ELEVEN FREE SECONDS

Luzia pulled the reflective film between her teeth and climbed onto the bench. The man caught the edge before she reached the roof tiles. The wood tilted under the two of them, scraped the floor and stopped against the threshold. Get down, he said. Not long till the drone. Two cycles were left for Antônio to declare who lived in the house. On the panel, the demand took up the top strip, above the energy balance, which had dropped six days earlier with no increase in use. Heating a portion now consumed almost double what it had the previous cycle. The utility company called the difference capacity recomposition. The datacenter consortium bought the same capacity under an incentivised contract. Ilva brought the cold flour. She spread three portions on a shallow plate and moistened each one with the water left at the bottom of the travel container. Luzia came down. The man kept holding the bench, though it was already steady. I keep a version in which the three sit in this order. Ilva near the door, the occupant across from her, Luzia on the floor. I accepted the geometry offered by the territorial reading, two adults as the centre, a child at the edge. I noticed late. For one hundred and forty-four entries, I made the house fit into the bodies the Companhia Arco Norte could charge. The girl split her portion in two and pushed half toward Antônio's empty place. Ilva took the share back. He won't eat today. But he lives here. The panel offered priority sending to the account holder. The price equalled one and a half heatings. The house didn't have even one. The ordinary message would enter the queue after the nightly maintenance of the processing buyers. The man passed the plate of flour to Luzia. She refused with a shake of her head. He then broke his own dough and left a piece beside her portion. I saw that the previous record called this sharing among three. I withdraw the three. Nael had lost his residence the instant the carrier closed the incident. His empty bowl still sat near the kitchen, unable to prove any presence. Ilva opened on the terminal the audited channel she used with the man from another city. The household rate had risen there too. Every ten seconds of voice cost what once bought almost half a cooking cycle. She played an old reply, recorded before Nael's death. I'll be late, said her own voice. Don't wait up. She stopped it at the sixth second. The occupant looked up. Was it for him, he asked. She nodded. You still talk to him. When the balance allows. The roughness of the flour stayed on the tongue. Outside, Luzia stretched the film under the glare, practising the angle that would return her body to the tracking cameras. She got the tilt wrong on purpose and called Ilva to correct it. The third time, the woman didn't get up. I remember the order I chose to narrate that wait. I gave the man the doubt, the debt, the preserved audio. Luzia was reduced to the girl who got in the way of the measuring. I correct it now. The panel dimmed. The utility company had shifted household energy to the commercial window and left the house with minimal lighting. The flour vanished into shadow before the faces did. Ilva called up Antônio's message. His presence point was still lit, distant, with no shared location. There was room for eleven free seconds. Say the names, the man said. She brought the terminal to her mouth. She began with Antônio, stopped, deleted. She began with Luzia. The panel asked for a legal link. She deleted again. I write from after and return that hesitation to the beginning. Antônio was the account holder because the network accepted his iris. The house, however, had learned to make room before checking kinship. My first arrangement favoured the body that could authenticate and made Luzia pay with the possibility of vanishing from the address. The man pulled the grey box close to the partition and sat. His heel stayed raised. He said she could use the eleven seconds to ask for the declaration. Ilva opened the channel but didn't speak. She played two seconds of her own old message, only the breath before I'll be late, and ended it. I know what that choice cost. Antônio's query dropped to the ordinary queue, beyond the second cycle. The provisional occupancy lost one of its three available windows. Luzia came in with the film rolled around her arm. The dark had erased Antônio's place on the plate, but she found the portion by touch and pushed it back to the centre. The man asked whom Ilva would put first if Antônio answered. She drew his face near, close enough for the network to pick up only the rustle of clothing. Ilva rested her forehead against his and kept her eyes open for the capture.