Crosstalk

The ethernet cable felt warm against my fingers, which was impossible. Plastic and copper don't hold heat like living things do. But I'd been gripping it for twenty minutes, willing the connection to stabilize, and somehow my desperation had transferred to the hardware.

"You're still here?"

I didn't turn around. Marcus's voice carried that familiar note of concern mixed with exhaustion, the emotional register of everyone in our department since the layoffs began. "Someone needs to fix the downtown node before morning."

"It can wait, Elena."

"Can it?" Finally, I faced him. Marcus stood in the server room doorway, his tie loosened, his eyes shadowed. We'd been something once—not quite lovers, but more than colleagues. Another casualty of the past six months. "The whole network's fraying, Marcus. You know it. I'm just the one still pretending we can stitch it back together."

He stepped closer, and I caught the scent of rain on him. He'd gone outside. "There's a storm coming. They're saying it might be the big one."

"I know." I gestured toward the window, where palm trees bent against darkening skies. "I've been watching the wind pick up for hours."

"Why didn't you leave?"

The question hung between us, heavier than any unspoken history. Why did any of us stay? Why was I still running patch cables through a building that might not exist next week? Why were we all pouring ourselves into systems that could be severed with a single corporate decision?

"Because," I said softly, "something has to keep the lights on."

Marcus reached out, his palm cupping my cheek. His touch was gentle, almost reverent. "You can't save the network by drowning in it."

"I'm not trying to save it." I leaned into his hand, just for a moment. "I'm trying to understand where it went wrong. Which connection failed first."

"Does it matter?"

"It might. For next time."

Water began to stream down the window, blurring the city lights into streaks of gold and red. Behind us, servers hummed their endless song—data flowing, connections forming and breaking, the invisible circulatory system of a world that kept spinning whether we tended to it or not.

"Come home with me," Marcus said. "Buster's been anxious. He could use the company, and I..." He paused, and I heard everything he didn't say. "I could use it too."

His dog. Buster, who greeted me with the same enthusiasm whether I'd been gone for hours or months, who loved without calculating the cost, who didn't know that our department was bleeding out, that Marcus and I had become strangers who shared memories.

"I have to finish this."

"Elena."

"Tomorrow." I finally met his eyes. "If there's still a building here tomorrow, I'll come over. We can... we can talk about what comes next."

Marcus studied my face, searching for something I wasn't sure I could offer. Then he nodded, once, and let his hand fall away. "The storm's supposed to break by morning."

"I've heard that before."

"So have I." He turned toward the door. "Lock up behind you. Don't stay too long."

When he was gone, I returned my attention to the cable. The connection light flickered—unstable, unreliable, but present. Sometimes that was enough. Sometimes that was everything.

Outside, the rain intensified, turning the world into water and uncertainty. I finished the splice, my fingers steady now, and watched the light turn green. One small victory in a system that was failing everywhere else. One connection that would hold, at least for tonight.

Tomorrow could wait. Tomorrow always did. In the meantime, there was work to do, and somewhere in the darkness, Buster was probably waiting, unaware that any of us were running out of time.