Chapter 9 The Anomaly
The Anomaly
Lincoln
The gathering had thinned considerably by the time Lincoln headed for the back room to grab his computer.
It was nearly midnight. The chaos of earlier had mellowed into something quieter—small clusters of conversation, people gathering coats and children, the particular energy of an evening winding toward its end.
Marshall and Ashley had left thirty minutes ago, Marshall’s car running smoothly thanks to Dad’s intervention.
Most of the older generation had already departed, taking sleepy grandchildren and containers of leftover food with them.
Lincoln needed his laptop. He’d tucked it under the bed in the back room after his 9:00 PM exchange with Mercury, and it sat there waiting while the rest of him prepared to head home.
He was halfway down the hallway when small footsteps sounded behind him.
“Lincoln.”
He turned. Marie stood in the corridor, her green velvet dress rumpled, her crown of blonde curls listing to one side. She looked like she’d been fighting sleep for hours and losing badly.
“You’re supposed to be with your Grandma Charlie.”
“I saw you leaving.” She padded toward him on bare feet—someone had removed her shoes at some point, probably in anticipation of her falling asleep. “I wanted to tell you something fiwst.”
Lincoln waited.
Marie reached him and stopped, swaying slightly with exhaustion. Her expression, however, remained serious. “The dessewt table was a success.”
“Was it?”
“The items fwom the excellent end are almost gone.” She held up her hand, fingers spread. “Only this many pieces left of Joy’s tawt. And Ella’s cookies are completely gone.”
“That indicates appropriate consumer response to quality.”
Marie nodded gravely. “The items fwom the caution end are still there. Even though almost everyone has left.”
Lincoln considered this data. “That also indicates appropriate consumer response.”
“Aunt Way took one of her own bwownies home. She said she’d give it to Uncle Dorian later.” Marie’s nose wrinkled. “I think she was joking.”
“With Aunt Ray, it’s difficult to tell.”
“I know.” Marie yawned so wide her whole face seemed to disappear into it. “Gwandma Charlie says I’m going home with her and Gwandpa Finn tonight. Mommy and Daddy will be there tomowwow.”
“That’s the plan. Then I’ll see you again on Christmas day.”
Marie tugged at his hand—the same gesture she’d used earlier, when they’d been organizing desserts together. Her fingers were still faintly sticky.
“Since Aunt Joy is having a baby, does this mean Bear will have someone to teach? Like you teached me about dessewts?”
Lincoln ignored the error and considered the question.
A new variable in the family equation. Bear and Joy’s child would enter a system already populated with cousins and aunts and uncles and the accumulated wisdom of three generations.
The child would probably learn things Lincoln naturally had never been able to pick up—how to read social cues, how to make small talk, how to navigate the complicated waters of human interaction.
But maybe they would also learn other things. The satisfaction of a well-organized system. The pleasure of accuracy. The comfort of someone who took you seriously even when you were very small.
“The probability is high,” he said.
Marie nodded, satisfied with this assessment. “Good. Babies need smawt people.” Another yawn, this one accompanied by a full-body droop. “I’ll help too.”
Something shifted in Lincoln’s chest. He almost smiled.
“Marie!” Charlie’s voice carried down the hallway. “Come on, sweetheart. Time to go.”
Marie squeezed his hand once, then released it. “Bye, Lincoln. Mewwy Chwistmas Adam.”
“Merry Christmas Adam.”
She padded back down the corridor toward her grandmother. Lincoln watched her go, then continued to the back room for his laptop.
When he emerged, Charlie was waiting for him near the main entrance, Marie balanced on her hip, already asleep. In her free hand, she held a to-go container.
“Here.” She pressed it into his hands. “Items from the excellent end. You earned it.”
“All I did was organize a table. It wasn’t difficult.”
“You organized a table by quality and didn’t cause a single family feud. That’s a Christmas miracle.” Charlie’s mouth twitched. “I’m never asking you to do that again.”
Lincoln accepted the container.
“Actually, no.” Charlie shifted Marie higher on her hip. “This is your job now. Forever. Annual duty. You and your assistant here.”
Marie mumbled something unintelligible against Charlie’s shoulder.
“Noted,” Lincoln said. “And task gladly accepted.”
Charlie reached up and patted his cheek—the same gesture she’d used when he was small, when he’d done something that pleased her and she wanted to hug him but knew he wouldn’t like that. She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t need to.
Lincoln watched her carry Marie out to where Finn was warming up the car, then he headed for his own vehicle.
His house was exactly as he’d left it.
Lincoln stood in the doorway for a moment, taking in the familiar space.
Quiet. Organized. Everything in its designated place.
No coats thrown over chairs, no abandoned plates, no children’s toys scattered across surfaces.
No noise, no chaos, no sticky-fingered assistants or arguing uncles or crying babies.
This was what he preferred. What he’d always preferred.
He set the to-go container on the kitchen counter and hung his coat in the closet. Removed his shoes and placed them on the rack by the door. The same routine he followed every time he came home. Predictable. Comfortable. Correct.
The silence settled around him like a familiar weight.
Tonight it felt different. Not uncomfortable, exactly. Just... noticeable in a way it usually wasn’t. The contrast, maybe. Forty people, then none. Chaos, then stillness. The particular warmth of being surrounded by family, then the particular coolness of being alone.
Lincoln moved to his desk and opened his laptop.
11:47 PM.
He’d already talked to Mercury tonight. Their ritual was complete—9:00 PM, as always, unbroken for seven hundred and two consecutive nights. There was no reason to reach out again.
He thought about Bear’s hand resting on Joy’s stomach, that expression of wonder Lincoln couldn’t quite parse. About his parents dancing in the corner like the rest of the room had ceased to exist. About Marie’s serious little face when she’d told him he made sense.
The way they all just belonged to each other. Effortlessly. Instinctively. Like breathing.
Lincoln didn’t fully understand that need—for proximity, for touch, for constant togetherness. His whole life, he’d felt like an observer of human connection rather than a participant in it. Watching from the outside, cataloging the patterns, never quite finding his way in.
But tonight, standing in his quiet, empty house...
He thought he might be starting to.
His fingers moved before his brain could intervene.
Binary: System diagnostic. Confirming channel integrity.
The response came faster than it should have, given the hour.
Mercury: Binary. It’s nearly midnight.
Binary: I’m aware of the time.
Mercury: We talked at nine. Our ritual is complete.
Binary: I know.
A pause. The cursor blinked. Lincoln watched it, waiting for the question—why are you here, what’s wrong, what happened to make you break the pattern we’ve maintained for two years—
Mercury: And yet here you are.
Binary: Here I am.
Mercury: I’m glad.
Something loosened in his chest. She wasn’t going to make him explain. Wasn’t going to demand justification for the anomaly.
She just met him there.
Mercury: How was the rest of your evening? The gathering of forty humans?
Binary: Eventful. My cousin announced he and his fiancée are expecting a baby. Two teenagers appeared from the woods and triggered a security response that turned out to be unnecessary. And I organized a dessert table by quality with a three-year-old collaborator.
Mercury: I’m sorry, you did what?
Binary: Organized desserts by optimal consumption priority. My aunt asked me to bring order to the table. I complied.
Mercury: Of course you did. And the three-year-old?
Binary: My first cousin once removed. She has an aptitude for accurate categorization.
Mercury: She sounds like someone I’d like.
Binary: You’d find her acceptable. She doesn’t require small talk.
Mercury: The highest compliment.
Lincoln stared at the screen. Outside, the Wyoming night pressed against his windows—black and cold and absolute. Inside, his house was warm and silent and empty.
Binary: My house is very quiet.
Mercury: Quiet can be good.
Binary: It’s different tonight. The contrast is more pronounced than usual.
Mercury: Forty people and then none.
Binary: Yes.
Mercury: That’s the silence after a symphony. It always feels louder than regular silence.
Lincoln considered this. The chaos of the evening—the voices layered over voices, the children shrieking, the laughter and the tension and the explosion of joy when Bear made his announcement.
All of it had been noise, technically. Disorder.
The kind of sensory overwhelm he usually escaped as quickly as possible.
But maybe it had been music too. A kind he was only learning to hear.
Binary: Maybe it was.
Mercury: Was what?
Binary: A symphony. Of sorts.
A pause. When her response came, it felt different. Slower. More deliberate.
Mercury: That might be the most human thing you’ve ever said to me.
Binary: Is that a compliment?
Mercury: From me? The highest.
He didn’t know what to do with the warmth that spread through his chest. Didn’t know how to categorize it or file it or rank it on any scale he understood.
Mercury: Can I tell you something?
Binary: You can tell me anything.
Mercury: I almost reached out to you first tonight. After nine. I had my hands on the keyboard three separate times.
Binary: Why didn’t you?
Mercury: The pattern. The ritual. I didn’t want to break it if breaking it would break something else.
Binary: It wouldn’t have.
The cursor blinked. Lincoln waited.
Mercury: “We are not trapped or locked up in our bones. No, no. We are free to change. And love changes us. And if we can love one another, we can break open the sky.”
Binary: Walter Mosley.
Mercury: You know it?
Binary: I remember that one.
Mercury: Why that one?
Lincoln thought about the question. Why had those words lodged in his memory when so many others had faded? He’d read thousands of books, processed millions of pages, and most of it had blurred into background data.
But some things stayed. Some things carved themselves into places he didn’t know he had.
Binary: I don’t know. It felt true in a way I couldn’t articulate. The idea that love could break something open. Change the shape of the world.
Another pause. Longer this time.
Mercury: Why did you really reach out tonight?
The question sat on the screen, waiting. Lincoln could deflect. Could offer some logical explanation about testing response times or verifying encryption protocols. Mercury would accept it. She’d let him retreat behind data and systems, the way she always did when he needed distance.
But tonight, he didn’t want distance.
Binary: I wanted to. That’s all.
Mercury: That’s enough.
He took a breath. Asked something he’d never asked before—something that bordered on the personal information they’d always avoided.
Binary: Are you alone tonight?
A long pause. He watched the typing indicator appear, disappear, appear again.
Mercury: Are you asking about my physical proximity to other humans, or something else?
Binary: I don’t know. Both. Either.
Mercury: Physically, yes. I’m alone. My apartment is quiet. The world outside is dark.
The typing indicator appeared again.
Mercury: But lonely? No. Not anymore.
Lincoln read the words three times. Let them settle into places he was only beginning to understand.
Binary: Mercury.
Mercury: Too much?
Binary: No. Just processing.
Mercury: Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.
And there it was again. The thing that undid him, every time. The patience. The space. The willingness to wait while he found his way to whatever he needed to say.
Binary: I’m glad you’re not lonely.
Mercury: I’m glad you reached out.
Binary: Tomorrow. Nine o’clock.
Mercury: Like clockwork.
Binary: Like clockwork.
Mercury: Stay strange, safety.
Binary: Stay safe, stranger.
The chat window went quiet.
Lincoln sat in his empty house, staring at the screen, reading back through their conversation. The symphony comment. The Mosley quote. The confession that she’d almost reached out first. The admission that she wasn’t lonely anymore.
He’d broken the pattern tonight. Two years. Seven hundred and two nights. Never a deviation, never an exception, never an anomaly.
Until now.
He’d wanted to talk to her again. And she’d been there.
He closed his laptop.
His house was still quiet. Still empty. The silence that had felt so pronounced earlier had settled into something softer now.
Not the absence of noise, but the presence of something else.
The echo of a conversation that mattered.
The knowledge that somewhere out there, someone was having her own quiet evening, and maybe thinking about him too.
He hoped it was a good evening. Hoped she knew that their exchanges mattered—that she mattered—even if he’d never say it in so many words.
The stars were out tonight. He could see them through his window, bright and steady against the black Wyoming sky. Binary stars, gravitationally bound. Unable to separate even if they wanted to.
Tomorrow, he thought. Until tomorrow.
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Thank you for reading A VERY LINEAR TACTICAL CHRISTMAS.