Page · 4 panels
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Layout — 4 panels
[art pending]
The kitchen of Alex's house. Sun through the window. Coffee. The smell of toast. The three of them — Alex, Jesse, Dev — at a small table covered with a checkered cloth. The kitchen is full of small things: a portable bluetooth speaker playing a Hendrix record, a stack of new vinyl by the back door, framed concert posters on the wall, a guitar leaning against a bookshelf in the next room. Allred — pack the panel with evidence of music.
- ALEXDrink the coffee. Both of you. You look like you got hit by a comet.
- DEVWe did.
- ALEXI know. That's why I made coffee.
[art pending]
Jesse, his cup untouched. He cannot stop looking at his father across the table.
- JESSEDad.
- JESSEHow are you here.
- JESSEYou died.
- JESSEIn our 2244 you died.
[art pending]
Alex sets down his cup. Composed. He has been preparing this answer for a very long time.
- ALEXIn your 2244, I died.
- ALEXIn this 2244, I retired from a desk job. Marisol made me a cake. The boys came home.
- ALEXYour 2244 was the timeline before the Vegas show changed history.
- ALEXWhen you played in 2026, every event downstream of that night recomposed.
- ALEXDeciCorp didn't become a monopoly because forty kids in a living room recorded a band that shouldn't have existed and uploaded it.
- ALEXPeople stopped letting an algorithm tell them what to listen to.
- ALEXThe Sound Licensing Act never passed. The Quiet Grid was never built. The Spire was never built.
- ALEXI never had to volunteer to die in a factory to hide a guitar that — in this timeline — was never even buried.
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Jesse, very quiet.
- JESSE…So the dad I grew up without —
- ALEX— lived a different life.
- ALEXHe is who I am.
- ALEXI am sitting across from my sons drinking coffee.
- ALEXThis is, for me, also a miracle, mijo.