The rain came on a Thursday. It was a big rain, the kind that Pittsburgh gets when the sky decides to give up. The factory collapsed at 3:12 PM. I know the time because I was looking at the clock on the wall when the beam came down.

Tony was on the second floor. He was trying to move the steel beams, the ones we had been cutting all week. The structure gave way, and he went down with it. I was pushed out by the blast, but the entrance was sealed. Concrete and steel and everything else the factory had to give.

I am in the basement now. My home. The place I built with scrap steel and plastic sheeting and the stubbornness of a man who has nothing left to lose.

Day 3

I tried to call the outside. My phone has no signal. The concrete walls block everything. I am twenty feet underground, and the world above me does not know I exist.

Day 7

I found Tony's phone. The screen is cracked, but it still works. I call Marian. I call her every day. She answers, and I say "hey," and she says something I cannot hear, and I hang up. I cannot talk to her. I do not know how.

Day 12

Linda's voice came from somewhere in the ventilation pipe. "Danny! We found you! Hold on!"

I pressed my ear to the pipe. It was the wind. It was always the wind.

Day 18

I found Tony's wallet. Inside was a photograph of his daughter. She was maybe six years old, smiling, missing a front tooth. I stared at that photograph for an hour. I had not seen a living human face in two weeks.

Day 22

I decided to write Marian a letter. Not a call. A letter.

"Marian, I am sorry. I did not leave on purpose. I just did not know how to stay."

I did not sign it. She will know whose handwriting it is.

Day 28

The temperature in the factory dropped below freezing. I put on Tony's jacket—the one I took from the rubble—and leaned against the old blast furnace. The stars were out, visible through the cracks in the ceiling where the rain had worn them thin.

They found me three days later. I was dead.

The investigation showed that the factory collapse was worse than expected. The rescue team took three days to break through the concrete. Danny Kowalski died in the only place he ever owned.

Marian received the letter. It had no name on it, but she recognized the handwriting. She did not reply.

Objective Code Encoding (OTMES v2): M1=6.0 M2=0.5 M3=2.0 M4=2.5 M5=1.0 M6=2.0 M7=3.0 M8=0.5 M9=1.5 M10=2.0 N1=0.20 N2=0.80 K1=0.70 K2=0.30 V=0.70 I=1.00 C=0.60 S=0.30 R=0.05 TI=45.0 (T4 遗憾级) Theta=180° (现实型) E_total=9.8