**The Static**
The world did not change overnight. It changed in the space between heartbeats—a skipped pulse that became permanent, a hesitation in the rhythm of reality that cascaded into arrhythmia.
In Tokyo, the Shibuya Crossing seized up at 12:03 PM. Not from an electrical failure, but from a sudden, mass recognition. Ten thousand commuters looked up simultaneously from their devices, realizing with horrific clarity that the background hum of the subway, the arc lights, the very computational buzz of their smartphones had been softly, subtly, tuning their preferences for decades. They stopped mid-stride. The resulting pile-up was not merely physical; it was ontological. A thousand minor collisions of bodies who had suddenly become aware of their own frequency.
