The Glimpse Trade (A Silas Sharp Metaphysical Mystery): Chapter 19

 

Day 19 — The Cost Revealed

Avery Bloom did mornings like a performance review. Careful lighting. Meticulous angles. My mornings are all chaos and dread. Avery does a version of morning that behaves itself.

I stood across the street with a coffee that had ambitions but no follow-through and watched her apartment building reflect the kind of sunlight that made people believe in curated lives. Marcy met me in the lobby. She looked like she hadn’t slept, which meant Avery had.

“That comment section is a war zone,” she said, not slowing down as she passed me. “I had to delete seventeen things before breakfast. One of them was just a shrug emoji. Do you know how aggressive a shrug can be?”

“I’ve seen worse,” I said. “Once had a guy threaten me with a semicolon.”

“That tracks,” she muttered. “Come on. She’s… off.”

“Define off.”

Marcy hit the elevator button like she wanted to fight it.

“She posted a video at 7:02. Took it down at 7:04. Cried at 7:06. Asked me if we could legally sue someone named ‘@truthishard89’ at 7:08.”

“Efficient.”

“She used to space those out.”

The elevator doors opened like they weren’t thrilled about it. We rode up in the kind of silence that’s trying not to get involved. Avery’s apartment was all soft edges and hard intent. Plants that had never known hardship. Furniture that suggested sitting was optional. A ring light stood in the corner like a small, obedient sun.

Avery sat on the couch, phone in hand, posture perfect. Eyes not.

“They said I was flat,” she said, without looking up.

“Good morning,” I said.

“They said I felt rehearsed.”

Marcy gave me a look that translated roughly to see? I stepped closer. On her screen: a comment thread. Hundreds of affirmations stacked neatly like sandbags against the flood. And one comment.

@truthishard89: You ever just… say something without pre-gaming it? This feels weird.

It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t even particularly sharp. It was normal. Avery stared at it like it had teeth.

“I deleted it,” she said. “Then I restored it. Then I deleted it again. But I can still see it.”

“That’s how memory works,” I said.

She shook her head.

“No. Not like this.”

She stood up too fast. The kind of movement that looks like it practiced being calm and missed.

“I ran it,” she said.

“Ran what?”

“The tape. Before I posted.”

Marcy winced.

“I told you not to say it like that,” she said under her breath.

Avery ignored her.

“I ran the morning. Twice. Three times, maybe. I adjusted tone, timing, the laugh at the end. I removed a word that tested poorly. I added one that felt more… me.”

“And this still got through?” I asked.

Her head snapped toward me.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

There it was. The slightest admission. I pulled a chair over and sat. It objected quietly.

“Walk me through it,” I said.

“I wake up,” she said. “I check engagement. I map the day. I schedule the post. I run the post. I check responses.”

“You run the responses.”

“Yes.”

“All of them.”

Her hesitation was small, which made it loud.

“The important ones,” she said.

“Define important.”

“The ones that move things.”

“Move what?”

“My life.”

Marcy leaned against the counter with a sigh.

“She means anything that could ripple,” she said.

Avery shot her a look.

“I mean anything that matters,” Avery snapped.

“And this didn’t?” I asked.

“It wasn’t there,” Avery said, looking at screen.

“Not in any version?”

“No.”

I let that sit.

“You ever miss a step on the stairs?” I asked.

“What?”

“You’re walking down, you think there’s one more, there isn’t. Your body drops an inch. Maybe you roll your ankle. You’re sitting there, a little helpless. Suddenly the world’s a different place.”

“I don’t—”

“Or the opposite,” I said. “You think you’re done, there’s one more. You hit it wrong. Everything jolts. Again, roll the ankle. Hurts like a sonofabitch.”

Her grip tightened on the phone.

“That’s what this is?” she said. “I missed a step and rolled my ankle?”

“No,” I said. “That’s what this feels like.”

She laughed. It didn’t survive the trip out of her mouth.

“I can’t post now,” she said. “Not like this.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know what happens.”

There it was again.

“You know what happens,” Marcy said, trying for light. “People like it. Or they don’t. We adjust.”

Avery shook her head, sharper now.

“No. I don’t know what happens.”

She looked at me like I might fix that. Like I was the kind of man who handed out certainty with a receipt.

“I need to run it again,” she said. “I need to see where this comes from. I need to find the version where it doesn’t.”

“And if there isn’t one?” I asked.

She blinked. Like the question hadn’t been tested.

“There is,” she said. “There has to be. I’ve optimized this.”

“Optimized isn’t the same as alive,” I said.

Avery’s expression didn’t change.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“I know.”

Her phone buzzed. Another comment. Another notification. Another small, unpredictable piece of the world knocking on a door she’d locked from the inside. She flinched at a vibration. Marcy saw it too. Her voice softened.

“Avery,” she said. “It’s just people.”

Avery shook her head slowly.

“No,” she said. “It’s variables.”

She looked back at me.

“Can you make it stop?”

“Stop what?”

“This,” she said, gesturing at the phone, the room, the air between moments. “The parts I can’t see.”

“Those are the parts doing the living,” I said, standing.

She didn’t like that, but she didn’t reject it, either. Just couldn’t process it.

I moved toward the door. Behind me, Avery sat back down carefully, like gravity had recently become untrustworthy. Her thumb hovered over the screen. Waiting, liike she was expecting the world to ask permission.

“She’ll be okay, right?” Marcy asked quietly as we stepped into the hall.

I looked back once. Avery Bloom, perfectly framed, bathed in the harsh glow of her ring light, completely still. A life with no margin for error.

“No,” I said. “She’ll be precise.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?”

I shook my head. “Not if she ever has to fall.”

Inside the apartment, Avery’s voice carried faintly through the closing door.

“I just need to run it one more time.”

I paused. Listened. There was something in it now. A system reaching for itself.

“She doesn’t know how to fall,” Marcy said.

I nodded. And that was the cost. The small, ordinary, human missteps. The off-beat comment. The missed note. The unexpected shrug. The inch you drop when the stair isn’t there. The world doesn’t end when that happens. But something does. And if you’ve never practiced the fall, you don’t bounce.

You break.

*******

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