The first play was called The Ad Man. It was about an advertising executive in 1954 Connecticut who discovers that the slogans he writes are actually commands, and when he writes a slogan that people buy, they actually obey the command embedded in the slogan. The play was written by a man named Robert who worked in advertising and who had noticed, over the course of fifteen years, that slogans did not merely persuade people to buy things. They changed the way people thought. Robert had concluded that slogans were commands, and he had written a play about this conclusion, and the play was being performed at a theater in Greenwich.

The second play was the play that Arthur watched. Arthur Vance was thirty-eight years old and he worked in advertising and he had come to Greenwich on a Friday night because his wife had told him to get out of the house and do something that was not drinking whiskey and watching television, and Arthur had gone to the theater and watched The Ad Man, and he had sat through the play and he had felt something shift in him, the way a mechanism shifts when it encounters a gear it was not designed to fit.

The third play was the one Arthur wrote that night. He sat in his car in the parking lot of the theater and he wrote on the back of a Playbill, and he wrote a play about a man who watches a play and the play changes him, and the play he writes is about a man who watches a play and the play he writes is about a man who watches a play, and he wrote this recursively, each layer deeper than the last, and he wrote until the Playbill was full and then he wrote on the other side and then he wrote on the dashboard of his car, and the writing on the dashboard was the only honest thing he had done in fifteen years of advertising.

Arthur was an advertising executive. He worked for a firm on Park Avenue that created slogans for products that people did not need and they sold products to people who did not need them and the slogans were commands and the commands changed the way people thought and Arthur was a man who wrote commands for a living and the commands were what he did and the commands were what he was and he had not written anything that was not a command in fifteen years.

The plays accumulated. Arthur went back to Greenwich the following Friday and he watched another play, and that play was about a woman who watches a play and the play she watches is about a woman who watches a play, and Arthur noticed the recursion and he felt it in his body, the way a recursive function feels in the body of a programmer, as a kind of vertigo, as the sense that you are falling through layers of yourself and each layer is you and the layer beneath that is also you and the layers do not end.

He wrote more plays. He wrote them on Playbills and receipts and napkins and the walls of his study and the walls of his car and the walls of the theater lobby, and each play was a layer deeper than the last, and each play was about a person watching a play, and the person in the play was watching a play, and the person in that play was watching a play, and Arthur wrote until he could not tell which layer he was in, and the vertigo became a permanent state.

The tension was: how many layers before someone breaks the loop. Arthur was the someone. He was living inside the recursion and the recursion was living inside him and the recursion was what he did and what he was, because he was an advertising executive and advertising is a recursive function. You write a slogan that tells people to want something, and the people want something and they buy it and they see other people buying it and they want it more and the slogan tells them to want it more and the loop continues and the loop is the product and the loop is the profit and the loop is the life of the advertising executive, and Arthur was living in the loop and the loop was layers deep and the layers were playing within playing within playing within playing.

His wife noticed the writing. She found it on the walls of his study and the walls of his car and the napkins in his pockets and the Playbills in his briefcase, and she asked him what he was writing and Arthur told her and she did not understand and she asked him to stop and Arthur said he could not stop and she left the room and the leaving was a layer in the recursion, because her leaving was something that was happening inside Arthur's life and his life was a play and her leaving was a scene in the play and the scene was about a wife leaving a husband who writes plays about plays and the wife in the play was leaving the husband in the play and the husband in the play was writing about the wife in the play leaving him and the layers accumulated.

He went to the theater every Friday. He watched plays that were about plays that were about plays, and each play was a layer deeper, and he wrote new layers each week, and the writing accumulated and the walls filled and the recursion deepened and the vertigo became a permanent state and Arthur lived inside the loop and the loop was playing within playing within playing within playing.

The breaking point came on a Saturday in November. Arthur sat in his study and he looked at the walls and the walls were covered with plays and each play was a layer and the layers went deep and he could not find the bottom and he could not find the top and he could not find himself in the recursion and he was inside the recursion and the recursion was inside him and the recursion was what he was and he wrote one more play and this play was about Arthur sitting in his study and looking at the walls and the walls were covered with plays and each play was a layer and the layers went deep and he could not find the bottom and he could not find the top and he could not find himself in the recursion and he was inside the recursion and the recursion was inside him and the recursion was what he was and the play ended with Arthur writing the play about Arthur writing the play about Arthur, and the play ended where it began and the loop was complete and Arthur broke.

He broke in the way that a recursive function breaks when it exceeds the stack depth. He broke into pieces. He broke into layers. He became each layer simultaneously, and each layer was Arthur and each layer was watching a play and each layer was writing a play and the layers were infinite and Arthur was infinite and the recursion had no base case and the function called itself forever and Arthur was the forever.

His wife found him the next morning. He was sitting at his desk and he was writing and the walls were full and the Playbills were full and the napkins were full and the dashboard was full and Arthur was writing and he was writing about Arthur writing and the writing was layers deep and the writing was the recursion and the writing was the only thing that was real, because the writing was the act of bearing witness and the act of bearing witness was the only thing that existed inside the recursion.

She did not understand the writing. She saw the walls and she saw the napkins and she saw Arthur sitting at his desk and she understood that he was inside something she could not enter and she left the house and she did not come back and the leaving was a layer and the layer was a scene and the scene was about a wife leaving and the leaving was happening inside the play and the play was happening inside Arthur and the recursion continued.

Arthur kept writing. The layers accumulated. The recursion deepened. The vertigo was permanent. He wrote every day. He wrote about the plays he had watched and the plays he had written and the plays inside the plays inside the plays and he wrote until there was no space left for Arthur and the writing was all that remained, and the writing was the documentation, and the documentation was the proof that he had existed inside the recursion at all.

He wrote one last line on the last blank wall: The play is me and I am the play and the play within me is watching a play and the play within that play is writing a play and the layers do not end.