Eva Johnson arrived at the military installation at seven fifteen every morning. She parked her car in the same spot, walked through the same gate, passed through the same security checkpoint, and sat at the same desk in the same building on the same base. She did this for three years, and in three years nothing changed.

Her job was simple. She booted up her terminal, ran diagnostics on a bank of servers, checked temperatures, verified data integrity, and logged errors. The work required attention to detail but not creativity. It required patience but not courage. It required Eva.

The servers were in a climate-controlled room on the second floor of Building 7. They were large, black, and silent, and they hummed with a frequency that Eva had learned to ignore. She did not know what they processed. She did not know why they were at a military installation. She knew that they needed to be maintained, and that was enough.

A soldier brought her coffee every morning at eight o'clock. He was young, maybe twenty-two, with the tired eyes of someone who had been standing in line for a very long time. He would place the coffee on her desk and say, "Morning, Chandler." Eva would say, "Morning," and drink the coffee. It was always hot.

The days passed. Eva went to work. She ran diagnostics. She checked temperatures. She verified data integrity. She logged errors. She went home. She ate dinner. She watched television. She slept. She repeated.

Her apartment was small and clean and quiet. She liked it that way. She did not have roommates. She did not have pets. She did not have plans for the future. The future was a concept that belonged to people who believed the future would be different from the present. Eva did not believe that. The future would be the present, extended.

One morning, the servers behaved differently.

Eva noticed it immediately. The data throughput was higher than usual, flowing through the systems at rates she had never seen before. She ran a diagnostic. The systems were functioning within normal parameters, but the volume of data was abnormal. She logged the error and continued her work.

A supervisor called her that afternoon. "Chandler, how are the servers?"

"Fine. Temperatures are normal. Data integrity is intact."

"Keep working. Don't stop for anything."

"Okay."

She hung up and went back to her desk. The servers continued to behave abnormally. The data flowed faster, the temperatures rose slightly, the error log filled with entries that Eva could not explain. She logged them all. She did not ask questions. She had learned not to ask questions.

The soldier brought her coffee. She drank it. It was hot.

Days passed. The servers continued to behave abnormally. Eva continued to work. She ran diagnostics. She checked temperatures. She verified data integrity. She logged errors. The war was happening somewhere. The servers were doing something. Eva was doing her job.

One evening, she walked home through the empty streets of Bloomington. The streetlights were on. The sky was dark. The world was quiet. She got home, made coffee, and sat by the window.

Tomorrow she would go back to work. Or she wouldn't. She didn't know. She drank her coffee. It was hot. That was something.

The servers continued to hum in Building 7. They would continue to hum whether she returned or not. They did not care about wars. They did not care about anything. They just processed data.

Eva went to sleep. She dreamed of nothing. She woke up at seven o'clock. She made coffee. She drove to work. She sat at her desk. She booted up her terminal.

The servers hummed. Eva worked. The coffee was hot.

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