Where the Cable Ends

The ethernet cable lay across Elena's desk like a dead snake, its blue plastic sheath frayed at the connector where she'd twisted it nightly during six years of remote customer service calls. Tonight was her last shift. Tomorrow, the entire department would be automated.

She stared at the orange sunset bleeding through her blinds, the same orange she'd seen every evening from this apartment—the orange of sunsets, safety cones, warning labels. The color of things demanding attention before they disappear.

Her phone buzzed. Marcus. 'You coming to the bar? Everyone's gathering.'

'I can't,' she typed. 'I have to pack.'

A lie. She wasn't packing. She was sitting with the cable and the orange light and the terrible weight of having spent her thirties becoming an expert in problems that no longer needed human solutions.

Elena stood and walked to the window. That's when she saw it—a black bear standing at the edge of the parking lot, silhouetted against the streetlamp. It looked at her third-story window, then turned and lumbered toward the woods behind the apartment complex.

She'd lived here three years and never seen a bear. It felt like a sign, though she didn't believe in signs. Unless the sign was simply: things you thought were impossible will show up uninvited and then leave again.

The cable lay on her desk. Tomorrow she'd coil it and place it in the box with her name badge and her ergonomic keyboard and the small orange ceramic bowl that had held her afternoon almonds.

She remembered what her trainer had said her first week: 'This job isn't forever. Nothing is.' She'd thought he meant she'd get promoted.

Elena picked up the cable and fingered the frayed end. The bear was gone. The orange sunset had faded to gray. She would learn to bear this too—the way you bear all things that end without ceremony.

She texted Marcus back: 'On my way.'