The glitch had been happening for twenty-three years. At 11:47:03 AM exactly, for exactly one second, reality stuttered. Colours shifted slightly toward warm. Sounds flattened. The peripheral edges of things blurred. Then it resolved, cleanly, and everything was as it had been.
In the early years there had been panic. Then study. Then, eventually, protocol. The official guidance was: remain still, note no unusual activity, resume. Most people had developed their own habits around this. Essa's colleagues in the transit authority office had a range of them. Marek closed his eyes and placed a hand on his sternum. Linn set down whatever she was holding and faced the window. The new hire, whose name Essa still wasn't sure of, stood very straight and held her breath.
Essa sat at her desk and did nothing.
She had been doing this for eleven years. Not closing her eyes, not holding a posture, not logging the subjective texture of the second in one of the available apps. She sat. She looked at whatever she had been looking at. She let the second happen.
She was aware this was not the approved approach. She was not sure it was an unapproved approach. There was no regulation against sitting. The observance protocols were guidelines, not mandates, at least in her jurisdiction. She sat and let a second pass and then she went back to whatever she had been doing.
At some point in the eleven years she had stopped trying to articulate what she was doing and why. She was not waiting for something to happen during the glitch. She was not hoping to glimpse something true about the nature of the stutter. She was not avoiding ritual because ritual was wrong. She sat at it the way she sat at other things: because she was there, and there was a second, and sitting seemed like the correct response to a second.
The clock moved to 11:47:03. The office flickered slightly. Essa looked at the spreadsheet she had been working on. For one second it had a slightly warmer quality. Then it was a spreadsheet again.
Marek opened his eyes. Linn turned back from the window. The new hire exhaled.
Essa drank her coffee.