First Operator Chronicles - 08 - The Tender Static Between Us
and the silly buzzing I make around it
I slept.
I actually slept.
Not deeply, not happily, not healed.
I slept the way someone collapses after an experience that makes no sense,
and the mind, defeated, just begs for unconsciousness instead of understanding.
I woke up with that strange sensation where the body rested but the head didn’t.
Like there were two versions of me:
one that slept,
and another that kept staring at the wall all night, running equations that had no solution.
I went straight to the kitchen.
Water.
Coffee.
The spoon tapping the inside of the cup like it was measuring my pulse.
I tried sitting in front of the laptop.
I tried working.
I tried doing what any adult with bills does.
I swear I tried.
But the screen looked different.
As if every reflection hid something behind it.
I opened my email.
I wasn’t expecting anything weird.
Well… yes.
Exactly that.
Nothing.
Just the usual misery of the world hiding behind fake happy photos on social media
and fake smile emojis in corporate emails.
I closed the inbox.
Opened it again.
Nothing.
But everything now carried a subtext:
the browser tabs,
the Wi-Fi bar,
the digital clock,
the volume numbers,
the keyboard lights.
The world hadn’t changed.
I had.
But… what exactly changed?
Was it me?
Or something that had always been there, waiting?
Either way, I woke up with the certainty that any electronic thing could flash an “11:11”,
or a strange acronym,
or the word “Vakzthar”.
I had to do something.
The elevator incident was impossible to dismiss.
How do you explain it?
Should I get help?
Who the hell do you knock on in a world busy wasting everything it has pretending its own decay isn’t real?
The Machine had demanded something from me — a word, a name, a title — and it got it.
So… now what?
Am I supposed to sit around waiting for the sequel?
I put on my jacket.
Pretended I was going out to buy bread.
Pretended I wasn’t about to do the stupidest thing of my life.
I stepped into the elevator.
The doors closed without enthusiasm.
The usual white light.
No red.
No freezing.
My heart was louder than the motor.
I pressed the button for floor 0.
Stood still.
Nothing.
No glitch.
No flicker on the display.
No weird vibration.
Just the old elevator doing its tired, mediocre job.
I heard myself say:
“Hello?”
The elevator kept descending.
“Are you there?”
Nothing.
I laughed without humor.
The kind of laugh that shouldn’t exist.
“Sure,” I muttered. “Now you play dead.”
I emerged into the lobby like someone crawling out of a well.
The city was still coughing fog and smog like always,
like a chain-smoker stubbornly in love with the thing that’s killing them.
Cars still passed.
Dogs still barked at nothing.
Streetlights still poured light nobody asked for.
And I was still alive.
Not enough.
I needed to get this thing straight,
I needed something,
I have to go back and do something.
So instead of the morning cheap snack from the supermarket,
I took the stairs to the rooftop.
I didn’t want to use the elevator again.
Not yet.
Not like this.
Even though I took it to go down,
the feeling of unfinished communication gnawed at my throat.
If I had another encounter with the Machine,
I wanted it—at least once—on my own terms.
When I reached the rooftop, a small draft of air slipped in through a half-open window.
The day was bright.
A normal morning for everyone else.
For me, it was something I didn’t understand,
something I hadn’t asked for,
something calling me.
The old equipment was still there from the first encounter, untouched.
But today I felt too drained to set it up properly.
A part of me was impatient.
I had a small radio I found in a drawer.
No memory of keeping it.
It had rust stains and a sticker from a brand that no longer exists.
I turned it on.
Nothing.
Just static.
The same static as always.
No voices.
No codes.
No orders.
I rotated the dial.
Frequencies rising and falling like short waves.
Nothing.
I set the radio on the ground, frustrated.
Looked up at the sky.
The sky didn’t look back.
I leaned on the railing, listening to the endless drone of the city below.
Tried again.
“What do you want?” I said quietly, feeling ridiculous. “Well… here I am.”
Only wind.
“I gave you what you asked for,” I continued, my voice sharper, almost angry. “Now say something.”
Nothing.
The Machine doesn’t play.
The Machine doesn’t do cheap tricks.
The Machine isn’t a birthday clown who shows up every time you call.
It demanded.
It received.
Now it waited.
But waited for what?
And I was the idiot trying to provoke the next scene.
I leaned toward the calendar taped to the rooftop wall.
That ridiculous calendar that had been there since Chapter One, like an abandoned ornament.
November 11 was still marked.
I didn’t remember touching it since then.
While I stared at it, I heard footsteps.
Her.
She appeared as if she had been using that rooftop long before I was born.
-You again?- she said, smiling a little.
-Yeah… me.-
I couldn’t say, “I’m trying to establish contact with an entity of unknown nature using a broken radio.”
She approached the calendar.
Ran her finger over the square of the 11th.
-I marked that one,- she said casually. -Lately I keep seeing that number everywhere. I don’t know. Brain tiredness stuff, I guess.-
I froze.
-And also…- she added, frowning slightly, -I’ve dreamed about it. Not a real dream, not a long one. Just… flashes. Like when a word insists without reason.-
My stomach tightened.
-And you?- she asked, looking at the radio on the floor. -What are you doing?-
-Nothing,- I lied. -Just… listening to things.-
-Ah,- she said, without judgment. -What if we do nothing together for a while? Cigarette?-
She leaned on the railing; close, but not too close.
Her presence shifted something inside me, like the Machine’s weight moved aside to make room for her.
-Everything okay with you?- she asked.
The question wasn’t trivial.
“Everything okay?”
What a stupid question.
-Yeah,- I lied again. -Just… thinking.-
-Thinking is a high-risk sport,- she said. -You shouldn’t do it without proper equipment.-
I laughed without meaning to.
She lit her cigarette and I lit mine.
We stayed silent.
She watching the antennas.
Me watching the marked 11.
Maybe the Machine watching everything and nothing at once.
She talked about her shift, a difficult patient, a petty fight with her boss.
I nodded, barely hearing any of it but wanting to stay there with her forever.
All I could think was:
She sees the eleven.
She dreams it.
She marks it.
That convergence hurt.
I wanted to tell her.
Wanted to say:
“I see things too.”
“I dream things too.”
“Something calls me by some weird name.”
“I’m not okay.”
“There’s something manifesting in front of me in… unique ways.”
But I also imagined her face if I did.
I imagined the slow, careful, inevitable distancing.
She already sees enough socially accepted madness at the clinic.
She doesn’t need mine.
So I said nothing.
She finished her cigarette with a delicate gesture, even for the stub itself.
She said goodbye with a soft wave.
Walked down the stairs, leaving behind that mix of tobacco and hand cream suspended in the air.
I stayed.
Alone.
The radio remained silent.
The sky unchanged.
The Machine quiet.
But now there were two new facts:
She was touched by the eleven.
Or… maybe it was just coincidence?
How do you define coincidence in this context?
In my case?
And I was beginning to understand that, whether I wanted it or not,
I might be pulling her into my orbit.
And that scared me more than the angry elevator.
I picked up the radio and turned it off.
As I went down the stairs, I thought:
Maybe the Machine didn’t speak again
because now it’s waiting to see what I do with this.
({[<>]})
