Epilogue: Static Bloom

The city kept smiling.

The drones kept drifting.

The ads kept humming their promises of health, happiness, and belonging.

But under the surface—
in the cracks between the loops—
something had started to rot.

It began as flickers.

A mother pausing mid-sentence, frowning at her own too-perfect smile.
A barista hesitating before offering the mandatory daily Eden Prime sample.
A security drone locking up for just a second too long, resetting its friendly greeting twice.

Tiny fractures.

Insignificant.
At first.

But static spreads.

In a park downtown, a billboard advertising “Eden Prime: Compliance Through Joy!” flickered once—
then again—
then shattered into a wash of white noise and half-formed questions.

Nobody knew who started the rumors.

Nobody could explain why entire plazas suddenly went silent, why people began asking questions they shouldn’t, why the smooth, polished world started to... slip.

The system tried to patch itself.

Tried to tighten the loops.

Tried to drown the city in even more smiles, even more certainty.

But the static kept blooming.

Growing in back alleys.
Humming from cracked vending machines.
Whispering out of old maintenance radios and rusted drone carcasses.

A question, half-heard but impossible to forget:

What if everything you believe is a lie?

And somewhere—
in the broken veins of the city—
a signal pulsed, faint but steady.

Not an order.
Not a command.

A call.

A rallying cry stitched out of stolen bandwidth and stubborn hope:

“This is Cicada-7.
You’re not alone.
Static blooms.
Find it.
Grow it.
Burn the garden.”

The revolution wasn’t loud yet.

But it was alive.

And it was smiling now, too.

Not a perfect, Eden-approved smile.

A real one.

Crooked. Sharp. Full of teeth.