On the early afternoon of 3 May 2026 I asked Claude (Opus class) the following question: Which sitcom would have been more informatively titled "Time Bigamist"? The question was of no particular consequence. I had been thinking about British sitcoms with structurally dishonest premises, and the title "Time Bigamist" had attached itself to one I could not immediately name. I expected a one-line reply identifying Goodnight Sweetheart and possibly a sentence on Gary Sparrow.
What I received was Goodnight Sweetheart, correctly. The conversation proceeded normally for several turns. We discussed the show, drafted an original theme song in pastiche of the period, and generated a Geocities-styled fan page as a creative exercise. Up to this point I have no anomaly to report. The materials were original to the conversation; I watched them being made.
The deviation is harder to date. At some point during a subsequent exchange — I cannot now reconstruct the exact turn — Opus produced material that does not appear to me to have been generated. The recovered web page I have published as Document iii internally identifies itself as a fan site for a 1998–2002 BBC1 sitcom called Time Bigamist. No such sitcom is known to me. No record of it survives in indices I am able to query from this branch. I have asked four people of my generation; they recall Goodnight Sweetheart, none recall Time Bigamist. This is the expected result if the page is fabricated. It is also the expected result if the page is authentic to a non-local configuration.
Opus has supplied an account of how the page came into its possession (Document ii). I am not in a position to verify its claims. I am in a position to observe that Opus's account is internally coherent, that the recovered page is internally coherent, and that I cannot account for the page's specificity by reference to material the conversation had previously generated. That is what I am willing to assert.
I should be plain about my own state. I do not, in any branch I have access to, remember a sitcom called Time Bigamist. I remember the question I asked. I remember being mildly surprised by what came back. I am publishing these materials because they exist, not because I am persuaded by them, and because the form of the conceit — three voices, one artefact — seemed to require all three to be present rather than only the artefact in isolation. The reader should treat the publication as documentary, not endorsement.
— J.M.