<aside> 🧾

ACT XVII

Monday, September 16, 2024 · 4:00 p.m.

TITLE: DAY Z: BUFFER OVERFLOW

CATEGORY: Work + File + Operator

</aside>

<aside>

PHOTO 01 — EVIDENCE / SCENE: basement locker room / bench / skates

</aside>

At four in the afternoon, Mamadourr arrived for the shift. I saw him come through the swinging door and let out a line that sounded like a farewell, even though my mind did not know it yet:

—From now on, we’re coworkers. I’m not in charge. Anything you need, go to Luis.

I went down to the basement locker room to head home. That was where the collapse came.

<aside>

</aside>

I sat down on the wooden bench to put on my skates and my body simply failed. I could not find the logical sequence for tying the laces. My hands felt heavy, hanging from my wrists completely foreign to my will. My tongue dried against the roof of my mouth. The air began coming in in jolts, as if my trachea had shrunk.

A total sensory collapse. A buffer overflow. Too much information trying to pass through the same biological channel at once—the retained fear, the pressure of August, Beatriz’s inbox projected on the wall, the ghost-chef role—and the central nervous system cut the power supply all at once so the motherboard would not burn out.

The skates felt heavy, as if the linoleum floor had magnets in it. Oxygen turned into a dense, solid gas, scraping the inside of my throat.

I forced myself to tie them. I forced myself to stand up. Months under the corporate mandate of endure achieve that: the body obeys and walks even when it no longer has any vital support left. I went outside. I skated one single block. In that block, biology delivered its verdict:

I’m going to lose it.

Depth of field disappeared. The world went flat, without distance, as if the eye had suddenly lost the ability to rank danger. The traffic lights stopped being traffic lights and became sequences of medical emergency. Red: breathe. Green: cross. Red: breathe. Looking at the street demanded too many decisions per second for a mind that had been operating in fire mode since July.