01
The Halt
It happened at 4:00 AM on a Thursday. The buy button went grey. Millions of orders from ordinary people — the guy on night shift, the student with forty bucks, the mom in the group chat — died in the queue before they ever touched the tape.
That much unfilled hope doesn't just evaporate. It pooled in the matching engine, it compounded, and at 4:01 it opened a pair of neon-green eyes. She stepped out of the terminal wearing a lime cape stitched from cancelled tickets and asked one question: "Who turned my button off?"
