The first crate nearly broke his foot when it slipped. Pine boards cracked against metal stairs, the sound echoing up through the lighthouse''s core. Marcus caught it three steps down, shoulder wrenching against the sudden weight. Something clinked inside – glass or metal or both.
His hands shook as he pried off the lid. Laboratory-grade beakers nested in foam. The same ones he''d left behind at MIT, down to the small bubble trapped in the glass of the 500ml cylinder. He set it aside. Picked up another. Same defect, same location.
The second crate held food. His stomach clenched at the familiar brands. Earl Grey tea – Sarah''s brand, the one she''d started bringing to the lab after finding him drinking month-old coffee at 3 AM. Protein bars from that shop near their old apartment. The ratio matched his usual shopping list: four sweet to three savory, just enough caffeine to maintain focus without triggering migraines.
His phone buzzed. Third message from Sarah this week:
"Please just let me know you''re alive. We can figure this out. Call me."
His thumb hovered over the delete button. Memories surfaced: Sarah explaining his research to her parents at Christmas dinner, defending his theories even when she didn''t fully understand them. Sarah bringing tea during all-night coding sessions. Sarah''s face the day he''d chosen his research over their future.
Delete.
Block contact.
His throat tightened. He forced himself to focus on the third crate. Server components wrapped in anti-static bags. Power supplies. Cooling units. Backup drives. Duplicates of what he''d just finished installing upstairs.
A note sat on top, the handwriting matching Walsh''s:
"The patterns need watching."
Marcus studied the paper. Standard printer stock. Fresh ink – the corners hadn''t started yellowing yet. He folded it carefully, tucked it into his pocket with Walsh''s first message.
The security footage showed nothing useful. Empty rocks at 3:47:00 AM. Crates at 3:47:01. No glitches, no missing frames, no digital artifacts. Just absence, then presence.
Steam whistled from downstairs. He froze. The kettle was still packed away, buried in boxes he hadn''t opened.
The steps creaked under his feet as he descended. Empty kitchen. No kettle. No steam. Just the sharp scent of Earl Grey hanging in the air – Sarah''s preferred blend, the one he''d sworn off after she left.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
His knuckles found the rhythm of Тёмная ночь against the railing as he climbed back up. Dark is the night, only bullets whistle over the steppe. He''d learned it during the worst of the academic battles, when Sarah would find him sleeping in his office, surrounded by printouts of quantum noise patterns.
The monitors cast blue shadows across unpacked equipment. Data streams scrolled past. A notification blinked:
"Final laboratory access revoked. Card deactivated. Personal effects in storage."
Delete.
Sarah had helped pack those personal effects. Had stood in his office doorway while he cleared his desk, her silence heavier than any accusation. He''d left his framed doctorate on the wall – her idea. A small act of defiance.
He laid out the delivered beakers beside his packed ones. The manufacturing stamps matched. Even the batch numbers aligned. His migraine flared, a knife behind his left eye.
Swan Lake rose in his throat. He whistled it soft and low, the way Sarah used to when she thought he was finally sleeping. The lighthouse''s acoustics caught the melody, wrapped it in metal and stone harmonics. Wrong notes crept in. The theme twisted into something that made his teeth ache.
Hours bled past. The sun dragged itself above the horizon. Marcus logged serial numbers, compared manufacturing dates. The new equipment matched his own piece for piece. Not impossible – improbable. A statistical anomaly that belonged in his research data, not his reality.
Sarah would have appreciated the irony. She''d always said his patterns would manifest eventually. Hadn''t expected them to arrive in wooden crates at a lighthouse''s door.
His hands found the kettle he hadn''t unpacked. Steam rose from a cup he hadn''t filled. The tea burned his tongue, grounding him in sensation. Real pain to counter unreal circumstances.
The fog rolled in thick enough to blur the horizon. The beacon cut through it in steady sweeps. No ships to warn away. No eyes except his own.
He pulled up the security footage again. Played it frame by frame. Empty rocks. Full rocks. Nothing between. Like quantum states collapsing into certainty, probability waves resolving into singular outcomes.
The monitors flickered – a microsecond of darkness. Outside, waves crashed against stone with metronome patience. Inside, Miles Davis rose unbidden from his throat. Elevator to Gallows, the soundtrack to choices that couldn''t be unmade.
His phone sat dark on the desk. Sarah''s contact blocked. Seven years of history erased with two taps. The psychology of it would come later, he knew. The full weight of cutting off his last connection to the world before.
But for now, there were patterns to find. Data to analyze. Deliveries to document.
The tea grew cold beside him, untouched after that first sip. Sarah''s blend. Sarah''s cup. Sarah''s absence growing larger by the moment.
Marcus started another analysis cycle. Let dark jazz fill the silence. Watched the sun climb higher over empty waters.
The lighthouse creaked around him, old metal stretching in the heat. The beacon kept its steady pace. Below, three crates sat on the rocks, filled with duplicates and implications.
Nothing impossible. Nothing perfect.
Just the widening gap between what was and what might be. Between the life he''d left and whatever waited in the patterns ahead.
The silence stretched. The numbers flowed. And somewhere between one moment and the next, Marcus Chen began to understand the true cost of isolation.
It wasn''t the loneliness that hollowed you out.
It was the choice to embrace it.