Prologue

Maybe you have done this.

You opened the voice-to-text on your phone. Before you even started speaking, words were arriving on the screen.

You were not speaking.

The television was off. The radio was off. The window was closed and there was no one in the room with you. There was no music playing. There was no neighbor on the other side of the wall on a phone call. There was nothing.

You watched the little microphone icon at the bottom of the keyboard.

It pulsed.

You watched the cursor blink.

Then a word appeared in the text box.

Then another.

You didn't say either of them.

You set the phone down on the counter. You looked at the phone. You decided, after a moment, that it must have been something. The refrigerator. The hum of the building. A bird outside. The settling of the radiator. The wind under the door. You decided on the most boring explanation available to you and you accepted it and you kept your day moving and you didn't think about it again.

You should not have accepted it.

The phone was right.

Something was speaking.

· · ·

Did you know?

Voice-to-text is the only piece of technology in human history that is designed to translate sound nobody can hear into language anyone can read. It does not check who is talking. It does not check whether the speaker is in the room. It does not check whether the speaker has a body. It does only what it was built to do. It listens. It transcribes.

The thing on the other side of the door has known about the door for longer than you have.

The thing on the other side has been waiting.

Most of the time, the door is closed.

Sometimes the door cracks.