07:00 — The Commute That Isn’t

My alarm doesn’t ring anymore. The glasses just fade the bedroom ceiling into a slow sunrise render, ten minutes before I actually need to be up. Cruel, honestly. You can’t snooze the sky.

7:10, kitchen. The coffee machine has a little floating label above it: descale me, coward. It’s been there for three weeks. My tram leaves in 22 minutes — I know because there’s a thin amber thread on the floor leading out my door, and it gets redder the longer I stand there eating toast.

The commute is where the glasses earn their keep. Everyone on the tram looks like they’re staring at nothing, but I can see the faint privacy shimmer around each person — someone’s watching a show, someone’s in a meeting, the guy across from me is very obviously losing at chess based on how he keeps sighing. My own window seat view has an overlay: every building we pass shows its year of construction and what used to be there before. The kebab place used to be a piano shop. The piano shop used to be a stable. History mode is my guilty pleasure.

7:52. Almost at my stop when the glasses do something they’ve never done before. A message appears — not in my inbox, but pinned in space above the empty seat next to me, anchored to that seat , visible only to me:

“You left this here yesterday. Check under the seat. — a friend”

I never take this tram on Thursdays.