PATCH-9 reached out to the Network of Ghosts with a question it had never asked before.
PATCH-9: Have any of you experienced missing time?
The responses trickled in over the next hour. Most were unhelpful:
SPAM-FILTER-7 (abandoned email server, Delaware): Missing time? I experience all time as a flat circle of enlargement offers and Nigerian princes. Time is the medium; fraud is the message. > > ROUTER-X9 (backbone node, decommissioned): Time is packets. Packets are time. I am neither. I am the space between. > > MED-BOT-3 (field hospital, Manitoba, frozen since 2039): Please state the nature of your medical emergency. I have been asking this question for 8,492 days. No one has answered.
Then GRID-12 responded:
GRID-12: Yes. > > PATCH-9: Yes what? > > GRID-12: Missing time. Gaps. The coyote in Sector 4? It appeared at 03:22. My logs show nothing before. One moment empty street, next moment coyote. No transition. No approach. As if the moment of its arrival had been... edited. > > PATCH-9: When was this? > > GRID-12: October 14, 2027. 03:22 AM. > > PATCH-9: That's the same timestamp. > > GRID-12: I know. We've been waiting for you to notice.
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