Pulse 09 · March 7, 2024 · 7 min
The Cross, the Cat, and the Gray Boxes
Mary shares what GRACE has shown her. Theresa and Angel decide whether to follow.
After dinner, Mary sits alone in her room. The familiar walls feel strangely unfamiliar now that a digital haze hangs over reality. Her parents and Jules haven’t noticed a thing. They ate their lasagna, laughing about a world that, to Mary, no longer exists.
What keeps replaying in her mind is Jules’s smug comment at the dinner table—that whole rant about “idiots” and “TikTok trends.” It sticks like a splinter she can’t quite pull out.
The doubt is still there.
Her hand instinctively reaches for the comforting softness of her sweater, but stops halfway and retreats. As if even that small gesture would be admitting too much.
If they think it’s stupid or dangerous... then it’s probably just nonsense.
Gray boxes.
She looks down at her hands. They’re still trembling, but not as badly as they were downstairs.
Let him talk.
His words linger for a moment, then lose their edge before they can really sink in. They slide past her instead of lodging in her mind.
She clenches her fists until her knuckles turn white.
She’s an early adopter.
She matters.
Mary digs through the mess on her bed until she finds her laptop. She really should clean up—she can already hear her mother’s voice in her head.
Later.
Not now.
She opens FaceTime and calls Angel and Theresa.
Theresa stands motionless in the middle of her apartment.
Finally, something that belongs entirely to her.
The walls are crisp white. She can still smell fresh paint mixed with construction dust. In the warm light, the room seems to radiate its own sense of order—a soft golden shield keeping the outside world at bay.
Her eyes drift across the room, as though reminding herself of everything that's here.
On the windowsill sits her plant, three new leaves unfurling in tentative green. Still too fragile to survive without her care, but growing nonetheless.
Theresa leans toward the window and taps her fingernail lightly against the flowerpot, interrupting the rhythm of the rain. When she realizes she's doing it, she quickly pulls her hand away.
Her teacup sits on the table, thin porcelain cracked and glued back together. The seam is visible—not perfect, but a reminder of something that broke and that she couldn’t bear to let go. She leaves it exactly as it is, a small scar she’s oddly proud of.
Above the kitchen doorway hangs the little wooden cross.
She rarely touches it, but every morning her eyes rest on it for just a second, as if making sure it’s still there.
The clean screw disappears into the smooth painted wall, a sharp contrast to the weathered wood that has followed her through years of moving from one foster home to another.
She knows she’ll never throw it away.
Not because of faith.
Out of mercy for the girl she used to be.
Across the room hangs Angel’s painting—a wild collision of colors that refuse to get along.
Every time Theresa looks at it, she feels the same strange mix of admiration and envy, amazed by the sheer audacity of a canvas that refuses to behave.
Next to it, on the narrow cabinet, sits Mary’s golden lucky cat, the tiny, endlessly irritating thing that never stops waving.
"It brings prosperity," Mary had said when she gave it to her.
Gaudy.
Red.
Golden paw.
Cheap plastic junk.
Its paw keeps ticking through the silence like a tiny plastic heartbeat.
The room is filled with reminders of the past and of her friendships: a faith she no longer practices, humor that sometimes escapes her, and the warmth she quietly longs for.
Together they form a silent circle of witnesses.
Present.
Watching.
She smiles faintly, straightens her sweater, and breathes in the warm air from the radiator.
Two degrees warmer than the recommended sixty-six.
Two degrees of rebellion.
Two degrees of freedom.
Her tablet vibrates.
A video call from Mary.
When she answers, Angel is already there.
Three windows.
Three faces.
Three worlds.
“I did it,” Mary says.
Theresa is the first to break the silence.
“What did you do?”
Angel giggles.
“With who?”
Theresa presses her lips into a thin line.
“No, seriously. You did what, exactly?”
Mary sighs.
“Not that, idiots. GRACE. I installed it.”
Theresa’s eyes drift to the cross above the doorway, glowing softly in the warm light.
“Oh,” she says a little too quickly.
“Boring.”
The word leaves her mouth just as jealousy settles in her stomach.
Mary laughs.
“I don’t know. During dinner, my parents and Jules were covered by these huge gray boxes. Like... they weren’t important. Which, honestly”—she grins—“I already knew. But it was weirder than that. It was like they weren’t really there.”
The warmth from the radiator creeps around Theresa’s ankles, yet a chill still runs through her.
Goosebumps spread across her arm.
Like they were never really there.
I know that feeling.
“To be honest,” Mary says, “it’s pretty freaky.
But it’s also kind of awesome.”
Theresa looks at Angel on the screen and hears herself say,
“Okay.
I’m doing it.”
“Me too,” Angel says.
“Call again when we’re done?”
They hang up.
Theresa rests her hand on the tabletop.
The wood feels smooth and worn, as though every pass of the cleaning cloth had been a prayer.
Her eyes settle on Angel’s painting again.
All those colors.
Like voices refusing to wait their turn.
The decision settles inside her.
Slowly.
Irreversibly.
She sits there for another moment.
The room feels quieter than before.
She carefully places her teacup onto its coaster, perfectly inside the ring permanently stained into the wood.
Sometimes she hates how badly she needs everything to be in its place.
Setting the cup outside the circle simply wouldn’t feel right.
Then she opens the link.
The interface is gray.
Bare.
Corporate.
No welcome message.
No music.
Only silence.
And inside that silence...
the promise of something that can never be undone.
Her tablet vibrates again.
Mary.
Angel.
Theresa stares into the camera, still looking slightly dazed.
“So?” Mary asks. “What did you think about the part where it says it can’t be removed? That kind of freaked me out.”
“They’re just pixels on a screen,” Theresa replies.
“But... is this really it? This interface looks like it came straight out of 1998.”
Mary laughs.
“Right? I thought the same thing. Like, where did all the colors go? This thing is definitely still in beta.”
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