Page 11 - DivineSparkRising II-TheMirrorofSilenceFinal

Nicholas Boothman
the room itself were waiting for permission to
speak.
A headline glowed on the wall screen:
THE ECHO: ONE DAY LATER.
Two baristas were whispering over the espresso
machine.
“I was watching the broadcast,” said the
younger one, Elena. “She just stopped. The
newswoman. Mouth moving, no sound. I thought
my phone died.”
Her colleague, Joe, slid a cup across the counter.
“Phones don’t die in unison, kid. The whole street
went quiet. Even the pigeons stopped.”
A man in a navy suit looked up from his tablet.
“It was a hack,” he said flatly. “Quantum
interference, neuro-ads, something experimental
gone wrong.”
Elena shook her head. “It didn’t feel like a hack.
It felt like we were being listened to.”
The man laughed once. “By who? God?”
“No,” she said. “By everything.”
At the far end of the counter, an old woman
stirred her coffee without drinking it. “When it
happened,” she said, “I heard my late husband
clear his throat. He’s been gone ten years.”
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