The Last Disconnect

The phone buzzed on the nightstand — my iPhone, screen cracking into life at 2:47 AM. Unknown number. I almost let it go to voicemail, same way I'd been letting everything go lately.

"You there?" The voice was familiar, wrong somehow. "It's Marcus."

Marcus. My college roommate, my best friend, the person who'd talked me through my divorce three years ago. We hadn't spoken in eight months. I'd been meaning to call. Always meaning to.

"Hey," I managed. "Everything okay?"

"Got fired today," he said, and there was something in his tone — not defeat, but something else. Something I hadn't heard since we were twenty-two and believed the world could be different. "They're replacing the whole department with AI agents. I walked out of that building feeling like I'd been given my life back."

I thought about my own office, the fluorescent lights that hummed like trapped insects, the way I moved through meetings like something animated rather than alive. A corporate zombie, shopping for shoes I couldn't afford and nodding at strategies I didn't believe in.

"That's... actually incredible?"

"I'm driving west," Marcus said. "No plan. Just — I'm done being dead on my feet. Remember that time we talked about just... leaving?"

I looked around my apartment. The television was paused on a show I wasn't watching, attached to a cable package I paid $180 monthly for the privilege of ignoring. My life was a series of subscriptions and automatic payments, a slow bleed of meaning in exchange for comfort.

"I can't just leave," I said, even as the words tasted like ash. "I have responsibilities."

"You have a cage," Marcus said gently. "But listen — that's not why I called. I wanted you to know I'm finally doing it. And I wanted to say: if you ever want to stop being a ghost in your own life, I'll keep a seat open for you."

The call ended and I sat there in the dark. My iPhone screen faded to black, reflecting my own face back at me — tired, unrecognizable. Outside, the city hummed with millions of people who'd also forgotten what it meant to be awake. I stood up and walked to the television, followed the cable to where it disappeared into the wall. And for the first time in years, I wondered what would happen if I pulled it out.