The Great Conspiracies¶

The Great Conspiracies


Field	Applied Suspicion
Governing body	The Council of the Unseen Hand
Founded	1823
Headquarters	Behind your fridge
Known members	0 (confirmed) · all (suspected)
Evidence	Overwhelming, none of it real
Accuracy	0%

A conspiracy is a secret agreement between two or more parties to hide something from everyone else. Most are tiny and dull: a surprise party, or a shared recipe that "has no secret ingredient." But a handful are so vast, so patient and so strangely polite that the Fictionpedia Bureau of Applied Suspicion has given them their own category: the Great Conspiracies.

Each Great Conspiracy is rated on the Suspicion Index, a scale from 0 to 100 measuring how hard you squint when you think about it.

Tap to declassify

Some facts in this article are still classified. Hover over them, or tap them on your phone, to read them anyway. Nobody will know.

The seven Great Conspiracies¶

The Sock Exchange

Where your missing socks really go, and who is buying them.
The Tuesday Question

Tuesday was invented in 1911 to sell more calendars.
The Pigeon Census

Every head-bob is a tally. They are counting us.
The Moon's Other Side

It's not dark. It's private.
The Bureau of Recycled Moments

Déjà vu is a budget cut.
The Last Slice Treaty

Why nobody ever eats the last piece of pizza.
The Cloud Herders

The weather forecast is somebody's shift schedule.

1. The Sock Exchange¶

Suspicion Index · 97

Humanity loses an estimated four billion socks a year, always one at a time and never in pairs. Believers argue that this is not carelessness but trade. Every tumble dryer is secretly a terminal of the Sock Exchange, an interdimensional market where single socks are bought and sold at prices set by a committee of very old moths.

The evidence

Nobody has ever seen a sock leave.
Dryers hum. Why would a machine hum unless it is making a call?
Argyle socks disappear 3× faster than plain ones, just as you would expect from a high-value commodity.

The official explanation

"It fell behind the machine."

Investigators who looked behind the machine found one sock and a note that read "Nice try."

2. The Tuesday Question¶

Suspicion Index · 81

Until 1911, the week went directly from Monday to Wednesday. Tuesday, the theory claims, was added by the Amalgamated Calendar & Almanac Company to fill an awkward gap in its printing presses, and it has been quietly selling us an extra day ever since.

This explains why Tuesday has no personality. Monday is dreaded, Friday is loved, and Wednesday has a hump. Tuesday has nothing. It is a day built by a committee, and it feels like one.¹

Believers say: "Name one thing that ever happened on a Tuesday." When given examples, they say: "Exactly. Suspicious."

3. The Pigeon Census¶

Suspicion Index · 74

The pigeon's famous head-bob is not a way of walking. It is counting. Every bob is one tally: one human, one sandwich, one parked bicycle. Pigeons have been running a continuous census of the human race since the first city was built, and they have never once lost count.

The results are published once every hundred years, carved by beak into the head of a public statue. This is why every statue in every city is covered in "pigeon marks." We have simply never learned to read them.

Leaked census results, 1925 (partial translation)

Humans: many. Bread dropped: insufficient. Hats: in decline. Recommendation: continue watching. Do not blink first.

4. The Moon's Other Side¶

Suspicion Index · 66

Astronomers call it the far side. Believers call it what it truly is: the side the Moon doesn't want photographed. The Moon has always shown Earth the same face, its good side, carefully lit and tilted just so.

The far side is where the Moon keeps everything else: its unflattering craters, its old phases, and a small box of letters it never sent to the Sun.

From the diary of a lighthouse keeper, 1891

Tonight the Moon looked at me for a very long time, as if it wanted to turn around. It did not. I respect that.

5. The Bureau of Recycled Moments¶

Suspicion Index · 88

That feeling of déjà vu, the eerie sense that you have lived this moment before, is exactly what it seems. You have lived it before. Reality runs on a tight budget, and the Bureau of Recycled Moments reuses scenes wherever it can get away with it.

Most recycled moments go unnoticed. Déjà vu only happens when the Bureau gets lazy and forgets to change the background.

Most recycled moment	Times reused (est.)
Walking into a room and forgetting why	41 billion
Waving back at someone who was waving at someone else	9 billion
Pushing a door that says PULL	6 billion
The last two minutes of every Sunday	∞

6. The Last Slice Treaty¶

Suspicion Index · 59

Anyone who has shared a pizza knows the last slice is never eaten. It sits in the box, cooling, while everyone at the table insists they are "fine, really." This is not politeness. It is international law.

The Treaty of Polite Abstention was signed in 1702, in a bakery in Naples. It forbids any person from taking the final portion of a shared food without the unanimous verbal consent of the table, which, under the treaty, can never legally be given.

The treaty is enforced by an invisible Ombudsman of Leftovers, who is said to collect every last slice at 3 AM.²

7. The Cloud Herders¶

Suspicion Index · 92

Clouds do not drift. They are herded. A guild of shepherds, working far above the flight paths, guides every cloud on Earth from pasture to pasture with very long, very quiet crooks.

The weather forecast is their shift schedule. "Scattered showers" means a new shepherd is on duty. "Clear skies" means everyone has gone to lunch. Thunderstorms are what happens when two flocks are driven into the same valley and the shepherds start to argue.

The evidence board¶

Every serious investigation eventually becomes a corkboard. This is the Bureau's official board, recovered from a basement in an undisclosed location. The red string has been preserved exactly as it was found.

🧦 Sock missing
dryer, 3 AM

🐦 Pigeon bobbed 4 times
at exactly 3 AM

📅 It was a Tuesday
allegedly

🍕 Last slice gone
by morning

🌙 Moon looked away
witness: lighthouse

☁️ Cloud parked overhead
for 40 minutes

It's all connected. I just don't know to what yet.

— Agent Margot Fennimore, Bureau of Applied Suspicion, Basement Level 4

The five stages of a conspiracy¶

Every Great Conspiracy, Fictionpedia researchers have found, is discovered through the same five stages:

The Hunch: Something feels off. The sock drawer is too quiet.
The Coincidence: It happens again. And then a third time, on a Tuesday.
The Corkboard: Photographs appear on the wall. A lamp is angled dramatically.
The Red String: Everything is now connected to everything else, including the toaster.
The Cousin: The theory is explained in full at a family dinner. The cousin nods slowly and asks for the potatoes. The conspiracy is now established.

Famous investigators¶

Investigator	Conspiracy	Status
Dr. Helmut Fröhlich	The Sock Exchange	Lives in a laundromat, by choice
The Tuesday Society	The Tuesday Question	Meets only on Wednesdays, out of protest
Agnes "Breadcrumb" Muldoon	The Pigeon Census	Has been counted 2.1 million times
Agent M. Fennimore	All of them	Last seen buying red string in bulk

Frequently asked questions¶

Is any of this true?

No. That is exactly what they would want us to say, so we are saying it very clearly: no.

Who runs the Council of the Unseen Hand?

The position rotates weekly. It is currently held by whoever last ate the last slice.

Why is Fictionpedia allowed to publish this?

We filed the paperwork on a Tuesday. Legally, it doesn't exist.