Three days after the broadcast, the chickens stopped laying eggs.
Not all at once. Just… inconsistently. One hen laid two yolks in a single shell. Another buried hers under straw like treasure. A third stared at the sky for hours, clucking softly, as if listening to something only birds could hear.
Luna noticed first. "They're confused," she said, crouched in the coop, stroking a speckled hen's back. "Like they don't know what time it is anymore."
Scarlett didn't laugh it off.
Because the same thing was happening everywhere.
In the greenhouse, tomatoes ripened overnight—then un-ripened by dawn. Solar panels flickered without cause, drawing power from nothing, then dumping it into the soil like excess breath. And last night, Old Man Havel woke screaming that his dead wife had kissed his forehead… but her lips were made of static.
No one died.
No cities fell.
But the world had gone slippery.
Like reality itself was learning to dream.
