On the sixth day of June, a Wednesday, just as morning awoke, the insurgents, having broken through the night before, detonated their pulse. Screens dimmed to a static fuzz, cars didn’t know where to go. And the sky cleared. The swarms of drones, delivering, watching, gently landed, all at once. For the first time in memory, the air was quiet; the sunrise painted itself onto the tired eyes of the a.m. commute. Amid the debris of crumpled machinery and broken windows, she, like the rest, still, watched the morning conduct its symphony of light: reds and pinks and blues, punctuated with pearlescent streaks of vapour, the curtain briefly lifted.