It only took 3 months for Wayne’s faith in humanity, already nearing rock bottom, to contract a professional drilling company to explore how much deeper it could go. The answer is disheartening. His first call of the day was spent pressing the cheap foam padding of his headset into his ears to parse through the static, only for it to end with the caller referring to him as a “useless fuck stain without a brain”. The rest of his calls were Tik Tok pranks, ranging from complaints about people getting their virginity back to reports of speaking to the dead, and George Washington is disappointed in America, each call ending with muffled laughter in the background. Blessed with a brief moment of reprieve, Wayne frees his ears from their corporate isolation, taking in the cacophony of one-sided conversations not much different than his. It’s a marketplace of misery and delusion. And business is good. Duuuun Dun Duuuun Another incoming call. Three alternating notes, the second higher than the first and third. So simple. So plain. It’s the ringtone from hell. Wayne fidgets with his headset knowing full well it won’t help relieve the pressure of his glasses digging into the right side of his head. Always the right ear, never the left. Duuuun Dun Duuuun. He spares a glance at the area code dialing in. 320. Minnesota. What’s the point, why look? Even if the area code was 666 and he knew it was Satan himself calling to inform Wayne a custom room is waiting for him with floor heating, he would still have to answer. How much worse could it be? A smaller gray desk with a tighter headset? He’d still have the same job. Duuuun Dun Duuuun. A deep inhale fills his lungs to capacity and he holds the breath for longer than he should, wanting the sharp pain from the notch forming in his chest to force the exhale. A slow, measured exhale. He needs that. The last three notes are coming. If he picks up any later he’ll get dinged by the system. Any earlier he’ll put his face through his monitor and that comes straight out of his paycheck. Duuuun Dun Duu— Resigned to his fate, he hits the “enter” key on his keyboard, “Hello this is the United States General Services Administration Department of Glow Research, if you have anything to report or have any information about the Glow, I would be happy to —” “THE KIDS NEXT DOOR GOT SOME KIND OF CREATURE. THEY UP TO SOMETHING I KNOW IT. IT NOT RIGHT,” the voice barked, every other word puncturing his headset. “Damn, why are they always yelling?” Wayne wondered. His hands clench above his keyboard, nails carving deep indents into the palm of his hands. The loudest ones never let him finish. It’s ironic they are always in a rush to say absolutely nothing. Morty’s advice is scribbled on a post-it note taped to this monitor - acknowledge and move on. Though it’s obviously easier when, as the recently promoted floor manager, moving on means never having to answer the direct phone line from the cesspool that is the intersection of (a) people that don’t know shit about shit and (b) people that think they know something. “Sir, There is no need to yell. If you have any information regarding the Glow, I would —” “IT GLOW SHIT! I SEE THEM PLAYING WITH THAT THING, IT AINT NO DOG, IT AIN’T NO CAT, ITS EYES TOO ROUND AND BIG. BUT IT MAKING DOG NOISES AND CAT NOISES. AND ALL OTHER KINDS OF NOISES. AND THE EYES ARE EVIL. I SEE EVIL IN THE EYES.” He took his time with the word “evil”, as if the more pronounced the “E” the greater the force of his statement. “Sir. This is a phone line to report any information that might be related to the Glow. Can you please explain —” “THAT A GLOW CREATURE. IT LOOK LIKE AN ALIEN. IT SOUND LIKE AN ALIEN!” It’s not an alien. 6 months answering this phone line made Wayne question many things, but not whether the unhinged voice screaming at him saw an alien or not. Most likely it’s a dog wearing a costume, or it's dark and he didn’t see clearly, or, and Wayne did not have these kinds of thoughts when he first started, the man was lying and he wanted to hassle the kids because they irked him for one reason or another. One thing he learned on the job was that people will find new ways to frame old grievances, the Glow just became the latest proxy. Acknowledge and move on. “Thank you sir, I will file a report and make sure the right people see this.” “NO YOU NEED TO SEND PEOPLE OVER HERE RIGHT AWAY. IMMEDIATELY. THIS THING AIN’T RIGHT.” “Sir. That is not how we operate.” “I DON’T CARE HOW YOU OPERATE, THIS THING MIGHT ATTACK ME AND MY GRANDSON. AND THEM KIDS IS DANGEROUS. I WILL CALL THE POLICE. LET ME SPEAK TO YOUR MANAGER.” The man is starting to run out of breath on the other line. So many questions dangle at the precipice of Wayne’s tongue. Why call if you don’t care how we operate? How do you know it’s dangerous if you don’t know what it is? Why didn’t you call the police in the first place if you thought it was dangerous? Do you think my manager is the FBI and they’ll send agents to arrest those kids? And most importantly, how did you (a) convince a woman to sleep with you, (b) raise a child, and (c) convince your child you are fit to watch their child? Using his middle knuckle, he tries to rub the throbbing in his temple out of existence; closing his eyes helps focus on the pain. The “m” key on his $10 keyboard is fading from overuse and he adds to the wear, just in case his thoughts escape the prison of his tightly pressed lips. Head hanging, Wayne mutters his frustration, “fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.” FUCK YOU. No, Don’t do it. Quality assurance is definitely going to audit this call, especially what happened last time. You’re on thin ice and starting a fire isn’t going to help. You need this job. You need this job way more than that man needs to hear your opinion. All that man wants is to be heard. BUT NOBODY NEEDS TO HEAR HIS BULLSHIT! WHY DO I HAVE TO ENTERTAIN IT? WHY DOES ANYBODY EVEN HAVE THIS JOB? NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT THE GLOW AND THAT’S NOT GOING TO CHANGE! And a little voice within, the one that convinced him to get a job answering the phone for any information on the Glow, the one that gets drowned out by each call but refuses to die, the one that still believes, emerges and whispers, “But you never know. The Glow isn’t nothing, it changed the world somehow and this is the front line of figuring out what happened.” The voice interrupts, “AYE YOU THERE? DO I NEED TO CALL THE POLICE?” Wayne sits up right and taps the “m” key again. Please call the police and become their problem. “Sir. Is the creature harming or threatening to harm the kids? “Not that I can tell, but never know with these things and what they are capable of. I’m afraid for my grandson when he goes out to play. He’ll get attacked.” “Mmm hmmm, and to be perfectly clear, you are afraid that this unknown creature that is currently not harming the kids next door actively playing with it, will definitely attack you or your grandson, is that correct. Sir? “Sound about right.” “Just making sure I have all the facts. I am going to fast track this report to the head manager of my department. Don’t you worry, I don’t do this for every call. Can you please let me know of an email address we can use to follow up with you for additional information?” “Bout damn time,” the man exclaims in satisfaction. It wasn’t standard protocol to ask for an email address, but it was necessary. The moment the call ended, Wayne pulled out his phone and navigated to www.naturalfarmfetish.com; they were getting a new subscriber. All in a day's work. Wayne leans back letting the back of his chair cradle the base of his head, the fluorescent lights on the ceiling humming straight into his eyes. He notices a ceiling tile above him just a tad dirtier than the rest. Huh, that must be rock bottom.

To this day, nobody knows exactly what happened. People can describe what they saw — or what they remember seeing — but even now one year later little is known about the Glow, the designation attached to the azure blue lights that bathed the world for several tantalizing seconds on June 1, 2023 at 9:28 pm UTC. Ethereal ribbons different shades of blue danced across our field of vision, and for that moment, a transitory aura shrouded all that is observable regardless of time, place, and circumstance. The commander of HMS Anchor, a Royal Navy ballistic submarine cruising 275 meters below sea level, marveled at the blue seemingly spilling from outside the hull into his navigation bridge. Astronauts aboard the International Space Station recalled their view of deep space that day had never reminded them so much of their home’s vast ocean blue. With omnipresent reach, the Glow touched the masses, even those asleep, intoxicated, or otherwise unconscious; they all woke grasping a dream, so intensely vivid they had trouble demarcating it from waking life, the distinguishing factor and only common denominator amongst them — a universal blue tint. And then it vanished, with no more explanation than when it came. Evanescent, subtle, yet enduring nonetheless. Except for minor variances, most described their experience of the Glow as the realization they were seeing the world through a pulsating blue filter. Though vibrant in retrospect, the intrusion of the Glow at the time wasn’t jarring or disconcerting; it settled on our awareness with the comfort and ease of a crimson-hued leaf landing on fall foliage. We accepted its familiarity as if droplets of blue had been gradually added to the fabric of reality, acclimating us throughout time until a faint whisper snapped our collective consciousness awake when it asked, “isn’t the world less blue than before?” Yes. Why? Wait, the world was blue? Yes. And then we panicked. The Glow, or more accurately its abrupt absence, left us stunned, reeling from the implications. Speculation ran rampant, mutating with each transmission and the contagion of an internet-borne social media-fed virus. Was the government involved? Was it aliens? A science experiment, a biological attack, an eldritch curse, a global hallucination? Did the rapture finally arrive and find every soul wanting? Everybody and their mother had theories. Nobody had evidence solid enough to survive even a modicum of inquiry. Message boards flooded with people asking questions, demanding answers, and providing little. Government responses varied, but confusion and fear spread throughout all echelons of order. Developing nations, still grappling with the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, reached out to allies abroad for help and information. Their recovery from the pandemic was already not guaranteed, another crisis would collapse their country. But this was no pandemic. A collapse wasn’t imminent but the potential threat still loomed in the backdrop with great prejudice. Developed nations, accustomed to leveraging their abundant resources, armies, and treatises on the global stage, found they were again facing an adversary they could not negotiate with. Arrogance fueled their apprehension and drove them into a fog of paranoia — the worst-case scenario was an attack and they prepared accordingly. But the only attack was on their pride. Their conviction on where they stood in this universe irreparably injured. Task forces formed to uncover the truth, each eventually devolving into glorified group chats filled with officials scrolling through online conspiracies. Misinformation disseminated almost faster than the Glow itself. Every news station covered the same story that week, but airtime quickly waned with subsequent segments as developments stagnated and every talking head spat out some iteration of, “we still do not know what the fuck just happened.” There were no experts, only the bewildered and deluded. Like ancient civilizations witnessing their first solar eclipse, we watched the Glow with unbridled awe, clinging to ignorance and tools too primitive to even capture what was happening. Film crews and content creators worldwide recording during the Glow scrambled to their phones and cameras to replay the video they had taken. Nothing. The world exactly as they knew it except for a moment of awakened silence followed by confusion. Opportunists mired themselves in controversy by attempting to fabricate the Glow with computer graphics leading to the viral trend of feigning confusing through a blue filter with the hashtag “#Blued”. Doctors, neurologists, and psychiatrists worldwide studied millions of patients, finding minimal or insignificant changes to the body or psyche, with no discernable pattern and nothing to suggest a remnant of the Glow. Scientists and researchers rushed to their respective machines checking for anomalous readings. Astronomers explored the possibility of a cosmic source passing through Earth. Microbiologists wondered if a prehistoric virus was released from the melting ice caps. Physicists theorized a new form of power and began to reexamine fundamental models of energy and matter. The list goes on, but irrespective of discipline, department, and budget, the result was the same: nothing, absolute acceptance of the null hypothesis. Everything and everyone came up short, almost everything. The greatest minds, conspiracy theorists, and commoners in between obsessed over an explanation, only to converge on a common frustration— the impracticability of studying an event that so completely disappeared without a trace. Well, not exactly without a trace. It nudged our reality one millimeter to the left loosening our grip on it, a tiny, almost insignificant amount, but enough to leave an indelible blemish on what we were holding. Most people learned to ignore the blemish. They moved on with their life and turn their attention to more immediate matters, the next electoral scandal, the next viral trend, the next controversial tweet by a controversial figure. A testament to our ability to adjust to any reality. Monday morning coffees tasted the same. The sun still warmed their skin and cast familiar shadows across the pavement. Days passed interacting with strangers disregarding the sonder of it all. However, for a select few, that blemish turned into a stain. And that stain began to grow. Who else breathed the same air of malaise? Low murmurs of unknown tongues hushed in the shadows. Unrecognizable silhouettes disappearing upon a second glance. And for a few of us, Monday morning coffees started to taste like lukewarm sink water from the bathroom of a dead-end job on a slow Wednesday afternoon. Nothing changed, but nothing felt the same. One year later, some of us know the world had changed. Just not everyone had caught on yet.