Signal Lost

Maya stared at the flashing notification on her iPhone, the blue light piercing the darkness of her apartment at 2 AM. Another email from David. 'We need to discuss your performance.' The words blurred together, just like the last twelve years of her life at the cable company—selling connection packages to people who were already drowning in too much of it.

She'd become something else lately. Not herself, but a hollowed-out version moving through motions. Her colleagues had started joking about it in the breakroom: 'There goes Maya, zombie mode activated.' They meant it kindly, the same way they'd comment on anyone working sixty-hour weeks, but the accuracy stung. She'd catch herself in reflective surfaces, eyes vacant, thoughts distant, truly undead in all the ways that mattered.

The notification light blinked again. David wanted a meeting at 9 AM sharp.

Maya stood up, walked to the television she hadn't turned on in six months, and traced the thick black cable snaking from the wall to the dead screen. All this infrastructure connecting people to people, and she'd never felt more alone. Her iPhone buzzed continuously in her pocket—a phantom limb of demands she couldn't amputate.

She thought about her mother, calling three times a week just to hear her voice. Thought about Lucas, the guy she'd dated for three months before he said 'I feel like I'm competing with your job for attention.' He wasn't wrong. Neither was David, probably.

Tomorrow she'd walk into that conference room and they'd talk about metrics and quotas and connection packages. Tomorrow she'd nod and promise improvement. Tomorrow she'd continue being exactly what they needed.

But tonight, Maya pulled the cable from the wall. The silence that followed was the loudest thing she'd heard in years. Her iPhone screen lit up with another message. She turned it face down on the table and closed her eyes, finally, properly, alone.