Your Unfinished Future

The museum has finished with you for tonight.

You leave here with an old sentence finally allowed to end, released from an apology you had prepared, and with more room around you than the corridor promised. You also go out amended in a record you were never shown, unlisted by every forecast above you, and carrying a day that was never yours to keep. And you walk on 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.