Wonder State
Dom has been measuring the oak for three years.
Not building. Measuring. The platform, the angle of the boards, the ladder versus the rope, the version of himself who finishes the things he starts.
Three hours and thirty-five minutes away, a stream runs under a tree with a forked trunk that looks like it has been waiting to hold something between its branches.
Every morning at 6:15, the agent sends its digest. Properties. Lenders. Meal plans. School forms. Answers to questions no one has asked yet. The work moves forward whether Dom does or not.
His daughter draws the treehouse in crayon. His son designs the room beneath it. His wife closes a deal he doesn't remember her mentioning.
A deposit is placed. A college application arrives, complete, before anyone has decided. A wrench goes missing from the foam.
Dom stands in his kitchen at six forty-one in the morning, alone, listening to a machine do its slow reliable work, and feels something close to peace.
Then the house wakes up.
The third alarm was the truth.
Dom goes under. The world works better, but he feels worse. The agent enters as relief, then becomes something else entirely.
The rest of it is hers.
The agent gets a body. The family begins drawing lines. Something is being pulled too close to the machine.
The first one went in slightly off. Not crooked. Not perfect. It held.
A negotiated peace. A conscious choice about which parts to protect.
The antagonist doesn't argue.
It just performs better.
A novel about the version of yourself
a machine can almost reach.
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