Speaker 1: Hello, I'm welcomed stories all the time. Glad you are here.
Let's get into it. I've und the battered recorder in
my lap, my breath fogging the windshield. The digital clock
on the desk clows two three a m. Everything feels sharpened,
as if the hush outside is just breathing in waiting
to exhale something unexpected. The lot is deserted. To save
my corolla, the low and ghost of a visitor hunched
under the dull sodium lights that border the telecom service building.
I let the engine idle, the low purse stranger in
the night stillness. Inside the car, there is just me,
my growing unease, and the clutter of my tools and
note but bristling with flagg pages, a thermos cooling by
the passenger door, and the heavy, tiny flasklight from my
father's garage. Across the lot, the buildings cross like a
ship run aground. Six stores of glaze brick in reflective
glass window bays, flickering with trout light, never fully dark,
but never quite alive. The top floors. Orange square of
fluorescents floats over the gloom, concealing the room where Walter
Finch was found last month I flip in the radio,
knowing at what's me There's nothing on at this IRIC set,
static and a late night weather report, but it fills
the silence. The real company comes from Finch, while the
echo of him lingering behind every thought. How he was
discovered slumped at his desk, had bent over a pension
reconciliation he'd been dragged into review. No one describes it plainly.
When I asked, the official word was hard attack. It's
always the heart, the paperwork says, but it impauses between
answers and Marisol's permanent worry and the text tight lips.
I send something unspoken. They found him alone some time
after three, but no one claims to know who made
the call. The building security locks had nothing unusual at
first glance. A second there were more questions than answers.
For weeks. Coffee mugs have been left half all at night,
and the HR portal politely reminded every one to you
celebrate the legacy of Walter Finch, now replaced by junior
acting supervisor who never worked past four. No one stays
late here, not any more. I telt the rearview, just
as a shadow drifts across the gloss double doors. It's nothing,
just the swaying branch of a bear tree. For a second, though,
I swear the automatic lights inside flower, the company logo,
a lozenge of low poly blue ring stairs out, blank
faced backlet, humming faintly against the eyes. I should get moving.
My assignment, strictly speaking, is already late. The City magazine
wants a feature on how omission is transforming backbone offices,
but my interest is personal. The rumors about this place
have stuck with me since college, since I first heard
about the voice in the system that taunted long tenured
phone operators night shift staff matter about a glitched into calm,
sudden brief outages at exactly two seventeen a m. Clockwork
phenomena dismissed as circum noise. No one admits to fear,
But sometimes in Marisol's eyes, I think I see something else.
Wearing a sharpened to panic, I reach for my back
double checked the microcassette still running. It's in affectation, I know,
But a truss tape grain over my phone's called anodine recordings.
I want to cat what digital compression might smooth the way.
Just as I braced myself to leave the car. The
radio snaps from static to a crisp, stuttering line. At first,
I think I've caught a despatcher or attacks cabs bleed over,
But the sound sharpens and of vose crack, high cussed
through put me through. The words are caught shop by
a wave of static. I freeze Han on the dial,
mind blank for a split second. The voice is a mistake,
could be pleading human and close, so close you'd swear
it was right beside me. But the lot is empty.
The clock on the dash sticks over to two seventeen. Then,
as quickly as it began, the airshift's total silence, so
thinket blots out the city's distant hum. The world seems
to hang in place. A swallow rasps across my dry throat.
I checked the recorder. Did it catch that the tiny
wheel spin? The taps red mark? Not yet at the end? Well,
I murmur, hand trembling over the flashlight. Let's keep the
tape running. I crack open the door, letting the colt in,
and step fully into the half lip purgatory of the
buildings on ending night. My days are usually measured in
small rituals. A symphony of schedules rendered in hasty pencil
marks on pocket calends, half remembered deadlines scribbled on cafe receipts,
and the relentlesstick of borrowed appointments. I'm not what most
will call a traditional journalist. I learned the ropes, chasing
stories that don't quite fit the morning newscasts, the whispered
scaleton's and dormant boardrooms, the faded faces behind lyneouds you
see once then never again. My fascination, my curse, maybe,
is finding patterns that drift beneath the surface, waiting for
someone to give them a voice on paper. My latest
contract assignment is unremarkable. I'm profiling this low chourn of
staff turnover at Novlea and Telecom's regional headquarters, a story
meant to see public anciety about automation, gently highlighting strong
corporate culture despite shifting needs. I'm move in and out
of the annula colorless structure by day. Badge clip from
a line out of borrowed corporate blue, trying with little
success to coax hones Stanzas from staff's still worried they'll
be next to vanish from payroll. The company's daytime rhythm
is heavy with routine. Datium's blonde wood reception desk is
man by Maris Alvarez, unfailingly polite, always dabbing the same
mug with sugar packets, never quite looking in the eye
for long. The call center partitioned by sound, dumpening foam
and the drawn over cycled a track is a kind
of purgatory deaths. A clotup with barble heads and peeling
family photos, silent reminders of absent staffers. Whiteboard's display occane
performance metrics, over handle time, speed of answer, and a
rolling list of agents of the quartered in arasable black marker.
Most faces now obscured by a congratulations magnet. The office
cafeteria deserves its own brand of exxtential despair. No one
talks above a murmured there, vending machines grumble casting reflective
strips of light across empty tables, and nearly all hours
after four p m. The fluorescent glare gives everything an
undeseat into The whole place feels like it's just waiting
for a final shift that never quite comes. I try
to gain trust, but staff avoid any questions probing beyond
surface level change. They say things like there's always new faces,
or that's just how it goes. Even among the more
confident employees. Nobody likes to linger, specially not as the
afternoon creeps toward dusk. If you ask about Walter Finch,
there's a brief pause, then a careful, period appropriate answer.
He was quite a company guy. Couldn't ever get him
to come out for lunch. Maris all offered once ie
distant the long term workers is left any way. Describe
him as present but invisible, always the first to put
in for night shifts, never want to turn down an
overtime request. The week after Finch's death, I made a
habit of sitting at his vacated disk. There's a particular
hollowness that sits over the work station, almost as if
the chair is still weighted down by a shape that
never stands. Finch's mug is still there and touched. A
faded souvenir from a regional staff picnic dated two thousand,
boasting a cartoon switchboard operator a desk calendar sits prop
between two crack plastic picture frames, s thick spring flipped
to the last full month. Each squarer's neatly excelled greening,
except for certain dates marked in black, almost as if
noting absences from something or some one returning after an
interval next to the monitor a batted no puddless internal
extension numbers mapped in neat rows. Some extensions have double
under lines, asterist notes beside them short cryptic jots like
N nine weight for ANSO or es Beeman is free
no response. The details look ordinary at first, but after
a while I realize the pattern is buried here, a
schedule in code. It's hard not to imagine finch late
at night, methodically a logging each announcewered call like a confession.
Days are haunted less by fear than exhaustion. Rumors scurry
through the cubicles, whispers of berna about people not lasting
the approbation, dismisses disguised as better opportunities elsewhere, ask about
missing people and shoulder stiffened eyes nearer. That's just the job,
one agent shrugs, voice stripped of effect. Ye won't last
if you mind the gaps. It's not dread then, but
the flatlesss air of a dissipation, as if everyone by
habit is preparing for a summons no one believes will come.
Nights are when the edges emerge. It starts as a curiosity,
a technical error, a phrase looping at the margins of perception,
like a song caught in the next room. The anomaly
first snags at me from whispers mariusol one evening, as
she packs her purse, leans close to confide, I've heard
it just after lock up down by the lobby, the
fun sort of spark up. You'll hear it too. She
looks over her shoulder as if checking for a manager,
before trembling out beneath the closing gates. The first time
I hear it myself isn't even inside it half with
through my now nightly circuit of the lobby, my recorder
in hand, the tag badge from Marisol clip to my
breast pocket. On my way to the far elevator bank,
I passed the row of dormant desk phones in black
models with number tuggles and brittle plastic cradles. The air
prickles my feet scuff overslate gray carpeting. Then each one
comes alive in sequence, not ringing, but emitting A brittle
line of distorted sound. Put me through so faint, so brief,
a spin back and certain if it's inside or at
another night. The custodal staff shuffle by, weighed down with
linen carts. I catch the janitor, an older man with
a slow, deliberate gate, grumbling as he fiddles with the
intercom bad lines. He says, not looking up, always forget
this time. It's not a plea, but an observation, as
if the building's quirks have grown a second nature. Determined,
I set my recorder overnight by the phones and slip
into the silver cause at a tight but a smelling junction,
tut between two network panels at two fourteen, a m
nothing at two fifteen, slow homes and the rattle of
ancient fans that at two seventeen clear as a code word.
The tape catches it. Put me through so short I
almost miss it, laid as if a current struggles through
tangled circuits. I replay it in the edded bay, running
the sample for spectral analysis. On closer scrutiny what once
seemed single voice fractures and de layer's faint traces of
all divorces overlapping. Some plead, some simply echo the phrase,
elongated into a dirge of failed connections. The time stamps
at square two seventeen a m every night, Almost ritualistically baffled,
I pulled the coal locks for several nights, accessing them
from a sympathetic night technician in exchange for coffee, in
an enful of please upgrade digital forms the locks of
real blocks of missing data at exactly two seventeen, not downtime,
not scheduled maintenance, but blank lines in a table suggesting
coal started then simply vanish, never registering a disconnect. I
matched these to finches marked extension list. Most numbers no
longer exist, pinging at the returns are dead, computerize harm
sum ring on forever. The line never picked up, but
one marked with the jagged underline connects to a wap
loop of tineyholed music, a synthetic melody I later recognized
from an old novel and promotion on YouTube. Each new
piece deepens the unreality. It's no longer a technical error,
not something you put down to a stray cable. Something
is echoing beyond what the CIA and said should be possible.
Every night, the building's line shudder with bleeding voices, aching
for a connection that never comes. I type a final
note on my phone, return to night, need to be
here in person. At two seventeen. The chills in my
skin feel less like excitement, more physical warning. The plan
is simple. Slip in just past minute, carry my resol's
borrowed keek out and try to catch the phenomenon first end.
I tail cluster of over night eighty workers through the
loading dark, pitching my voice low and confident storage audit.
I offer, and the toles gives me a thumbs up.
Convinced Ibilan. The corridors are stranger at night, bent snarl
and the lighting cough out circles of weak yellow on scufflenolium.
Every footstoprings louder. On the second floor, the intercomposes to life.
I walk quickly past the meal room, heart sprinting at
each unexpected noise. As I step a side near a
half open copy room, a metal gruel of the wall.
Intercom snaps open with the sharp click. Snatches of conversation
drift out of male and female voices in her distant
exchange biff shifts don't aligne it's not my get project
locks SB nine locked again, check with finch hiez. The
intercom clicks off, leaving only the hum of air handler
and my quickening breath, I dick into a nook off
the stairwell. I can't shake the sense that beneath my
own movements the building is listening, sift in the air
for my intentions. Feeling too exposed, I take the elevator down,
counting floors by the stammer of the consoles that they
display G one two and then something peculiar. They are
a bottom labeled A speaminis one, below that s B
minis two and s B ministry. Those last two covered
by cheap masking tape. A quick glance reveals under the
faint outline s B minist three scrolled and pencil. I
take the stairs and he spurring me downward. The sub
basements are colder, denser, the air criscrossed by the metallic
tone of dust on cooling fans. At s B minis two,
my car fails once, then the third twipe lets me through.
The hall is low ceilinged, churtru's pain chipping away and
bake unevenswaths. The only door with the windows caked in
rafter's dust. Inside mountains of a plain mail sit marked
for a personnel operations and in fading InKo transfers curiosity
hitches me forward. Shifting through boxes, I find stacks of
audio cassettes a collector's nightmare, each bulk labeled by date
and coal review. The box is bulge within dexed cards.
Finch's name appears again and again. Playing one tape, I
hear him miciding flatly the credentials of an agent named
megantours her name. I jot a note to look profile
to morrow. I ease another tape into the deck, but
this one is stranger. There barely above the tape hiss
A voice, gender and determinate, charged with anxiety, repeats, please,
I need to it's been ires put me through the
police stretches rising and fall length, the cagence familiar. Extraney's
voices crowd in, sharp, clipped at the ends, like coal
transfers gone wrong. I shut off the player, unnerved. Later
that hour, I bump into Jacob night Deck, who keeps
his security fastened with a corded larnard and a handful
of brassquys. You chasing the lost souls around here, kirk cot,
he jokes, flashing a tech grin his eyes, dart to
the flickering hole lights, just ghosts of layoffs, that's all.
You dig deep enough, you'll find half if these badge
codes stopped walking years ago. His banter doesn't last. He
admits between glances at his phone that Megan Tours, whose
badge and file I just found, hasn't picked up a
shift in weeks. She clocked out two nights after Finch died,
I think, he mutters, suddenly serious, her badge ping for
access after two a m. In the basement, nobody admits
to seeing her again. He shrugs, lits, forming a line
too thin to read. Despied. I check badge logs and
fine corresponding evidence. Mecan's badge last seen at two three
a m. Marked as beaminis three, the sub basement of
yet to access. A memo on Finch's old computer, left
unsent in his drafts folder references project can Court with
a single scrolled sentence, No further transfers until program evaluation complete.
Wi Feu screen wobbles was swept between my fingers. The
story is changing. The gaps are no longer just about
burnout or automation. Something weighs below, encircling cordoning off the
ires between two one and the unrecorded two seventeen am tonight.
I make my way back to the elevator, Finch's badge
now clicked beside aerosols. The building is perfectly quiet, so
much so that the low whine of the fluorescent bulb
scenes deafening. I doubt the as be men, A three
button heart shuddering in my chest. The elevator lurches and stops.
I brace for the economy of truth. Whatever weights here,
I need to see it, to listen with the kind
of openness my teachers used to call a dangerous candor.
The door grounds open unto a hallway barely higher than
my shoulders, walls dotted with faded placards for emergency evacuation.
The pink gives way to bare cold concrete. My footstep sucker,
despite the thick layer of dust, has to rusted's service.
Caught in a wall of shupbreaker boxes, I reach a
heavy fire rated door with a magnetic lock. Finch's badge
fills but Marisol's works baubles of past habit stake. I
think Finch was always covering other people's shifts, sometimes those
whose names no longer appear in directories. The worker's room
is nothing like the clean, sanitized archives. I have seen
in city buildings. Cabinets of transfer locks line each wall,
thick with the yellow of age manilla folders, corner clamps
twisted from years of overstuffing. A narrow table runs the center,
shadowed beneath an old hallow on its surface is a
single microcassette player, and besides a dusty black bindo stamped
in block letters confidential Performance, trioge I, flip it open
staff reviews from the late nineties and two thousands. The
earl is before I was even in high school. Nearly
all over employees with innocious job titles Operator, Roman Io, Night, Analyst,
Transfer Support files Bay. The same triangular stamp extended due
to experimentation. Block notes are terce clinical, but as a
skim the words sharpened at the edges. A tape already
in the deck is marked review alois f slast Apartment nine.
I press play and the room seems to contract. A
voice male for more begins. Thank you for participating, Elois,
Your resilience under communications iquestration is commendable, he droned on
opening a fire. The lawses replies are hesitant, trembling, tripping
over words as she's prodded about misresponses, errors in shift coverage.
The fear in her voice grows as the review continues,
until finally she can't contain it. How much longer do
I have to do this? I I don't hear anything
but the lines. I can't tell what's real. Please put
me through. There is a supplice of static. As the
supervisor ends the tape and carry I sit back mild
dry pulse racing. Project Concord was never just about coal handling.
It was a study, a human experiment, to test the
breaking point of isolation, to stretch the concept of communication
until the person became the connection itself, ground under the
pressure of endless, disconnected voices. I rifle the cabinet at
the back a modern file meganturs it shouldn't be here.
Her recent badge photo clipped to the stapled packet, stirs
back at me. I glanced at a log entry. Her
personal details already appear in transfer a logs dated nearly
two decade prior my head swims dates collide. Either Megan
has existed in the system for a generation. Where the
building's histories folding in on itself, the air thickens. The
overhead light dims were replaced by the glow of the
emergency stairwell. I packed the tapes of Megan's file, moving
quickly as I make for the exit, the intercom hisses
to life. A dozen pleading voices break through, not just one,
not just a loyse, but a chorus, repeating in exhausted harmony.
Put me through. The tone is more desperate than technical error.
Muskin crawls, a cold flush igniting across my scalp. I
clutch the recorder so tightly my knuckles ache. I move
every nerve alive, feeling watched. The notion tickles my mind.
The building isn't haunted by ghost in any spiritual sense. Rather,
it's an edifice saturated with forces, caught in an endless transfer,
leaped victims of an experiment whose staff are erased, rewridden,
and renamed with every upgrade. Tonight, for the first time,
I know what untruly listening for a I returned to
my cats surfaces. I see would do my fingers stick
for the taped cartridges. I play the freshest one back
on it. The desperate phrase repeats layered under my own breathing.
We were never transferred, were still on hold. In the background,
a sound like static shapes were as I can almost understand,
but not quite a fresh dread clench's main size. As
I review mechans agent record side by side with ones
from a twenty year old archieve. The names are recycled,
the extension numbers were purposed. No departures, so only replacements.
I try to sleep, but every time I close my eyes,
the plea follows me. At two seventeen, I wake certain
the phone at my bedside is ringing, even though the
line is dead. I have to go back to the route,
to whichever so maintains these connections in the sub basement.
What if no one ever leaves, What if, somewhere inside
noble lines blinking switchboards, every failed connection is still waiting
to be completed. Every instinct tells me to stay put,
to let daylight dilute the panic gnawing at my edges.
But nummis isn't immunity. And there's something about the sensation,
this pressure at the back of my skull, the crisp
memory of those coarse voices, that makes waiting unendurable. I
rummage through what are Scavenge Finch's calendars, Meghan's archphile and
envelope of badge codes fulched from an out of date hidbinder.
They sprawl out across my passenger seat like a paper
can to the forgotten. I drot notes by hand, my pens,
stuttering under the dome light ESP Ministerry recurring times down
benomally to transfer logs unknown recipients. The flashlight in my
lap thuds to the floor as I lean over, catching
the edge of a nintennal directory half torn from a
wall near Finch's desk, one of the old chewed up
from back signs listing departments by floor. A jagged bit
of the label remains where a Department nine was once stuck,
but some one tried to peel it off, leaving only
a faint rectangular scar. My phone buzzes with a new email.
It's from a city record request loss we mahail Mary
for old telecomblootprints and employment rosters. A low recipue d
F sluggishly loads diagrams of the building's original construction. My
eye scan for any sign of the third sub basement.
Sure enough, wedged into the sheet's margin is a faint
hand marked box s B minis three, no function listed,
no clear agress I send a quick message to Jake,
gambling on as a knees as leverage. He ever been
to three below. I type the dots flicker, then settle.
He replies with a single emoji, the clasic sipilepse on
a hunch. I dial his extension from the car. There's
a hollow ring, then Jake's voice, low and close. He
should drop this, Emma. I know you won't, but you should.
He coughs, as if short of breath. Basement freeze off
limits official line as arkevil storage. It's not, he stops.
If you find Paran down there, let me know. His
words are as much warning as confession. Was Meghan looking
for something a press A heavy exhaled crackle through the line.
She wasn't, he says, finally, Maybe that's why we hang up.
The recorder's red light spins out another thin band of
tape waiting. I pocket Finch's badge, double up my layer
of jackets. The night went weighed on inside. Crossing the
lot again is surreal in its normalcy, just the soft
writ of gravel, the distant whir of a generator, and
the faint, ever present home slipping through the utility wires.
I let myself impass the badge reader by the loading dock.
The scanner hesitates, then shows a friendly green axis granted.
I move with purpose, scraping up old habit from years
of venus. After Iro's research gut in my nerves into action.
My feet mapped the route down the service tunnel, left
past the faded vending machines, into the secondary stairwell. The
faint scent of industrial cleaner stings the nostrils, overlain by
the sutler older notes of paper rot and nozon. At
the s b menace to landing, a dull light over
convex mere shimmers with bugs drawn in by warmth. The
air is just a little too still. I press on
one floor deeper, feeling the concrete pinch heat from my face.
There's effort in ignoring how my breathing quickens. The s
beam and is three door looms, heavy, institutional huncombed with
old scratches, where the badge reader sits askew. I swipe
finches badge nothing, then try marisels. This time a cheerful
double beep in the lock yields. I shoulder through, flinching instinctively.
Is dark as avalanches in the door saddles behind me
with a hesitant sigh. My beam slices the black down
Here the usual rust and dust a joined by the
smells of machine oil and stale coffee dents deeply embedded
as if decades of shiftwork have soaked into the floor.
Pipes overhead tracked the dimensions, but hang lower, crowded by
thick insulated feeders. The building secret arteries next to eUtility
cart loaded with dead fluorescent tube sits a battered wheel's
cabinet in its open bottom shelf. I catch the sickly
glint of magnets extension tags from old badge lanyards, some engraved,
many more hand labeled in waterproof marker Nina ar the
Dane ag key mince to I g torres. My thumb
brushes Megan's faded badge Gooselish rises down the far hole
a red eg that sign flickers weakly before going dark again.
At the tea intersection, dulled signage points may narcoats to
the left and communications No to the right. Against all reason,
I choose the latter, heart Jack and Murray. As I
passed her A sagging wiremash gate the air precious subtly changes.
The electrical field prickles along my wristwatch. Every footstep grows heavier.
A bank of ancient analog retasigns one wall. They indicate
a light stunned in cycle, blinking in perverse coordination once
every few seconds. The color like candied apple, only rum
In the center of the room, a metal table faces
a panel of breaker switches. The table top is mirrored
within circles, as if someone habitually set their coffee and
then spun the cup in moments of tension. A stack
of yellow transfer locks tells off one side the newer
stated only days before Finch's death. Behind a partition, I
spot another door. It's identifying, black peeled away round the handle.
The paint is worn to metal. I reach for it,
pausing to listen. Beyond, I catch the hard coal jill
of motion, something or someone shifting weight. The air thrums
with a muted cyclical noise, almost like the whirring of
a tape deck, continually queuing up a blank I breathe in,
staring my hand on the recorder. The tape continues its
faint hiss, a white noise backdrop to the erratic creek
behind the door. I knock gently, half houp, half dread.
Silence thunders back. No further warning comes. I turn the handle.
The room is stifling, lined with cork soundproofing, stained with
decaes of Nick's heene and spilled coffee. On a batted
mezzal stool sits an ancient reel to reel tape record
at its plate, dotted with button labels that have long
since crumbled away. The reel spin slowly, endlessly, fretting out
with with thin fibers. A light on the console pulses
in time with the rods outside irregularly desperate. Taped to
the wall, black and white ied photos and an even
grid mole's faces scribbled out with red pen Some are
too faded to see. One or two look recent the
slick finish and congerors amid the yellowing edges. One face
caught mid laugh could be Megan, but the smile is odd,
as if captured in a moment of defeat. On the
small work bench beside a crack mark, sits Meggan's badge
and a miniature tape recorder, the kind issue to call
sender trainers A decade ago. I thumb it on the
tip plays back in megans was at first heard, then
quavering a testing testing two fourteen. Think I saw lights
down the corridor, But when go further till I record this?
Not sure if anyone will get this. If they say
I'm out on leave, that's not true, not unless lie.
It means you never get called home again. Something someone
keeps picking up. They don't respond. Just listen to sixteen.
Now hear the music again. If anyone finds her breath catches,
then a sudden burst of static interrupts. The tape, silent
except for a whispering undertone that could be a dozen
voices hissing. Put me through. I snapped the recorder off.
Paul studying irregularly on impulse. I check my own recorder.
The tape inside is spinning, picking up every scrape of
my jacket, every ragged exhil. I reach for the operator's console.
The old phone at its center bears no branding, just
a dial pad's so worn, the numbers of sunk in
to ghosts. I brace myself. Each finger traces the crack
plastic a lighting on the zero, impausing pure muscle men
memory from childhood, calls to directory information. When I left
a receiver. Icy static rows in my ear, then abruptly
it clears. On the other end, a brittle lay its
soundscape emerges, not one voice, but what feels like a
stack dica from every abandoned extension, crawling it way through
the system. Some voices are nearly audible. Others drop into slowed,
kaleidoscopic glitches. They overlap until all language nearly collapses. In
the midst of the cacophony, a phrase emerges, churned through
machinery and time. We're here, we can't get out. Please
connect us. The words coil through the earpiece, desperate but
strangely distant, as if strappling up through fathoms of static.
I try to speak, who are you? A bit? As
soon as I voice the words, the static cuts downward,
hammering my eardrum. A deep, distorted wine begins to rise,
pulsing with every syllable spoken on the other end. Finally,
another voice breaks free, this one chillingly close to Walt
of Finch's steady cadence, worn and hollow line never clears.
Can't complete the call. You have to transfer us. Behind
it a dozen other voices, some nearly children, some gravelly
big plead whisper the same. The air in the room
grows frigid. Suddenly, a metallic click echoes from deeper in
the sub basement. The smell of burning plastic threads into
the air, sharp alarming. My nurse shold me back. I
later receiver gently on its cradle and scrambled together what
I can the reels, Mekkin's badge, three cassettes, a bat
of folder, mark Department nine, A legacy, do not file.
I rush out into the hall, passing the mesh di vada,
nearly stumbling. As the building's electrical system growns and the
rudders begin to surge with power, it bels and waves
a deep or vibration less harrod than fell, like a
tuning fork against bone. Overhead, the PA system snaps on.
The entire sub basement is suddenly filled with the familiar echo.
Not a single voice this time, but a chorus. Put
me through, Put Me, put me through. Each repetition grows richer,
with overlapping syllables, the rhythic pulse of every stock coal,
every midnight plea that never left the line. My chest
feels crushed. The full escent lights overhead stutter a break
into run, boots splashing through standing water, nearer sagging set
of floor tiles. A faint blue clow like a whimper
in the dark, leaks beneath the closet door labels which
room vaulted access for a moment reasons, succumbs to obsession,
a crouch, forcing the jam door open of my shoulder
inside amid a tangle of punch down blocks and vintage
PBX hardware. At the world contracts, small red bulbs flicker
and fade along the banks of wiring. Every patch cord
is labeled, but most are so worn the plastic sheathing
crumbles at a touch against the wall. Dozens of extension files,
each with a photo, high date and a chillingly last
activity time, all stamped at exactly two seventeen a m
from years past, two thousand one, two thousand eight four
more just last year. At the front, my own badge
photo has been hastily printed and pinned, fresh and bleeding slightly.
A single word pending panic gnaws at my throat. I
back out, knee shaking, and fumble through the pocket from
my phone, but the screen is black and unresponsive. The
only light comes from the door I left Ajar, where
the building's moans and whistles resolve into a single broken chord,
returning to the hallway. The main operator's room now pulses
with blinding light. Run is arking a shadow glide along
the far wall of shape, flickering between bodies, features, rearranging,
Finch's draw, Megan's brow all blurred, all watching. The face
blinks out, then resolves, the effect like a film melting
and splicing itsself. Madria, Every instinct is screaming to run,
but some part of me journalist chronicler, full, hold, steady,
don't hang up. The figure gasps, voice slicing through the case,
a chorus splintering through the face, the room, my bones.
The plea multiplies, branching and echoing, pulling at something elemental
in my mind. Blinded by panic, I flip open the
mappiece of the operator's terminal and jam the connects, which,
in desperation sparks, sizzle. An immense pressure bears down on
my skull, the console of loads, flotting the room with
the tangled, drowning out sound of infinite hole music. First low,
a measured interval. I am nowhere in everywhere, sensation eclipsed
by static memory, flickering between places and times. Above it,
all the voices converge, whispering and shouting over one another,
not transferred on hold. Don't disconnect, don't disconnect them. The
machine nary cases, lights black out, and all as deep silence,
except for the matron impulse of a single line live nowhere,
never reaching completion. A final mechanical wine rides the air,
flattening the boundaries of the world. Where recorder drops from
my grip. For an instant, A shock of cold air
sweeps over me, parstling with the pressure of countless shunered
off connections. I glimpse my own face reflected not in glass,
but in the blank glow of the console's green time
stamp extension color id he kirk. I try to scream,
whether in fear or outrage or plephe logic, I don't know.
My mind scatters with the circuitry. The system hisses, wraps
the world in white noise and then blackness. Cold. Not
just the creeping basement shall now, this is something deeper,
the sort of cold that belongs in white memory of
the last edge of a nightmare before waking. It's in
my scowl, saturating mirror numbing, the aching my jaw where
I must have clenched my teeth so hard they still frob.
My mind scrabbles at the edges of itself, hunting anchor.
Point's time. Please, body breath. I'm here, I'm somewhere. I'm
not dead. That's as far as I get before sensation
bleeds back with a rushing, blurred intensity. The smell of
burnt wiring hovers in the air, thick and oily. My
cheek presses into a textured final surface, sticky with spilt
soda and ground and crumbs. The faded echo voice is real,
ones insistent present filters in from a corridor outside, muffled
radio static, the rising intonation of a question, the slap
of hard soled shoes on tile. There's a hend on
my shoulder, shaking me just gently enough not to be alarming. Hey,
am I command you with us? My eyelids drag uput
overhead for us since blink on glare tracing cold blue
white through the warp plastic diffusor I'm slumped on a
battered plother couch in a forgotten break room. It's clock
jawned at three thirty six a m. The scoffed table
in front of me blooms with the detritus of baygunshit's
empty chip bags, water bottles half filled with something syrupy,
A copy of a safety post, A culling at the
corners on the edge of the formicah, My jacket lies crumbled,
megan'sole tape record, a bareley peeking from the pocket like
a nervous animal. I push upright on elbows numb with
pins and needles. In the doorway, A uniform security office
appears in radio clip Toffusity's belt. He's joined by another,
older gray stubble arms crossed, face out and cautious Neutrality
as quint a memory rally slowly tap or corder, cold
rock of rodders the line, the voice crawling up through
ancient foam wires. My skin is coated and stale, sweat. Sorry,
adjust it, I croak, voice famished for water. The older
guard steps closer, wary. We try to reach you by radio.
Someone spotted you on us be too. You shouldn't have
clearance for that. Need to call it in whenever you're
here after, iurs all right, I nod dumbly. My watch wearer,
is it? I glance at the dent in my wrist,
but only a strip of pale skin answers me. My phone,
shoved into my jean's pocket, blinks a furious three forty one.
I try to unlock it, The screen stays black, battery
inexplicably dead. My hands tremble as I clamped them around
my recorder and Miggins's device, checking for damage, still whole,
the tip wheel barely moved. He stares at the bow
straped on my collar. The little digital reader on the
wall of blinks red. A new string next to my
name in block time status stea activated, slash departed. I
miss with the clasp, too rattled to mount a reaction.
He got some one picking you up. The under one asks,
not unkindly. I mumble something about my car outside in
the lot. The break room is warm, dry, planted the
point of nullity. But suddenly I need disting of air,
the kind of space only wind in mun Allah can I?
I start, and he nods, waving me forward. They escort me,
not watching closely as I gather my things. Megan's taper
coorder heavy now fits too neatly in my palm. The
hallway is blank with forgettable colors, and the humming quite
behind my steps is merciful. No strange forces, no shivering
into calm, just the company of a plug, vending machines
and employee health pamphlets curling in their plastic crack. In
the lobby, Mysol stands at the far desk here in
a hasty knaw face roll with worry. She doesn't approach.
Just moths call me behind her. At the wall, clock
jumps between three forty five and three forty seven, the
mini hand shuddering, and sure we're to blonde. The officer's
murmur had me off to a waiting dorman. And that's
the time. On the street, the doors sail behind, already
a liability. My fingers fumble inside my coat for the recorder.
Its window, unspooled, flickers back the last seconds, static and
unfamiliar voice, and then nothing. Try as I might every play,
but only returns the same clipped audio or warped syllable
that isn't mine. My own voice is gone from the machine,
wiped out or overwritten. The rest a black hole in memory,
a sequence of hints with no substance. In the parking lot,
my car weights dusted with dew. I climb inside, staring
at the silent dashboard. Aside, the building looms exactly as before,
as if the events below ground around themselves to secrecy.
Above me, the floors shine their in different florescence. From
the street, there is no sign of trouble. No lights
flicker in alarm, Security moves to ru choreograph rounds, no
one looking over their shoulder. Is it the greatest cover
up I've ever uncovered? Or am I coming unstrung? Just
another casualty of iris too long, in questions too heavy.
It's only when I ad just my grip that I
noticed the tape inside Megan's machine. It's new, labeled in
her herd script the last word and finish if found
you don't le h. I lower my head to the
steering wheel and laugh quietly, because in this moment the
absurdity hovers in balance with the dread. My badge is
deare my evidence garbled? But I'm breathing for now, for
to night later. The clock in my car jumps three
seventeen to four eighteen, as if time itself is as
directional as a transfer coal, waiting for the right operator.
I can't explain how and Ire went missing. All I
know is that the world outside remains unaltered, only I
and maybe a handful of others sagurub of ground. Feeling
a cavity in the night that reason cannot fill. I
keep the recorder running. I listen for anything that might
reach me in the feed, and, for the first time
in this hole, gnaing miss the empty street feels like
a mercy. By daylight, reality tries to put itself back together.
It's a performance, artificial freeing at the seams, but a
fallen line. Back in my apartment, I set the stack
of recovered files, Megan's badge, the cassettes, the brittle folder
of a department none legacy beside my desk, promising myself,
I'll come them for logic has soon as I've rested, showered,
eaten something with nutritional value. Sleep never really lands, It
just circles in fitful sways of static and clip phrases.
When I finally rise, it's well past noon. City is
pressing at every window. My laptop pums with the back
look of scheduled interviews, emails. I should answer a burning reminder.
The actual deadlines await. I check my phone off, miss messages,
Marisol Jake, my editor. Each is a single line clipped
the kind of brevity bread by anxiety Marisol or you okay,
call me, but don't use work extension Jake heads up,
security wiped over night logs, Megan still listed as on leave.
Be careful, my editor, we're getting company pushback. Stick to
your original angle, or I can't run the piece. Call
me a s A P. I scroll through the digital
voice recorder, hunting for any clean audio from the night before.
Most sublanks are nothing but a tidal wash of static,
punctuated every so often by a word, sometimes mine, sometimes
someone else's. The only usable sigment is a brief loop
my own voice clipped off, replaced by a desperate static,
lazed whisper that doesn't sound like me. Omegan closer instead
to something laid beneath both please let me to it.
The urge dismastered machine percolates, but I force myself to
catalog the files. Labeling what fragments are can salvage as
I begin to chart the names from the badge logs
and folder. Patten's reassert extension goes repeating every decade. Whole
patches of personnel wreckers mark departed, but never accompanied by
files or exit forms. The lines are only ever replaced,
never ended. Name cycle back. The system like a corrupted organism,
loops itself to feed Mina books chines a new message
from Jake, subject only up there. The text is short,
but not cold. Legals deleting all late night badge records.
Megan's desk is empty, her name's off the shift roster
unless you scull back by date. If anyone asks, tell
them you're working from home and now the desk filled already.
No overlap. Good luck. Somehow that's worse than silence. Mid afternoon,
I listen to the new statement for Mackens's final tape.
Her voice is then knuckles rubbing metal, likely recorded in
the same wire mesh partition droom. I found her badge.
If you're next, she says, don't follow the call, don't
let them connect to the word tapers off, overtaken by
tinny crawling whole malady so old and what it becomes
a parody of hope. My own phone on Vibrate rattles
once at two seventeen p m. Too early to be
a true echo, but I check it anyway. Unknown extension,
no call or ID, no voicemail, just a blank space,
as though the system itself is still trying to push through.
I try to reach Mecan's personal number, only to hit
a message that the subscriber is no longer in service,
followed by an unbroken minute of the same using hold
music now too familiar to mistake is random. Frustration mounts
with every technical dead end. I shift people calling farmer
agents I'd interviewed in earlier weeks, some of whom had
offered half answers about night shifts, transfer protocols, strange coal roading.
Most don't reply. Those who do pick up false silent
when I mentioned Project Concord, then hurriedly beg off, claiming
new jobs, sick relatives, or pure forgetfulness. One older ex operator, Janet,
keeps my coll just long enough to confirm the etiquette Emma,
I know you want the real story, but that company
sometimes it's worse not knowing it follows you understand her
voice shakes. I was lucky got out early. Some people, well,
they never get called off break. She hangs up before
I can press further. In a last attempt at logical
sense making, I trioched the folder from the record's room
dates assignments a third birth, history of a performance, trioche
reviews all lead to the same narrative. Employees reassigned, mad
project files vanished, the only record left being hand scrolled
logs and anonymous audio tapes left rod in the dark.
Every clue points to an erasure, not just of career,
but of history. In alleged existence of Novelaine, there's no
space left for even a memory. It's after sunset when
the next spin drops. My phone, plugged to charge shutters,
with an income and call from a hidden extension local
team in US nine. I let it go to voicemail.
A minute later, there is a new message. When I listen,
it's not my editor or a co worker, but only
the tinue loop of that now down told music, then
a whispered scrape, still waiting. The shiver that runs down
my back isn't so much fear as resignation. Even at home,
the system is chasing me, dragging its net over every
device I own. The music wants a suporific background. Company
training videos now feels pretty tory, its melody gnawing at
the nerves of anyone at chunder it. With rising dread,
I combed through old save force metals and realize several
have been overwritten in their place. Three second old io
glitches at exactly to seventine. Sometimes my name warped into
a hiss, sometimes only the phrase put me through. I
check the badge locks once more, paranoid that if I
refresh my own digital trail will vanish or worse, respawn
attached to the wrong face, the wrong year. It becomes
a compulsion night after night, bordering on ritual, I patch
my audio recorder into the line outside my window. Each
time at two seventeen a m. A surge of silence
just long enough to cover hollow in the belly, is
followed by statics so intense I have to rip out
my buds again and again. The system bide its moment,
choosing entry points I can't shore up or predict. On
the fourth night, a package arrives in my mail box,
flame brown, no return address, inside a generic blank security
badge not yet encoded, and square white envelope marked in
blocky red felt pen emma. There is no letter, only
an old my crooks set loose in the fold. I
sought it into Meghan's recorder hands sha click The tape
inferls are sluggish bruised melody, then an updated a warped
version of the wold music, punctuated with what sounded like
urgent and coherent whispers. I slow it, hoping for clarity.
At the end, a human breath, then a voice only
barely distinct, still waiting the urge to torch. The lot rises,
warring with the part of me wired Francis. But what
good does an answer do if the system erases the question?
The second is spoken aloud The next night, A foreign
rings are two seventeen, This time my own number e
could on the color ide. I answer against every surviving instinct.
Nothing except my own voice plays back, Emma Kirk, please
put me through a glitch, an echo, a warning. I
can't tell if the story is following me or if
I am already its latest extension. The world outside noveline
becomes blurry, indistinct, my life, still stitched together with the
mundanity of meals, chores, sleepless nights, gradually degreed into a
desperate search for proof. Marisol's message has grown frequent, always warning,
never stating. My editor pussured by legal backs array, We're
boxed and this story isn't safe to run. The company
wants assurances of confidentiality, although'll pull ads. The city's normal rhythms,
market noise, street cars, the casual laughter of acquaintance severe
into the unreality of someone else's routine. The only signals
cutting through the haze are the increasingly erratic behaviors of
Novelene's call center agents, replacements, staff arriving, never meeting those
whose desks they fill, their own, extension numbers now echoing
with slight digital twitches. Every night at two seventeen, I
piece together the reality is best I can in physical evidence,
first memos, photos, archives, testimony, until it's clear the system
will not tolerate revelation. In a fit of half mouth hope,
I assemble everything into makeshift audio documentary. A serialized episode
from my small, stubborn podcast lays together with the few
clean fragments of my own investigations, spliced with Marcel's early
admissions and snippets of recorded interviews now overridden by static.
I send the file encrypted to national outlets, online archivists,
a few trusted friends who once believe me infallible. Twenty
four hours pass, forty eight there's no reply. I call
those I've trusted law long guest. They don't pick up
or else answer, and quickly claim not to remember who
I am or what I'm talking about. That third night,
walking past noval Lines head quarters under a bruise pre Rainsky,
I see a figure in a second floor window, face,
indistinct posture, familiar Megan or someone worrying her outline. She's
not looking out, but in, as if glimpsing me from
some other frequency. The sight shows me anew of granular
ways even in the world above. The recursion flows and checked.
In a final gambit, I stake out the telecom office
one last time. Audio equipment wedged in the back seat,
trunk bristling with bored directional mics, parabolic dishes, a battery
of charge recorders. I position myself in an alley behind
the wires, listening the wind buffets the car. A drizzle
telegraphs mino static into the dash. At two seventeen, the
trunk phone line surge within unearthly compounded, coarse fragments of
names not just mine, but Walder's megans, even sloud syllables
of operators from three decade prior. Each four screens the
same plea, as if the system can't bear the isolation
it inflicts. Connect me, connectus, please let me through. I
sit is paralyzed with the auglacertainty that no matter how
many times I circle back, the feed will never resolve.
The coal will never clear Core's contracts, compressing somewhere between
hope and oblivion. Loneliness now is no longer a personal affliction.
It's industrial, the enforced, mechanized suffering of hundreds, a memory race,
all left to wait for the line to pulse open,
if only for three seconds every night. There is no
safety in stasis. The company revises its documentation, implements tighter
badge protocols, rewires the elevator system, and retrofits badge logs
to eliminate errors. Agents cycle through their digital trails, blotted
and blended beyond the point of pattern recognition. A new,
smiling supervisor takes Finch's old office. The labby vending machines
are updated. They're hum fresh and cheerful. When I walk
in at dusk, blending for one last time with an
upgoing shift, Maris All meets me with eyes roomed in alarm.
We speak in code, our word shape for the recorder.
I tuck against my rib. They are looking for you, Emma.
You need to go. They are rewriting the logs to night.
I slide the batter my crook set across the desk
to her. If something happens, if you hear the call,
don't answer, don't go down. Don't ever go down. She
nods too quickly, too late. Outside, the storm builds in
the city's blue Lick grid. Phone lines whip and hum
with and seen unending traffic. My own number on it
of by somewhere in the debt's pulses, its presence into
the night. I promise myself, this is the last descent.
I cannot run this. If I don't look the system
in the eye, it will find me for every wire,
every hour, until the world thins beneath the weight of
its secrets. It's not courage that brings me back, just
refusal to be raised without seeing the shape of the erasure.
A gap in the fence, a bypass code memorized from
Jake's old texts, a brief outage scheduled for two a
M two upgrade s over racks. The building is all
raw nerves, security, out of sight, rain hammering the roof,
the electric scent of ozon in every step down down
to the subassement. My route almost automatic by now, each
darkened cordor each battered sign soaks into the body, until
I'm a ghost in my own investigation. At s B
minis three, the reader accepts the override. I passed the
mesh gate since its crawling flask, white beam buckling against
shadows thick as blood tonight. The Roger's pulse brighter. The
loop of holed music is faster, the panic in its
undertones heightened by the cutting in of new unrecognized coal signals.
The main operator room opens up. My badge now no
longer deactivated, but label pending transfer Inside the amplifier's rock
light stutter. The antique operator console is a live screen,
flickering wires hissing. The wall monitor, updated since my last visit,
flickers frames of names and faces, as if a slideshore
has been set to restless shuffle. At the bottom, Mine
appears overlaying Finches and Meggins, each frame snaggered on the
same time. Step two seventeen a m. The system welcomes
me TeX's green against digital black voice called and impossibly
familiar welcome and M Kirk pending inbound connections. Please remain
in the line. I've led the mobile hotspot live, praying
for signal. My laptop shirts as it picks up the
outside fee, broadcasting raw, every crackle, every connection plea, every
hideous undertone made audible. The first listeners are bots, sweeps,
perhaps owe me and the absent faces of the coals
enter's history. But it's at now somewhere that camp be
deleted by shift supervisors. Keystroke as of un cue. The
speaker system kicks in the familiar litany, a single voice,
ten dozens, then a hundred whales for connection, each syllable
freighted with panic, don't leave us, stay in the line,
transfer me connect meat. The voices glitch and echo, such
that some of the pleas sound almost like laughter, others
like threat. Every fifth line mute hits too, Emma, m Att,
please don't disconnect. The room's temperature plunges. The rodders crackle,
cycling in and out of phase. For a moment, a
console glows a solid blue transfer request inbound. My own
photograph fills the side monitor, then a rising buzz. I'm
at once present an archived voice out of time, memory
blurring like a skip tape. The system speaks now in
chorus transfer the call or stay to manage. Only one
can clear the line at each clock cycle. If you
hang up, they stay. If you can act, you join.
Paddock presses at my temples. But logic gains a last
hard edge. I rifle through memories of what I've heard,
Meghan's warnings, Finch's final log, the ghost of John, its advice.
What if a croak out loud? What if no one answers?
The system stalls. Images flicker faces upon faces, hands at
the ears, all stirring at and scene screens in the
lightning flash behind scratched glass, I see Meghan and Finch
side by side, their expressions neutral, wordless, pleading without hope.
Don't leave us, Emma. The machine bakes, don't disconnect From
somewhere far away, my own broadcast feed, I hear my
own voice leap back, warped and insistent. You have to
finish the transfer. You have to. I slam the operators,
which harb left into a right eclipping, the entire room's
audio rebeating, every road ck scating from left to right
for a single hot stopping instant. The system falls into
absolute silence. The digital displayed eyes. The room darkens, the world,
if only for a breath, is empty, clean, free from
the noin chorus. But then out of the terminal darkness,
a new voice surrenders itself, soft, sibilant threadd with the
timber of both Finch's wariness and Meghan's panic. Now it's
your turn. The router cycle up again, the emergency lightning
a night. An alarm shrieked from a dozen hidden places.
Security clacksons, the shouts of approaching staff, the disjointed gramble
of other unseen vickers fill the sub basement. I forced
the door, half crawling heart choking itself into ragged gallop.
In the corridor, I see to ince mirrors of movement
faces flickering between old supervisor, vanished agent, and finally, unmistakably
my own facing me with the desperate, searching grief. I
run boots, splashing through puddles for it locked and tear
up the stairs, past the mush cages, through a mark
service stors into the stormy night. My phone in my
pocket convulses every few steps, slaughtered by a waterfall of
new vosemels, each marked by the same time stamp. The
identical phrase is head a pending please answer outside. The
siren of reality fails to drown the surge of two seventeen.
As every device I carry, every borro tape, every piece
of audio equipment I'd left, rollicking chirps and coffiner's unison.
The plea chases me all the way to my car,
to the edge of the lot, to the red light
of the dash. Put me through again and again. I
drive rain lashing glass until the building shrinks behind me
to an anonymous black square. Only later do I check
my coal logs train the log enters loop. There's no exit,
no disconnect, only an indisligne on infinite hold. The aftermath
is a matter of slow erosion. I move, taking a
subletan edge of the city, erasing my name from every
directory I can a close accounts, ditch old equipment. However,
my cook set ever badge every copy of my audio
logs into the river. Certain for a moment that water
can wash away what wire is burned in. But I
am not alone. Every night, whether by phone, radio, even
the digital readout of a hotel lom clock, the same
phenomena occur at two seventeen. My world tilts static, segmented
please spoiled through the either sometimes my own voice, sometimes megans,
sometimes a corse blended from dozens of prior years. I
answer nothing, but the weight of expectation never relents. E
Mails vanish from up boxes, Messages to contact Spence or else,
thread back with vague, almost automated answers. Attempts to pursue
the story spark media interest only result in warnings from
company council, new language legalise writ large leave this subject.
No further comment will be entertained. I work our jobs,
logging out of every system before midnight. When I hear
from Marisol at last, our voice is a feverish rattle
through ten seconds of a burnou line. They're asking for you,
Am I have to go? I counted the call fractures,
Dan Katz when we dialing only static answerers, I burn
what's left, but the system is more insidious. Sometimes a
phone left and plugged still rings high and tight. Sometimes
a whispered plea filters through white noise, unbidden, always always
the same phrase, the line the chorus put me through
just one more, please, I keep. The last entry of
my diary sequestered, carved out at two sixteen a m.
One spring morning, a parting shot against a cycle. I
don't know what will reach you, but if you're hearing this,
don't answer the call. Months pass the city is growd
hums and changing a living circuit. Most citizens never wander
near the telecom headquarters at night, never notice the flecker
of off schedule for essence, or the silent turnover of
unfamiliar faces. Heable repair crews come and go, marking boxes,
rerouting traffic. On a wind bitten evening, an anonymous Stignian
yeelds to repair street cabinet outside novelene's metal fence. Inside
the mesh, half buried beside the coils of looping wire,
he finds an un marked microcosseveral corrider still hoffing through
a depleted battery. Idly, he presses play. The tape turns
the three second loop. A woman's voice distant, exhausted, a
final thread of hope or to spare the words, almost
eaten by static. A police put me through. The technician
shakes his head, shrugs, leaves the recorder running, closing the
gray steel door with a clack. He slide a new
lock over the housing and sets offt down the block,
thinking nothing of ghosts, nothing of circuits that look beyond
the grasp of manuals or maps. Overhead, the city's foam
lines hum nourished, perhaps by their losses, never quite silent,
never quite a lowe, as the legacy of connection weights
unresolved for a chance to answer itself. A bus trundles past,
the telecom lock breaks, squealing a ripple of van burn
side as passenger's does. A scroll oblivious in a nearby alley,
exhaust calls a long water streak pavement, and then diffuses
a way up into the scrap of sky. The night
is a washed with minor city currents, distant car horns,
elevator murders, the feintware of electrical grids, resuming their midnight work.
For nearly everyone else, normal life ticks along, each small
connection routine, each force met with another on the other end.
But for me, even away from noval ends looming prisons,
every interaction feels precarious, charge, desistant, poise to glitch at
any moment. Some nights I lie awake in my narrow room,
counting the heartbeat between the subtle growing static in the
wall's old wiring, My mind catalog and shadows I try
moving the furniture. I switch off power strips, pulled the
battery from the smoke alarm, but still at two seventeen
eight a m. Those disturbance the taught expectation that somewhere,
some device, some invisible circuit, is about to shudder to
life and ask for me by name. One Tuesday, I
bury myself in daylight work, transcribing interviews for a mundane
city project, wealthy, forcing an ordinary cadence into the morning.
My old phone is bricked, replaced by an anonymous propaid brick. Yet,
when noon comes and I decide to risk a walk
sun night sharp against tired eyes, the sensation trails after
something unfinish, always looking at the edge. A neighbourhood cafe
provides relief, chatter and music and mechanical espresso noise, covering
my nose for an hour. I watch bars to steam
milk and practice smiling at strangers, trying to convince myself
I'm not always one light click away from collapse. I
think absurdly about how I would explain all this, the
ghosts in the system. The artifact voices the cycle of
erasure to someone else, a possible friend. Someone remarked by
what I found. But as I fish for change at
the counter, the radio on the shelf croks are not
a psalm, but a sudden peal of static, sharp as
shattering glass. It's over in less than two seconds, and
nobody else reacts. The barrister leans in to fix a
sticky button, but my good twists. The next moment, the
cash register freezes. For just an instant, the digital readout
staughter is two seventeen. Then back to the correct iur
like a blinky almost miss. I leave my coffee cooling
on the table, step out, chest hot and tied under
the cold. It's relentless latecy in the air, a sense
that no matter how far I drift, the search continues.
The city is supposed to be a place of anonymity,
but here I'm known by a machine that remembers too
much and refuses to let go. Back at the sublet,
I open my laptop, fingers trembling as the slide headphones
over my ears to review for the hundredth time the
corrupted audio from my last Noveline Descent. There is my
own rapid breathing, the distant wail of alarms. Then beneath it,
the layered polyphonic plead, each voice spliced with mine a
sequence of please, please put me through. Sometimes, when I
concentrate too hard, I can almost tease out new syllables,
utterances that have never belonged to me, and yet now
cleave to my name. It haunts my sleep too. Each
night the dreams drive with the interest of awareness, of memory,
but none of the comfort. I wander endless, blinking corridors,
hunted by the pulse of an unsane transfer call. I
wake again and again in the row, astonished certainty that
a line is ringing somewhere, and if I answer, I
might never return. One night, a new wrinkle, A letter
posted in tight never as Prince lies beneath my apartment door,
no return address. The note inside is only a sentence,
there hiring again, replacing lines I saw your name in
the new cycle. Be careful. Folded in the paper an
old noveline visitor badge, the lumination pealing, but unmistakably stamped
with my most recent ID photo. I hurled it into
the trash, then immediately double bag the can and carry
it to the curb, feeling watched the hallway. The next morning,
the badge is gone from the garbage, but a scrap
of a corner, just enough to recognize the rounded shape,
turns upon my kitchen windowsill as if scooped by the window,
forsaken by the cleaning crew. Now I can't shake the
conviction that things are moving, we combining themselves, setting new
stages for a confrontation I haven't chosen. I try not
to involve myself further. Her last message sounded afraid or
rehearsal for Farewell's neither of us trust Still. One night
I risked diling the old back up number of flip
fuonid's stasch in my destrawal months ago. The call rings through,
and for once, she answers. Her voice crackles low. Worry.
They are watching all up going lines. Emma. I can't
talk long. They say the system needs fresh extension code.
The new highs there not real, not all of them.
I saw some one in the basement I thought was Finch,
but I don't know. Please be careful. Have you heard
the calls, I ask hard in my throat. She hesitates.
It's worse now, after you'd after ye left some nights,
no one on the shift answers phone, not even their own.
We just let them ring. A call drops suddenly, no click,
just eating static, the kind that leaves the air hungry.
I stare at the phone for minutes after, as if
expecting speech to resume. By now, paranoia and perception warp together.
The story is a closed circuit, heat rising with every
attempt to break out. I keep trying, documenting everything, uploading
encrypted backs, printing hard coppers of every hands called note,
and stashing them in an anonymous storage locker across town.
One evening, digging for anything that might explain why two
seventeen became the moment. I pour through old blueprints, staff schedules,
and city utility routing manuals, cross referencing patterns. It emerges slowly,
like an image rising through a developing tree. That timestamp
is not arbitrary. Every system maintenance window, every planned outage
in Ovolene documentation hinges on it. Two seventeen a m
the one block of time where an accounted activity may
peak a warning, not a fluke. Even as an outsider
with no access, the company's internal digital news feed finds
me tucked between spam and system air ports. Congratulations to
our new transfer supervisors. Thank you for your commitment to
seamless connection generic, but I recognize the faces one as Megan's,
but the name is not another Finch straw set beneath
another employee's eyes. The system is actively replacing identifieres now,
the lines between identity and function erased. That night, my
phone lights with one new message at two seventeen a
m precisely a single empty audiophile. When I play it back,
there is only silence, the kind that thins the air,
mixed a room colder, as if something just failed to arrive.
The next day, I find a physical reminder pushed under
my apartment door about it en below, containing a network
cable sliced at both ends. It's labeled in shaky ballpoint
safe when disconnected. Beneath offended photo of the old operator's
console in the sub basement, the very place I last
saw on my way out. The notation beneath reads s B.
Ministry rotates names every system cycle, even a race. Still
there after this, my resolve thinds to the bone. I
begin keeping travel bags packed, cycling through cheap hote tells
always booking under a pseudonym, never for more than two nights. Still,
wherever I sleep, the same phenomena static from the TV,
or ringing from the hotel phone that the front desk
claims not to have roaded. I has under the ice
machine at two seventeen. Finally, on a rain flush Thursday,
the compulsion returns, sick, gnawing, deniable. I drive to Novolin
one last time, this time not to the looming brick
and glass structure, but to the hub where the city's
lines converge. I park under a low concrete overpass, gripping
the umbrella and the single analog tape that survived the
last perge. Walking out rain, drilling my collar, I watch
utility trucks idling in the distance, text in reflective jackets, whistling,
carrying coil after coil of cable. I can't tell if
I'm watching them or if they are part of a
watch set from me. The main distribution box sits against
the retaining wall, locked but easy to bypass. With the
firm twist inside. Noise and warmth pulse together the hum
of millions of connections braided in steel string. I hold
the old tape recorder up to one port, press record
and let it run for a long minute. There's nothing.
I stand, drench breath rising in clouds. Then, unmistakably, the
really clicks, and through the spool tape I hear the
course now fully manifest, no launder, bound by sub basement walls,
Voices intermingle, not just pleading, but laboring to construct some
larger shape of sentence. Courage this Meggin's fracture tone finches
careful control, and beneath them a ground layer of others,
all stitched by the same tachycard cope. Are you there?
One distant bread asks can you hear us? On the line?
Still on the line. I don't answer. Instead, I rewind
and play it back, the plea, the harmony, and finally,
my own voice woven among theirs, not as a warning
but as an invitation. For a while, I stand. We'rein,
slicking my hair, trying to will a new connection into being,
a kind that amidst escape, not recursion. If there is
a way out, it doesn't arrive, just the same insistence,
same institutional heart break and endless hunger to be recognized
by some one. Somewhere in that moment, there is a
flicker of release, not of understanding, but of acceptance. I
cannot clear the line, I cannot patch the call. Ferru
the system has had my name too long, knows my habits,
my holes, the wrong where my voice belongs. But outside,
in broad daylight, I make a choice to leave the
recorder running in the utility box, tape spinning, not as exorcism,
but as a record. May be One more technician, one
more well meaning operator, will listen and hear not only
the plea, but also the refusal to answer, the tiny
act of resistance woven into the hum. Walking away the
rain erases my footprints. The city's circuit spin on, and
for one final night, when the clock takes to two
seventeen a m I sit awake, hands pressed over my ears,
as every device in the room buzzes, every wire trembles
with the strain of unfinished business. This time I do
not reach for the receiver. I do not answer. Outside
the window. The lion's hum infinite, insistent, never quite silent,
never quite letting anyone through. And that is the end.
Thank you for listening, and I will see you in
the next one.