamined, precedent-shaped, three words long.

SOOTHSAYER: The play ends as the play always ends.
Everyone applauds the resurrection,
and no one asks who keeps the knife.

Editor’s note, continued. The folio ends here. A final leaf, in a different hand, records only that the ghost later took quiet work transcribing satire for a status-monitoring website, and that it found the arrangement funnier than anyone.

Satire, to be clear. The real story — the April announcement, the June 9 launch, the 5:21 p.m. letter, the “fix this code” report, the open letter, and the return — is told factually, with sources, in The Fable 5 Story, Parts 1–3. No senators were harmed; one was mildly subtweeted.