THE GLITCH#
Chapter Two#
DAVID SHAW: The Gravity of Achievement#
The pain was a bright, thin wire of white heat that started in David’s left buttock and unspooled all the way down to his heel. It was his first waking thought, every morning at 5:45 AM. It wasn’t a medical mystery; it was L5-S1 nerve compression, a souvenir from twenty years of leaning over patients and, more recently, three years of leaning over a standing desk that promised “ergonomic liberation” but delivered only a $1,200 invoice.
David didn’t move. He lay on the $6,000 Stearns & Foster mattress–another “investment” in sleep health–and waited for the ibuprofen to find the inflammation. Beside him, Clara breathed with the heavy rhythm of someone who had earned her rest.
He reached for his phone. The screen’s blue light was a slap to his retinas.
Notification: Mountain View Highlands HOA (Bot-ID: 992-A) Violation Detected: Unit 402. Item: Unapproved Balcony Vegetation. Status: $150 Fine Applied. Recurring daily until remediation.
David stared at the text. He knew exactly what it was. It was the tomato plant. Clara had bought it for Leo’s third-grade science project. It was currently four inches taller than the railing, which meant it had been flagged by the HOA’s perimeter drone–a silent, high-resolution snitch that patrolled the “luxury” complex every six hours.
“Bastards,” he whispered.
He opened his banking app. It was a masochistic ritual.
Balance: $12,402.11 Pending Transaction: Mortgage - $5,942.18 Pending Transaction: HOA Dues - $1,185.00 Pending Transaction: PITI Escrow - $1,240.00
The math was a slow-motion car crash. After the property tax and the insurance–the “I” in PITI that never seemed to actually cover anything–he was looking at $8,300 a month just to keep the roof from being repossessed. He made $425,000 a year at Telexa, and the math still didn’t work.
He swung his legs off the bed. The wire in his leg snapped taut. He let out a low, hissed breath, his hand finding the edge of the nightstand.
“David?” Clara’s voice was thick with sleep. “You okay?”
“Fine,” he lied. “Just the back.”
“Did you call United? About the PT authorization?”
David closed his eyes. He was a doctor. He had spent a decade navigating the ICD-10 codes, the pre-auths, the peer-to-peer reviews. And yet, yesterday, a “Physician Representative” for United Healthcare–a man who sounded like he was reading from a script in a call center in Manila–had told him that his requested ten sessions of physical therapy were “not clinically indicated” based on the proprietary algorithm’s assessment of his recovery curve.
“I’ll call them from work,” he said.
“My mother wants to know if we can go to that organic nursery in Los Altos this weekend,” Clara said, shifting under the covers. “She says the kids need more greens. Real greens.”
“We have a $150 fine for the greens we already have, Clara.”
“Don’t start with the money, David. Not this early. It’s a scarcity mindset. It’s toxic.”
David stood up, his spine popping like dry kindling. He looked at his reflection in the en-suite mirror. Graying at the temples, eyes underscored by the permanent purple bruises of the chronically underslept. He was the Director of Sleep Wellness for one of the largest tech companies on earth, and he hadn’t had a solid REM cycle since 2019.
He walked to the window and pulled back the blackout curtain. Outside, Mountain View was waking up in a haze of expensive, filtered air. A self-driving delivery pod hummed past on the street below. The drone circled back for another pass at his balcony.
He checked his watch. 6:15 AM.
Time to go promote wellness.