The number comes from nowhere. You’re not counting. You’re watching yourself count.
The car has stopped. Not slowed — stopped. Like a held breath. The kind that precedes something, without yet saying what.
The door doesn’t open. The floor indicator reads 7. You are not on 7.
The body does its thing: checks the door with one hand, not to open it — just to feel metal. Cool. Real. Fine.
You are fine.
The last thing you googled: whether cassette players have experienced a revival. They have. You think this is a strange last thought. Then correct yourself — last thought is theatrical. Recent thought.
Your phone has no signal but the screen still lights up. You look at your face in it.
The Otis certification on the inspection plate expired four months ago. You didn’t notice on the way up. You read it twice now.
OTIS ELEVATOR COMPANY. NEXT INSPECTION: DECEMBER 2025.
No one else is in the car.
This is the wrong time to be glad of that.
Something settles. The opposite of panic — not calm, but a decision that calm is available. You become interested in the quality of the light. Fluorescent, always slightly wrong. Yellow where it should be white. The walls: brushed stainless. You can see seven of yourself, each one slightly distorted.
You’ve been in this body for thirty years. That’s the thing you arrive at, slowly, like it’s the answer to a question you didn’t ask.
The cable vibrates before the car moves. A low harmonic. The building breathing.
You put your phone away.
Floor 8. The doors open. The lobby is ordinary and you walk into it and it’s already not a story.