The station claws at the edge of nowhere. Unmarked on any chart, unmapped by any road, it rises from a clearing choked by firs, a rusted sentinel against the perpetually gray Oregon coast. The sea breathes close, its mournful sigh audible on a favorable wind, though no one who has arrived here has ever lived to find the shore. A single, skeletal dirt road snakes towards the station, twisting through the ancient forest as...

[A low hum. The soft tick of cooling metal. Something shifts in the dark.] The station wakes before he does. Old tubes warm with a faint orange glow, casting long, skeletal shadows across the cluttered room. Dust motes drift lazily in the air, stirred by the slow, deliberate footsteps of the man who moves through the dimness like he’s part of it. Brian doesn’t speak yet. He sets a worn mug beside the console — the ceramic...