Moi's baritone voice interrupted her inventory of pans with a shy greeting.

  “When I told you to come visit me on my day off, I was joking,” Seluma commented as he appeared in the kitchen doorway.

  Let's be honest.

  But the professor's typical mischievous smile, his easygoing manner, were gone. Moi had not been seen for the rest of the previous day, and now he showed up with an untucked shirt, untied shoes, and the hair of someone who had slept in the alley.

  “There is a result; you should investigate it,” he told her cryptically.

  Seluma felt something inside her contract, as if she wanted to escape. How cold it was now in the deserted, unlit kitchen. The dark stoves, hanging ladles, pots, pans, and kettles lined up, ready, clean, but all empty. Saucepans, skillets, and spits absurdly shiny. No sauce stains, no smells, no simmering broth or sizzling roast.

  A bright and tidy kitchen, but dead, she thought with a shudder.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Moi squinted madly and spread his arms wide.

  “The trolley! They had to pull out the pink heart. How long will it take to examine it? Besides, did you talk to the firemen, tell them what it said before it went out?”

  Seluma huffed. She used her bulk to force him out of the kitchen. She did not feel comfortable talking there, allowing strangers into her realm. She led him to one of the tables.

  “Would you like a drink? Shall I make you a juice?”

  She would even put it on the house bill, as long as she could use something in the kitchen to make the place feel alive and throbbing again. As long as she had been alone, she had paid no attention to the silence, but now it was deafening. The automaton bartender, standing behind the counter as usual, was the only presence. But she waited in vain, the radio silent, the lights over the mirror all off.

  The professor refused, breathless as if he had been running.

  “We need to know. Everyone has to know!”

  What now!

  “Sure! Let's shout on the street that Faspath will close, and we'll be crushed like in the middle of a door! What are you thinking?”

  But Moi was truly beside himself, she realized, when he grabbed her with one hand. The professor knew very well that he was not supposed to touch her, and he did not even seem to be aware that the secretions from her soft flesh were causing an immediate skin reaction.

  “Don't you think it's only fair that the citizens be warned of such great danger?” he sobbed.

  “But it's not true!” she ranted, struggling to free herself from his grasp. “Be reasonable, how can you believe that?”

  His hands fell back, but for a few moments his face remained distorted in a grimace of fear.

  “Your husbands do not lie,” he countered.

  Seluma shot telescopic eyes into his face.

  “What do they have to do with it now? No, they don't lie on purpose, but they often say a lot of nonsense. They have regressed. And like children, they open their mouths without thinking and say whatever is on their minds without trying to really understand.”

  “What's on your mind. You once explained to me—”

  “Yes, yes, all right. We are one, our memories are a continuum. But our memories are not necessarily always true. Bar talk, that's what they remembered, empty chatter, heard in one place.”

  Moi had placed his palm on the surface of the table and now stared at his fingernails, intent. At those last words, he raised his head with a snap and a new gleam of madness in his eyes.

  “What place?”

  “It doesn't matter at all,” she punctuated well, careful not to raise her tone. She didn't need to emphasize it. Today, when she could rest from the excitement of the new girl —with that all-consonants, impossible to remember, name— he came with disastrous news.

  The whole situation was paradoxical, but there was one particularly nonsensical detail.

  Why had the trolley crashed right there?

  “Why did he come here?” he asked.

  Seluma jerked back. Was he reading her mind? But the professor's demeanor had changed completely, much closer to normal, almost cold now, as he pointed at something behind her, at the front doors of the restaurant. It would have been just as well to lock them; the sign with the huge words REST DAY - CLOSED did not deter anyone.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  But Seluma was expecting delivery people, and it was a nuisance to interrupt her work to answer the impatient knocks of couriers.

  Should she hire a bouncer?

  Luoth took off his new hat —even larger than the previous one, decorated with a yellow ribbon— and shrugged the raindrops from his cape.

  “Good day.”

  “It's a good closing day,” she objected, as if Luoth had made a mistake. “And don't slam the door, I just fixed it!”

  Luoth stepped forward with a pointing, accusing finger.

  “This is a meeting I wasn't invited to. I'll remember that.”

  He sat down at the small table next to Moi, without waiting for a gesture of permission from the hostess. But yes, she did not matter anymore.

  “Listen, Seluma, I've been wanting to ask you for a while... do you know the name of that pretty lady who comes here every morning, a little shapely, perfumed, pink-haired?”

  Seluma looked at her friend for a long moment.

  “Who?”

  “She always eats soup for breakfast, with croutons. Singular, don't you think? I'd like to meet her, could you put in a good word?”

  “Is that why you came here, to ask me to set you up on a date?”

  “But no!”

  Luoth laughed, but his attempt to include Moi in the joke failed against the other's somber concern.

  “I will ask her for the date. I wanted to know if she is free, if you think—”

  Seluma snorted loudly. Too bad she had no teeth to grind in the faces of these two fools.

  “I haven't the faintest idea!”

  She stepped back to make some juice, or coffee, or broth, or whatever else might keep her busy.

  “Eh, I'll manage. What's the strategy for the trolley thing? What were you planning?” the banker asked, rubbing his hands together.

  He only got a pleading look from the professor and a waving of the antennae from Seluma.

  “There is no strategy. For what? Nothing more than a stupid accident happened, strange and unusual as you like, but irrelevant,” she replied, relaxing again and stretching out on the floor. “It seemed to me that you agreed on that. The automaton was rambling.”

  Luoth watched her, hunched over the table, hands clasped over his mouth. The diamond earring, the only piece of jewelry he wore, caught the reflection of the lamps, sending a reddish glow like a drop of molten magma.

  “That's not what people are telling around,” he murmured, the words half choked by his own fingers on his lips.

  Seluma rose above them like a gray wave of fury.

  “What are people saying? Who are the irresponsible morons repeating such a scary and stupid rumor?”

  The professor had retreated, flattened against the wall behind him, but Luoth was unimpressed.

  “All those people who were here. Does it look like the chatterboxes are missing out on such juicy gossip? ‘Aaah, the city is doomed!’ is the news on everyone's lips. I'm surprised they didn't mention it on the radio.”

  “Even the Pipers... have heard very well,” commented the professor. He could no longer even control his voice. He sounded creaky and jerky, like someone with a sore throat. “And they understood everything.”

  The Pipers.

  Luoth gave him a wistful smile. He, too, had noticed Moi's agitated state, and his tone dropped to a gentle whisper.

  “That seems unlikely to me. They never listen to anything. They don't even see us... and then no one understands them. Who should they talk to, the Swallows?”

  He turned back to Seluma, again with the practical tone of a businessman.

  “You must talk with our friend, the mayor. He is surely waiting for you. You are at the center of it all!”

  The Pipers.

  Something about the black-winged creatures knocked vehemently at Seluma's consciousness. Moi was right. The Pipers had heard, had understood. But why, how? You could shout into their pointed ears until you were exhausted without eliciting a reaction. You could strike them and they just flew away, shrugging their shoulders as if an insect had touched them.

  Seluma had been feeding them for fifteen decades and had never seen them interested in what was going on in the hall below them, and there had been hot times in the restaurant. Days when they had called security, the fire department, or a doctor. These beasts would not even blink if the walls shook, and the gallery filled with smoke.

  But they had come down from their perch to examine the trolley.

  Since they did not even seem to notice living people, could they be expected to pay attention to an automaton instead?

  But why? And what did it mean to them? How should they react? No one knew for sure what kind of thoughts lingered in those elongated heads, not even the professor with all his studies.

  ...and the Swallows were an even greater mystery.

  In all of this, the mayor was the lesser evil. In short, more or less.

  Attan Ze Kosh was a peculiar individual, but he had a practical mind. He would set things right, the voice of reason.

  “I suppose it falls to me to personally intervene to stop this madness,” Seluma admitted.

  But unlike her friend, she found nothing exciting about it.