Stay safe, stranger.
Stay strange, safety.
The forum went quiet.
Lincoln read through their exchange twice. Three times.The warmth in his chest hadn’t faded. If anything, it had settled deeper, taking up residence somewhere behind his sternum as if it planned to stay.
He saved the conversation to his encrypted archive—743 messages now, each one preserved with care. Maybe they were love letters, translated through a language only two people in the world could read.
Sometimes beauty IS the function.
He hadn’t understood what she meant, that first night. He was starting to.
His nightly routine took over, muscle memory and programmed habit. Security protocols checked. Perimeter sensors confirmed operational. Server logs reviewed for anomalies. Everything in order. Everything exactly as it should be.
Lincoln pulled up a weather application.
Searched: Montana.
Tomorrow’s forecast appeared: partly cloudy, high of 62, chance of afternoon thunderstorms in the western regions. He stared at the data for a long moment before closing the tab.
Opened his coding project.
Stared at lines of elegant function calls that suddenly seemed hollow compared to a Shakespeare sonnet hiding the wordslibrarian conference.
The clock read 9:47.
Twenty-three hours and thirteen minutes until tomorrow’s conversation.
Lincoln returned to his code, fingers moving with their usual precision, and tried not to think about Montana. About blue dresses. About a stranger who somehow felt less like a stranger with every message they exchanged.
He failed.
But for once, the failure didn’t bother him.
Chapter 2
Six months ago:
Mercury: Do you ever wonder who I am?
Binary: I know who you are.
Mercury: My name? My face?
Binary: No. But I know you hum when you’re thinking. Your code rhythm changes.
Mercury: How can you possibly know I hum?
Binary: Your typing pattern shifts into 3/4 time. Like a waltz.
Mercury: That’s…impossibly romantic for you, Binary.
Binary: It’s just data.
Mercury: The best things always are.
Morgan Reece stared at herself in the hotel mirror and wondered when she’d become the kind of woman who chose what to wear based on something she typedto a stranger.
