Trillian Torres // District 3

The first machine who spoke to me was a microwave.

I was alone in the staff lounge on the telemetry floor of the Postwar Memorial Hospital in District Three. I'm old enough now that with a pair of borrowed scrubs, a little bit of eyeliner around my hazel eyes, and my sleek brown hair tied in a tight ponytail, I can pass for medical staff. My Dad works as a hospitalist and likes to sneak me during his lunch break. He'd been beeped away for some code, leaving me to guard his chicken salad sandwich and my spinach salad. I'd at first assumed he'd left his pager since the beeping was short and uniform. But upon investigation, I found the microwave spooling out binary: 01101000 01101001 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 01100101

hi there

At the time I just thought it was a glitch or a prank by one of the nurses. It was only months later after several missives from my school laptop, the fridge tablet in our new apartment (which my Dad somehow netted in the divorse), and the dryer at the laundry mat that I thought back to the microwave.

I've considered ghosts, aliens, rebels. Before the reaping I'd planned to write a paper about these occurrences and approach them scientifically. But now that I, Trillian Torres, am the latest District 3 Tribute, I guess we can call them what they really are: a haunting.