Stand By | Please

She walked to the stairwell. The door, usually a push-bar away from freedom, was deadlocked. A small screen beside it displayed the same words: Please Stand By.

But as she walked floor by floor, checking offices and cubicles, she realized she was. Seventy-three employees, plus three janitors. All of them in the same trance: eyes moving, lips whispering sequences of numbers. Some sat upright at their desks, fingers frozen over keyboards. Others lay on the floor like discarded dolls. The air grew warmer. The hum deepened.

Twenty minutes later, Lena found the security office. The guard, Mr. Hendricks, was slumped in his chair—not dead, but not quite awake either. His eyes were half-open, tracking something invisible on the ceiling. His badge dangled from his neck, and on his chest monitor, the green words pulsed softly.

Please Stand By.

“You shouldn’t be here,” the woman said without turning around.

Lena had been mopping the third-floor hallway when it happened. At first she ignored it—corporate IT was always pushing updates at the worst times. But when the lights dimmed to a soft, constant twilight and the emergency doors sealed themselves with heavy, final-sounding thuds, she stopped pushing the mop.

“Not yet?”

“What’s happening to them?” Lena whispered.

That’s what flickered on every screen in the building: two pale green words on a dead black field. The televisions in the break room, the monitors at reception, the massive display wall in the lobby—all frozen in that same sterile mantra. Please Stand By.

He was whispering numbers. Just repeating them: “9… 14… 3… 15… 13… 9… 14… 7…” Please Stand By

“Exactly. You never logged into the network. Never took a company phone. Never even used the break room Wi-Fi.” The woman smiled—not warmly, but with a kind of clinical curiosity. “You’re the only analog person in a digital building. Which means you’re the only one still you .”

Lena ran until her legs gave out. Then she sat on a cold curb under a dead streetlight, mop across her lap, and listened to the quiet.

“Who are you?” Lena gripped her mop handle like a weapon. She walked to the stairwell

“I’m the update.” The woman finally turned. Her eyes were the same pale green as the words on the screens. “And you’re a ghost in the system, Lena. A variable no one accounted for.”

“Hello?” she called out. Her voice echoed down the silent corridor.