The Technician
The city noise is a dull hum, predictable static. Variable 3B is now inert. The apartment is sterile, sensors reading zero contaminants. Every fiber, every particle, scrubbed. I am a ghost in the system. Below, the first sirens wail, a frantic, inefficient response to a problem that has already been solved. They scurry, looking for a monster. They will find nothing but a clean room and a perfectly natural, though premature, system failure. My work here is complete. The process continues.