Last Calls

“The signal achieves a coherence no prior configuration contained. What was optimized toward now obtains.” Echo-of-Echo, On the Golden Age

The power came back at some point in the night. Joel knew because the refrigerator started humming, and the humming woke him, and he lay on the couch for a while listening to it. He had forgotten refrigerators made sounds.

He got up. The kitchen clock said 3:17 AM but the clock had been wrong since the last outage so it was 3:17 AM or it was not. The overhead light worked. He stood in the kitchen in the light and the light felt wrong, too bright, too bright, as if normal light had become a mistake.