A Morning Like Any Other

Canvas City never sat still.

From the top of the Crayon Paintbrush Fortress, the whole city spread out like a painting someone was still finishing. Bright storefronts. Zigzagging streets. A goat in a newsboy cap arguing with a sheep over a parking spot. A humanoid deer jogging past with earbuds in, not even glancing up.

Crayon Paintbrush Man leaned against the railing of the fortress's crayon tower and took a long sip of coffee.

"You're staring again," said Dab — the small, round-headed robot who managed the fortress controls. His screen-face blinked yellow.

"I'm *appreciating*," CPM corrected, adjusting his blue sunglass goggles.

"You've been appreciating for forty minutes."

"Best city in the world deserves forty minutes."

Dab made a sound like a slow deflating balloon.

Below, the city hummed. The blue windows of the fortress caught the morning light and scattered it across the plaza like spilled paint.

Everything looked perfect.

Which, if CPM had been paying closer attention, might have been exactly the thing to worry about.

Something in the Static

The coffee went cold.

CPM didn't notice at first. He was still leaning on the railing, watching a goat in a newsboy cap chase a parking ticket across the plaza below, when Dab made a sharp, crackling sound — like a radio between stations.

"Hey," CPM said. "You okay?"

Dab's screen-face flickered. The yellow blinked out. What replaced it was a flat, dead grey.

CPM set down his mug and crossed the tower floor in three steps.

"Dab?"

The little round robot turned slowly. His screen glitched — yellow, grey, yellow — then locked on grey again. His voice came out wrong. Choppy. Like words dropped from a sentence.

"The sky — signal — something is — pulling the —"

Then Dab froze completely.

CPM looked up fast.

Above Canvas City, a wide, colorless smear had opened across the sky. Not a cloud. Not smoke. It had no edges, no shape. It was just... absence. Like someone had pressed an eraser against the blue and dragged.

And it was growing.