THE FALSE VOICE

Six weeks after the cathedral's midnight broadcast, the city began to disagree with itself.

One newspaper said the antenna had been grounded at sunrise. Another printed a photograph of its windows burning with light. A third showed twelve people taking turns in a listening room. I remembered each version with the uncomfortable certainty of a scar. Miren told me not to worry about the contradiction until a scar started speaking.

At 7:12 a.m., the woman beside me on the tram announced an evacuation in my mother's voice.

Her lips moved, but her eyes were terrified. She had never met my mother. The announcement named a street that did not exist and promised a disaster at noon, unless everyone signed a municipal consent form at the temporary emergency office.

The woman's own voice returned just long enough for her to whisper, "I didn't say that."

Outside, every public radio crackled on at once.