The lab started six months ago. Nobody in our town knows what they do in there. We just know the trucks come and go at night. Big trucks, black windows, no markings. They don't use the main road. They cut through the back fields, past Harlan's place. I heard the tires on his gravel this morning. Three different sets of tracks.

The sky sometimes glows that wrong color. Burnt copper. You'd look up from washing dishes and there it is, just hanging there, like someone spilled it. I told Linda about it. She looked at me like I was talking about weather from last year.

She says things are getting weird.

We don't talk about it much. We haven't for a while. Not since she started losing words.

It started small. Fork becomes spoon. Spoon becomes the thing you eat soup with. Then the thing you eat soup with becomes nothing. She just holds it. The spoon sits in her hand like a piece of metal she found in the yard. We ate cereal like that for two weeks before I noticed.

The lab started six months ago. The trucks come and go. The sky glows burnt copper on some nights. I turn off the kitchen light and sit in the dark. The radio is still on. I can't remember what I was listening to.

My truck showed up at the grocery store on a Tuesday.

I left it in the driveway that morning. Linda said she saw me back it out. She was washing the windows. I watched her from the porch, drinking coffee that had gone cold. She was on her knees, scrubbing at something on the bottom pane. I backed the truck onto County Road 9 and headed in.

But there it was. At the grocery store. In the same spot I'd parked. Engine still warm. Driver's seat still moved all the way forward for my legs. I sat in it for a minute. The radio was off. I could hear my own breathing.

I drove it home. Backed it into the driveway. Linda was inside, watching TV. The same show she watches every night. I didn't tell her. What's the point.

My boy, Jimmy, says the neighbor's cat talks to him.

He's eight. He told me at breakfast. I was flipping pancakes. The cat says his name. Says things about the weather. Says the ground is moving, just a little, like it's breathing. I told him cats don't talk. He looked at me like I was the one who didn't understand.

"I know," he said. "That's the weird part."

Old man Harlan's hands are burned clean.

That's what the woman at the post office told me. Harlan came in this morning, held them out on the counter. Both of them, palms up. No marks. No redness. No blistering. Just clean. Like someone had taken a sponge to his hands and wiped every mark away, but the skin underneath was different. Harder. Like stone that's been in a fire and come out wrong.

He didn't say much. Just paid his bill. But the post office lady said he was standing by his window the night before. A ball of light, he said. Hung there outside his kitchen window. Not moving. Not flickering. Just there.

He reached for it.

She said he reached right out the window, like he was reaching for a curtain. Next morning his hands were like that. Clean. He didn't complain. Didn't yell. Just drove to town and stood at the post office counter and showed everyone his hands.

Linda forgets more words now.

Yesterday she called me "the man with the kind face." I was sitting at the table, reading the paper. She came in and said it, like she was introducing me to someone. But she was talking to me. There was nobody else there.

"The man with the kind face is eating breakfast," she said. And she pointed at me. And she sat down. And she ate her cereal with the spoon she couldn't name.

I didn't correct her. I just kept reading the paper. The same stories I've been reading for months. The football scores. The weather. Some mayor in the next county over got arrested for something involving money. Nothing about a lab. Nothing about burnt copper skies. Nothing about Harlan's clean hands.

That's how things work here. You don't talk about what you don't understand. You do what you need to do. You wash your dishes. You back your truck into the driveway. You listen to the radio. You pretend the ground isn't breathing.

The hum started at seven in the evening.

It came through the floor first. I felt it in my feet while I was tying my shoes. Then it moved up into the walls. The picture frames started rattling. I left the shoe untied and walked to the window.

The house was shaking. Not much. Just enough that I could feel it in my teeth. I put my hand on the window frame. It was vibrating. Like when a big truck goes past, but this was coming from everywhere at once.

Linda came into the room. She stood next to me and looked out the window.

For once, she wasn't forgetting words.

"It's beautiful," she said.

I looked. Over the fields, maybe a mile out, there was a sphere. It was the color of burnt copper, maybe a little brighter. Maybe three feet across. Maybe thirty. It was hard to tell the distance — it was like looking at something through water, everything was slightly bent around it.

"It shows me things," she said.

She wasn't looking at me. She was looking at the sphere. Her face was doing something I couldn't read. Not fear. Not exactly wonder either. Something in between. Like she was seeing a person she loved standing across a room, and she couldn't quite remember why.

The sphere pulsed.

Once. Twice. The light went from burnt copper to something lighter. Something I couldn't name. Blue maybe. But not a blue I'd ever seen. Not like the sky. Not like water. A blue that didn't belong to anything I knew.

Linda reached toward it.

Her hand went out the window. The screen was open. I knew I should stop her. I don't know why I knew that. Something deep and old, like the part of your brain that tells you not to put your hand in a fire. But I was late.

I grabbed her arm.

She stopped reaching. She turned her head and looked at me.

She didn't know who I was.

I could see it in her face. The way her eyes moved over me — not angry, not scared. Just empty. Like I was a piece of furniture she'd had in the room for a while and couldn't quite place. A chair. A table. Something you live with but don't see.

I let go of her arm. She turned back to the window. She was still looking at the sphere. She was still saying things. But I couldn't hear them over the hum.

The sphere pulsed again. That impossible blue. And then it was gone.

Not faded. Not moved. Gone. Like someone had turned off a light.

The humming stopped too. The house went quiet. The picture frames stopped rattling. I stood at the window for a long time. Linda stood next to me. She didn't reach for it again.

We went to bed without talking. That's the thing about small towns. When big things happen, you don't talk about them. You just lie next to the person you're married to and you wait for morning.

The sphere is gone now.

Linda remembers most words. She called Jimmy a "boy" this morning instead of "my small son." She found her fork. She found her spoon. She found the words for coffee and toast and the name of the road we live on.

But sometimes, in the evening, she stands by the window.

Not every evening. Just some. She'll be washing dishes or folding laundry and then she'll just stop and go to the window and stare. She doesn't reach for anything. She doesn't say "it's beautiful." She just stands there and looks at nothing and her face does that thing — the thing between fear and wonder — and I don't disturb her.

Last night I found the flower.

It was growing through the crack in our kitchen floor. The crack we've had since we moved in, six years ago. We put a rug over it. But the rug had moved and there it was. A blue flower. Exactly the blue from the sphere. Not a blue from this world.

It had four petals. They were thin, like tissue paper. The stem was the color of copper wire. It was maybe four inches tall. Nothing else was growing around it. No weeds. No moss. Just this one flower, coming through the crack in our floor, in our kitchen, in our house.

I've never seen one like it.

I didn't tell Linda. I just moved the rug back over it. I stand by the table sometimes when she's in the other room. I lift the edge of the rug just enough to look. It's still there. Still growing. Still that impossible blue.

I don't touch it.

I just watch it when she's not looking.

**TENSOR ENCODING (OTMES v2):** - M = [6, 5, 6, 7, 3, 5, 2, 4, 5, 6] - N = [5, 6, 5, 4] - S = [5, 6, 6, 6] - K = [1, 1, 1] - T = [7, 6, 7, 5, 7, 7, 6, 7, 6] - TI = 65.0 - θ = 225° - Code: VL-BL-V09-ASST-225T-DIRTY