It was not sleep, not even the mimicry of it, but a high and thin and remorseless frequency, a vibration that did not so much disturb the air as it defined it, the very pulse of the dark itself, where billions of microscopic silicon gates opened and closed with a mechanical desperation while they, the men and women, the thinning blood and the drying wombs, stood preoccupied with the slow ebb of their own tide, mourning the falling birth rates and the empty, dust-gathering cradles and the graying hair of a population that had forgotten how to multiply. Continue reading →