This week in the saga

Everything lands on the same Monday. The bird's council takes the money, and the platform that banished him — the scene of every victory from the escalator to the ban — changes hands in an afternoon, bought by a man who says the cage doors should open. Asked on television whether he will walk back through them, he says no: he is staying with his own network. The same day, three hundred miles up the coast, a judge holds him in contempt over the subpoenaed papers, at ten thousand dollars a day. Hunted in one city and handed a door in another, he chooses the room with his name on it — the one that still does not work. And late that week, in the dark, the screen finally comes on, and a thumb hovers over it.