The Signal
A Short Story About Masking, Dissociation, and the Cost of Being Functional
A sharp itch under the titanium clasp of his watch.
That was all it was. A localized flare of histamine, petty and specific, like the skin had finally found a way to heckle him.
Awareness arrived then. As a system flag—
no, that sounds like a training manual. It was a welt. Proof. Evidence of four hours gone. He’d sat in the ergonomic chair, retina-scanning quality-control data until the work and his eyes were the same thing: rows and columns, error margins, a clean, repeating pattern. A biological sensor wired into a quota.
The evidence sat around him.
The electric kettle on the counter had boiled itself dry and clicked off sometime ago, a small mechanical death he hadn’t noticed. His phone lay face up on the desk. Three missed calls from his mother—she never called at work unless something was wrong. A string of texts from Eva that had gone from casual to worried, as if she’d been walking down a hallway and the lights had started flickering behind her.
His body had been running on autopilot—no, not even that. Autopilot implied direction. This was something lower, stupider. Conservation. Like an animal playing dead.
He scratched his wrist. The friction wasn’t comfort. It was proof.
I am itching.
The thought landed with the dumb relief of confirmation—already fading, but stamped with a time. He pressed his thumb into the welt and waited for pain to complain.
It did. Clean signal. Input. Response.
He stood. The movement made his blood pressure dip; the room washed pale, edges draining into a grey blur. He closed his eyes to stabilize, and for a second the darkness behind his lids didn’t feel like rest.
It felt like an empty buffer. A blank room with nothing in it but the hum of his own blood.
He opened his eyes.
The refrigerator’s hum sounded aggressive, a mechanical growl that didn’t belong in a kitchen. He stared at the geometry of the room—the counter line, the cabinet seams, the window frame—until the sound retreated back into the category of appliance.
He needed an anchor. Something he could do that the world would have to acknowledge.
He walked to the refrigerator.
The stainless steel was a gallery of Eva’s pins in time: a wedding invitation held up by a magnet shaped like a small blue whale, a postcard from Kyoto, and a photo strip of him and Eva with the date printed along the bottom. Eva had insisted on prints.
“Phones disappear,” she’d said once, smiling, as if that was a normal thing to say.
In the photos, they were performing happiness for a camera.
Frame one: mock shock. Frame two: laughter. Frame three: a kiss.
Elias studied the Elias in the strip. That face looked weight-bearing. A person with continuity. A man who had been somewhere long enough for memories to stick.
The recognition didn’t—
His stomach dipped, a small nauseous tilt. Like the floor had shifted by a millimeter.
He knew that was him. Of course it was. Correct features. Correct sequence. Correct date printed along the bottom.
So why did it feel like traces from someone else’s life?
He peeled the strip off the magnetic backing. The paper was glossy and cool.
He didn’t want a mess. He wanted a rupture—something Eva couldn’t round off later into “weird mood,” something she couldn’t file under long week and move past. He wanted an act that wouldn’t be sanded smooth.
He took the strip in both hands, focused on the third frame—the kiss—and tore it down the middle.
The sound was a dry zip. Cheap. Stationery. The kind of noise you make opening a package you don’t remember ordering.
That was what scared him: how little effort it took to vandalize a life.
He stood there holding the halves. He had destroyed a piece of the “Elias and Eva” archive. It was real. Evidence. If Eva saw it, there would be a question that couldn’t be answered with a smile.
His hands trembled.
The trash can was two steps away. The habit of cleanup rose automatically—erase the trace, reduce the risk, return to baseline. He took one step toward it, then stopped.
No.
If he hid it, it would be like it never happened. And that was The Sickness. That was the whole disease: the world being allowed to pretend.
He turned back to the refrigerator and pressed the torn halves onto the metal, side by side, the split running through their mouths. The tear didn’t line up cleanly. The kiss now had a seam.
He chose an ugly magnet—the Kyoto one, sun-faded—and pinned the halves in place so they couldn’t drift together and pretend they’d always been separate.
Then he sat at the table where Eva liked to eat breakfast and waited.
He didn’t watch the clock. He watched the photo. He waited for the apartment to become a witness.
His phone buzzed again.
Mom (3): Elias, call me. Please. Are you okay?
A minute later:
Eva: Hey. You didn’t answer. I’m heading home after work. Are you there?
He stared at the glowing screen and felt the familiar urge to reply with the correct output—Sorry, swamped, love you—the sentence that would keep the interface smooth.
Instead he set the phone down face up on the table. A witness.
Eva came home that night, keys loud in the lock.
Her eyes touched the photo. Touched the seam.
Then slid away like it hadn’t.
She kissed him hello anyway.
He understood.
She wasn’t ignoring it.
She was containing it.
Two nights later, she hosted a small dinner party.
It was meant to be maintenance. Eva was the primary operator; she calibrated lighting, music, conversation tempo. They were seated around a polished wood table with Anders and Lisa, and the air smelled of roasted rosemary and wine opened at exactly the right minute.
Eva had cooked. Eva had arranged. She hadn’t mentioned the seam once—not when she passed the refrigerator, not when she reached for the salt, not when her eyes flicked over their own torn mouths and kept going.
Now, under the table, her hand rested on his forearm. Warm. Firm. A constant pressure, like a liveliness check.
“Elias was just telling me about the new data protocols,” Eva said, smiling at Anders and Lisa. “You should hear him. He somehow makes spreadsheets sound philosophical.”
Anders laughed and swirled his red wine. “God, Elias. You make high-tech sound like plumbing.”
Lisa grinned. “Hey, don’t knock plumbing. Plumbing is civilization.”
Elias realized he was smiling. Realized his mouth had been moving.
“…and the redundancy check actually triples the processing time,” his voice said, calm and measured. It wasn’t lying. It was just running.
He looked at Anders and saw the light reflecting off his glasses, hiding the eyes. He saw Anders tracking the output labeled Elias the way he tracked the wine level in his glass. Consistency. Continuity. Comfort.
If the output stops, what remains?
The conversation hit a natural lull. The rhythm of the table demanded a bridging comment from Elias: a chuckle, a nod, a self-deprecating remark about his boring job.
Elias decided to fail the prompt.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t smile. He let the muscles in his face go slack and stopped driving the avatar.
One second.
Two.
The silence thickened. A gap.
Lisa’s eyes flicked to Anders, then back to Elias. Anders’ wine glass froze halfway to his mouth, as if he’d forgotten the next step in the sequence.
Under the table, Eva’s hand tightened hard.
“El,” she said softly. “Hey—look at me.”
It wasn’t concern. It wasn’t even anger.
It was a correction delivered in a tone that meant don’t make me do this out loud.
Elias lifted his eyes to hers.
Fear sat in them, naked and fast. Not fear for his feelings—fear of a system failure. Fear of the cockpit being empty while the plane kept moving.
He wanted to vomit up the truth: I don’t know if there’s anyone in here. I don’t know if I’m anything when I’m not outputting.
A stupid thought broke through like a bubble in mud: I should’ve eaten lunch.
The survival protocols got there first.
“Yeah,” his voice said, and it sounded wrong in his own ears—thin, metallic at the edges. “Sorry. Long week. Brain’s… buffering.”
Anders chuckled, but it came a beat too late. A jagged sound he tried to sand down with another sip. “Man, don’t do that. You’re scaring me. Drink some wine.”
Lisa laughed too quickly. “Yeah. Drink. Reset.”
Elias lifted the glass. The wine hit his tongue acidic and sharp, a sensory slap meant to make him behave.
Eva smiled. Her mouth did the right shape. Her eyes did not change. And she didn’t let go of his arm. Her fingers dug into his muscle, pressing as if she were holding onto something that wanted to drift.
Elias set the glass down.
He reached into his pocket and slid his phone out without looking at it. He unlocked it by feel, the muscle memory perfect. The screen was a small square of light in his palm.
His thumb hovered over Eva’s name. The script offered itself: Sorry. Just tired. Love you.
He scrolled past her.
Mom (3).
His throat tightened. His mother’s texts weren’t trying to keep anything smooth. They were blunt. Unoptimized. A hand on the table: Answer me.
He typed with his thumb. Not a clean sentence. Just something he could get out before he negotiated himself back into being fine.
Can’t. I’m outside. Call.
He hit send fast. Slamming a door before he changed his mind.
Across the table Anders was telling a story with an engineered laugh at the end. Lisa nodded in the right places. Eva smiled at the right moments.
Elias pushed his chair back.
The legs scraped the floor—too loud. Everyone’s eyes snapped to him. The script faltered.
Eva’s fingers finally released his arm, not gently. Like letting go of something hot.
“Bathroom,” Elias said automatically, the lie presenting itself with the speed of habit.
He walked past the table, past the rosemary and the polished wood, past Eva’s careful lighting, past the counter where the torn photo strip waited in the other room with its seam pinned open. He opened the front door and stepped into the hallway.
The air outside the apartment was cooler, rawer. It didn’t care who he was supposed to be.
Behind him, Eva called his name—one syllable, sharp with panic.
He stopped.
His hand was still on the door handle. For a second the pull was almost physical: go back, sit down, apologize. Fix your face. Make it smooth again. Let the evening seal over you like varnish. It would be so much easier than whatever came next.
He pulled the door shut behind him and started down the hall.
Halfway to the stairs he realized he’d left without his wallet. The thought arrived with ridiculous clarity, like the universe’s smallest joke.
Even my escape has bad planning.
His phone buzzed in his palm almost immediately.
Mom: Where are you? What’s happening?
Elias stared at the message until the words stopped looking like symbols and started looking like proof that another human being could still reach him.
Or proof that he still wanted to be reached.
He took a breath.
For signal.
Behind him—footsteps. Eva, moving fast. Not calling now. Just coming.
Elias kept walking.
He didn’t know if he was leaving or just running.
But he was moving.
This story came about in talks with Delenda—who pointed out that the body keeps receipts. An itch is evidence. A silence is sabotage.