January 19, 2030
The apartment was quiet in the way only a city apartment could be quiet—never silent, just layered with distant movement. Traffic hummed several floors below. An elevator chimed somewhere in the building. A neighbor's television leaked faint dialogue through a wall Timothy had learned to ignore.
He stood in the kitchen while the microwave finished reheating dinner, watching the reflection of the city in the darkened window. His laptop sat closed on the dining table, deliberately so. He had spent the entire week buried in numbers that behaved the way numbers were supposed to behave. Manufacturing yields had improved. Energy forecasts stayed within tolerance. Automotive testing continued without incident.
Everything was stable.
That stability left him restless.
