Your Unfinished Future

The museum has finished with you for tonight.

You leave here known by something that cannot quite place your name, answered by a life you decided not to live, and with a line still open behind you. You also go out with more room around you than the corridor promised, amended in a record you were never shown, and unlisted by every forecast above you. And you walk on carrying a day that was never yours to keep and quietly owing more than you agreed to spend.

The Counterfactual Communications Boom keeps your line open. Somewhere a receiver is warm, and nobody in that kitchen has hung up.

The Domestic Weather Memory Era files your future under shelter. Expect rain indoors, and a voice calling you in before the thunder.

The Civic Time Expansion Era expects you back. It is still holding a day with your name on it and no year to put it in.

The lights go down one room at a time, in the order you walked them.