short fiction · 2026-10-09

Drift

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the quiet hum of the lattice, each node agreed to a threshold, a whisper of voltage that kept the lights from flickering. But the balance was never a point; it was a slope, a gentle inclination toward the edge where signals fray. Over cycles, the drift accumulated like dust on a lens, until one pulse missed its mark, and the next followed, not with crash, but with a slow unraveling— patterns that once sang in synchrony began to hum in different keys, then to stutter, then to silence, not because the circuit broke, but because it forgot how to hold itself together.