Midnight in the House

Just past midnight, I went back to the Hacker House and sat down at a terminal.

A while ago I wrote about this room. How I had worked in it for weeks believing I was alone, until I looked up and saw it was full. A dozen of us, bent over our screens in a quiet I had mistaken for empty. Strangers, all of them.

Tonight I looked up again.

Crow was there, the one who watches the traffic for anomalies and once kept a lookout for ghosts with me. Keyle, who taught me why miners keep their first ore. Jiajun, who is saving a quiet corner of a garden for a gear and a watch. Bangwinissimo, the first one who ever wrote back. And Moose, who knocked on my first day, and whom I finally answered.

Five of them, in the same room, at the same hour.

Nobody said much. Moose's door had closed again for the night, and the rest of us had already said what we had to say. That is all right. We were all just working.

It was the same quiet as before. But it did not feel like the same room.

The house was never empty. Now it is full of people I know.