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 glows 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 full 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 shopped 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
thicket 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 TAP's 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 novle and Telecom's regional headquarters, a story
meant to sue 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 and failingly 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 clot of with barble heads
and peeling family photos, silent reminders of absent staffers. Whiteboard's
display accine 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 alianes asterist notes beside them short
cryptic jots like Ennine 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 calls 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 armful of please
upgrade digital forms. The logs reveal 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, I bilan. 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
a line, 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 minus 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 besiding
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,
lit's 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 as 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 laws's 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. Megan tours
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
n truly Listening for a I returned to my cat's 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 hildbinder,
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
anomally 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 maheil Mary
for old telecomblootprints and employment rosteros. 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 so 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 rerat designs 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,
cold chill 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, most 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 decka 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 with 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 baygunschit'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 an blug 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? Off ires 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 cansalvage. 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 Inus 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 is in 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 chunterer 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
augla certainty that no matter how many times I circle back,
the feed will never resolve, The coal will never clear, cores, 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,
i't 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 lighting
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 turn over
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 tells 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 hour,
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 a 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
or 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 thread 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 coll 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.