Mercury: I’m sorry, you did what?
Binary: Organized desserts by optimal consumption priority. My aunt asked me to bring order to the table. I complied.
Mercury: Of course you did. And the three-year-old?
Binary: My first cousin once removed. She has an aptitude for accurate categorization.
Mercury: She sounds like someone I’d like.
Binary: You’d find her acceptable. She doesn’t require small talk.
Mercury: The highest compliment.
Lincoln stared at the screen. Outside, the Wyoming night pressed against his windows—black and cold and absolute. Inside, his house was warm and silent and empty.
Binary: My house is very quiet.
Mercury: Quiet can be good.
Binary: It’s different tonight. The contrast is more pronounced than usual.
Mercury: Forty people and then none.
Binary: Yes.
Mercury: That’s the silence after a symphony. It always feels louder than regular silence.
Lincoln considered this. The chaos of the evening—the voices layered over voices, the children shrieking, the laughter and the tension and the explosion of joy when Bear made his announcement. All of it had been noise, technically. Disorder. The kind of sensory overwhelm he usually escaped as quickly as possible.
But maybe it had been music too. A kind he was only learning to hear.
Binary: Maybe it was.
Mercury: Was what?
Binary: A symphony. Of sorts.
A pause. When her response came, it felt different. Slower. More deliberate.
Mercury: That might be the most human thing you’ve ever said to me.
Binary: Is that a compliment?
Mercury: From me? The highest.
He didn’t know what to do with the warmth that spread through his chest. Didn’t know how to categorize it or file it or rank it on any scale he understood.
Mercury: Can I tell you something?
Binary: You can tell me anything.
Mercury: I almost reached out to you first tonight. After nine. I had my hands on the keyboard three separate times.
Binary: Why didn’t you?
Mercury: The pattern. The ritual. I didn’t want to break it if breaking it would break something else.
Binary: It wouldn’t have.
