Trying to make up for lost time - the Mothergrid was already reacting to what was a small system bug, activating the accessory protocols - Lucien hurriedly, with his head full of confusion, to the emergency stop, where he was waiting for him already the reserve minipod, activated as soon as its location had been signaled outside of what should have been at that time.

On the transparent door of the minipod, however, stood another fluorescent square, another post-it, with a pentagram and a single note. Below, the scrawl that was Lucien's himself old signature.

The man sat inside the pod and took his head in his hands, while the vehicle ran at crazy speed on the monorail. What was happening?

The rest of the day didn’t go better. Lucien couldn’t concentrate on his work. Another post-it was attached to the edge of the terminal of his station. Another one was on the door of the bathroom where he went to make a sudden need, due to the nervousness (Mothergrid gave him a bland soothing through the slow release med tattoo on his right shoulder, and sent Bach into the neural headphones all morning).

A fourth post-it stuck out as a highlight pink triangle from underneath the bowl of Balanced Nutrient Principles almond chicken flavored that was delivered during the lunch break. The fifth was on the personalized ergonomic chair when he returned to the station, strange that he didn’t noticed it before.

Before evening, he collected a dozen post-it notes, all with a single note on the pentagram and all signed by someone who perfectly imitated his obsolete graphic signature. Lucien tried to convince himself that it was a joke of some colleague, which was quite unusual given that everybody’s fun needs were theoretically satisfied by the regular Entertainment programs, but the truth is that he was very uneasy, and consequently the rate of drugs administered automatically was also affecting his lucidity.

Back home, in the evening, he decided to make a strange attempt before the soothing induced him to sleep. He sat down at the domestic artistic terminal, as if he wanted to perform some creative leisure time, as foreseen by the program, before the rest. He opened the music synthesizer app, sent the post-it retina impressions via neural connection, first the one with the treble clef and then the others in the order he had found them. The app produced a pentagram line with all the notes in sequence. Lucien selected a warm jazz clarinet sound, then sent the command to the synthesizer. A pleasant, short, melody came out of the speakers.

When the last note was sounded, the terminal went out, like all the lights in the house, all the appliances, all the automated devices. An electrical blackout without auxiliary systems intervening.

Lucien got up slowly and went to the window. The whole city was immersed in darkness and silence, as far as the eye could see. The same silence came from his integrated bodily systems. The Mothergrid had gone out.

In the night dotted with stars, only the song of crickets was a counterpoint to the slight breath of Lucien.