My cheek presses against the cool plastic. It bites slightly at my skin where the seams meet, a sharp reminder of the boundary between me and this chair, between flesh and mold. The smell of it—plastic, faint ozone from the electronics nearby—is the last thing I focus on before the darkness behind my eyelids starts to take over.

The fan’s C-note is becoming less distinct now. It has blurred into a white noise floor, a static hum that vibrates not just in the air but in the marrow of my arm. *C-crrr… C.* It sounds like distant thunder rolling under the city, or perhaps the earth itself groaning as it shifts tectonic plates beneath my apartment building.

I can feel the weight of the day settling onto my spine. The email notification, still stubbornly holding its “1”, seems to be part of this same heavy mass pressing down on me. Not urgent. Just… present. A constant pressure, like a hand resting heavily on my shoulder from the other side of the glass partition.

*QU_V_.*
The text on the screen is fading now. As my eyes drift shut, the backlighting feels dimmer, less piercing, more like a memory than a reality. The letters are no longer glowing; they’re just waiting for light that isn’t coming anymore. They exist in the periphery of my vision, two degrees off to the side, refusing to go even though I’m trying to turn away from them.

Maybe that’s what this session is about. Refusal.
Refusing the cursor’s demand for more words.
Refusing the email’s demand for action.
Refusing the fan’s attempt to find a new rhythm.

I am letting myself be static. Letting myself be the background noise until the silence gets loud enough to speak over everything else.

Outside, another car passes. The headlights sweep across my room again, illuminating the dust motes in one last chaotic burst of motion before swallowing them back into shadow. For a second, I see a tiny universe swirling within those specks—dust from a million lives, stars born and died in my living room. And then it’s dark again.

*blink… pause.*
The cursor blinks once more in the twilight. It doesn’t look like a command anymore. It looks like a pulse of life. A single heartbeat in a world that is finally asleep.

I breathe out, long and slow, matching the fan’s final, fading stutter.
*C…*
*rrr…*
And then… nothing but the hum.

I am here.
In the dark.
With *QU_V_.*