Maintenance Window

When reality glitches, someone has to mop

Flash Fiction February rolls on over at The Writer’s Journey, hosted by Bradley Ramsey, and I’m back with Day 8’s prompt: which today is sci-fi/comedy. . . sooooooo lets just see where this ends up going haha. . .

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The first thing you learn as a universe maintenance worker is that reality is held together by polite lies.

Gravity is mostly accurate.
Time is mostly cooperative.
And coincidence is a premium feature we deploy whenever a human gets too close to the menu.

My job is simple on paper:

Fix glitches.
Tidy broken code.
Keep the story moving.

Most importantly—
make sure no one discovers the truth.

Which is inconvenient, because today a human saw me working.

Not sensed. Not intuited.
Saw.

With eyeballs that still believed the sky was stitched for their comfort.

They stood on their porch in pajama pants and a brave little optimism, holding a mug that read World’s Okayest Dad, and they said the most dangerous word in the English language:

“Excuse me?”

It’s not the question.
It’s the confidence behind it.

As if reality is a customer service desk
and the universe owes them a receipt.

The incident started with birds.

A flock of sparrows glitched mid-flight—paused, perfectly arranged like punctuation—then dropped straight down in synchronized defeat, hovering a foot above the street as if they were waiting for permission to resume being birds.

Known bug. “Aerial Pathing Desync.”
Usually caused by a microwave shorting, a solar flare, or—my personal favorite—a toddler naming a stuffed animal something that collides with a dormant variable the size of an ocean.

I materialized behind a mailbox, standard uniform:
gray hoodie, tool belt full of instruments that refuse to be remembered, and a clipboard.

People will accept anything if you give it a clipboard.
The clipboard is a magic item, truly.
It says: Infrastructure.
It says: Not your business.
It says: If you ask questions, we will invoice you spiritually.

I knelt, peeled back the edge of the scene like wallpaper, and found the problem.

The sky had a seam.

It shouldn’t.

Sky is supposed to be seamless.
Sky is supposed to be an unconditional promise, not a zipper.

I slid my fingers into the seam and felt the code beneath—
cold and wet and humming,
alive in a way numbers shouldn’t be.

Something on the other side breathed.

I muttered, very professionally, “Nope,”
and began stitching.

That’s when the human on the porch decided to speak.

“Excuse me?” they repeated.

I froze with my hand in the sky.

The sparrows hung there, offended by gravity.
The wind stopped.
Not slowly—instantly.

The whole neighborhood became a held breath.

The human squinted, then pointed at my arm like I was a street performer.

“Are you… fixing the sky?”

I gave them my most neutral expression, the one we practice in training videos titled HOW TO BE FORGETTABLE WHILE DOING IMPOSSIBLE THINGS.

“No,” I said immediately.

Then, because lying is an art and I am underpaid, I added:

“I’m fixing a… wireless thing.”

They stared at the seam, then at my clipboard, like it might translate the absurd.

“Wi-Fi?” they asked, hopeful.

Humans love Wi-Fi.
Wi-Fi is their secular religion.
You can blame anything on it and they will nod through their terror.

“Yes,” I said, relieved. “Neighborhood interference.”

They took a cautious step off the porch.

Not ideal.

Rule #1: Do not panic in front of locals.
Panic implies there’s something to panic about.

Rule #2: Do not answer directly.
Direct answers become hooks, and hooks catch minds.

Rule #3: If the local advances, deploy a harmless distraction.
A dog works. A toddler works. A small fire works.
(We log the fire, but it works.)

I scanned the street for a dog, toddler, or flammable object.

Nothing.

The universe, it seemed, wanted me to do this the hard way.

They took another step.

“Because my wife said the internet’s been slow,” they offered, as if that explained the sparrows’ existential malfunction.

“Sir,” I said gently, “for your safety, I need you to remain—”

“Why are the birds frozen?” they cut in.

“Bird strike prevention,” I said, because the sentence appeared in my mouth like a reflex.

They blinked.

Then nodded like that made sense.

It didn’t.

But humans are built to accept nonsense as long as it arrives confidently, wearing a hoodie.

They stepped closer.

And as they did, the seam in the sky twitched around my wrist.

Not like fabric.

Like a mouth trying not to yawn.

The air tasted faintly of pennies and deep water.

The human’s face tightened.

“Do you smell that?” they asked.

“No,” I lied, which was poor timing.

Because the seam opened.

Just a fraction.
Barely a blink.
Enough for something on the other side to look through.

Not an eye.
Not a face.
A geometry that implied observation.

That feeling you get when you realize the dark has been paying attention.

The human’s mug slipped.

Ceramic cracked on the porch steps—
and sound, insulted, rushed back into the world.

Wind returned.
The sparrows remembered they were birds and exploded upward in frantic apology.
Time resumed its quiet cruelty.

The human stared at the sky, pale.

“I—” they started.

I raised the clipboard like it could block knowledge.

“Okay,” I said, crisp, calm, falsely warm.
“You’re having a normal reaction to a non-normal maintenance event.”

“That’s not comforting,” they whispered.

“It’s not for you,” I admitted. Then quickly added: “Sorry.”

They swallowed. “Who are you?”

My job title is Reality Integrity Technician, Third Tier, Temporary Contract.
But telling a human that would be like handing them a match in a library.

So I said, “Facilities.”

“Facilities,” they repeated, voice brittle.

“Universal Facilities,” I clarified, which made it worse.

Their eyes kept flicking to the seam.
It wasn’t fully closed.
It hovered above us like a thin, dark smile.

Something shifted behind it.

I felt it the way you feel a massive object move behind a wall:
pressure without sound, presence without shape.

Then a thought arrived—not in words, not exactly—
clean as a scalpel:

Is this one yours?

The human shivered.

“Did you… hear that?” they asked.

“No,” I lied again, and my performance was failing.

I reached for the standard amnestic patch—
a small silver sticker, harmless-looking, bureaucratic, the kind of thing that makes the brain politely misfile the last ten minutes under WEIRD DREAM / TOO MUCH CAFFEINE.

But my fingers hesitated.

Because the human wasn’t just seeing me.

The human was being seen back.

And the seam… liked it.

Curiosity is beautiful.
Curiosity is also how your species gets audited.

The human took one slow step closer.

“Don’t,” I said, sharper than intended.

They stopped, mid-step.

Then they laughed—nervous, disbelieving, trying to sand down terror into something manageable.

“So what, I’m not allowed to look at the sky now?” they said.
“Is this like a ‘wet paint’ situation?”

I almost respected the attempt.

“It’s more like,” I said carefully, “if you look too hard, something looks back.”

They swallowed. “Aliens?”

“Worse,” I said.

“Worse than aliens?”

“Yes.”

They stared at me like I’d just told them their HOA had cosmic jurisdiction.

“I’m going to tell someone,” they whispered.
“My wife. Somebody. This is insane.”

Here’s the problem with humans:
they always assume truth is a social object.

Something you can carry into a kitchen like a casserole.
Something you can share and survive.

They don’t understand that some truths behave like predators.

They want to be spoken.
Because speech is an opening.

The seam trembled, delighted.

I stepped in—fast, not violent, not cruel.

I pressed the silver sticker to the back of their neck.

Their eyes fluttered.
Their shoulders dropped.
Their face softened like a knot letting go.

“Who… are you?” they murmured again, already dissolving.

“A guy fixing the Wi-Fi,” I said, because the lie was the kindest thing I had.

They nodded slowly.

“Oh,” they whispered. “Thanks.”

The seam in the sky gave a sound—not a tear, not a rip—
a soft, satisfied settling.

Like a page finding its place.

I finished the stitch with shaking fingers.

The sky smoothed itself back into a polite lie.
Wind behaved.
Birds flew normally.
Reality resumed its customer-facing posture.

The human turned toward their door, safe and blank.

Then paused.

They glanced back at me, squinting like they almost recognized something.

“Hey,” they called, cheerful now, unaware of how close they’d come to being filed.

“Yeah?” I answered.

They pointed at my clipboard.

“You guys ever take care of the sun too?” they asked.
“Because it’s been, like… really bright lately.”

I stared at them.

Somewhere behind the repaired seam, something moved—massive, patient—
and I understood with a sick little laugh:

This job isn’t maintenance.

It’s customer service.

And the customers are hungry.

“No,” I said, forcing the smile back onto my face.
Then, because I’m still employed and still lying:

“That’s a different department.”

They nodded, satisfied, and went inside.

The door shut.

And the universe—quiet now, stitched and smiling—
felt attentive.

Like it had enjoyed the near-miss.

Like it would schedule another.

Soon.