THE LAST CALL

At 3:33 in the morning, every telephone in the radio cathedral rang once.

This might have been less frightening if any of them had still been connected. Asa had removed the copper after the false emergency broadcasts. Miren kept the dead receivers as evidence. Leon had persuaded the choir to sing only when its members wanted to.

I remembered three incompatible endings to the night we stopped the counterfeit signal. In one, the city built an independent listening council. In another, we made every official warning show its source. In the third, the transmitter was silent. All three memories bore the unmistakable weight of something I had lived.

The last telephone rang again.

"My name isn't in your book," said a woman. "There's no date for me before today, and there won't be one after. I don't need you to tell me who I am. I need you to stop counting me as nobody."

Outside the stained glass, a line of people stood in the rain. Each held a blank document where an address should have been.