Hot Copper

The air tasted like hot copper. It was Tuesday, 11:14 AM. The sun was a harsh, white glare against the new spring leaves, and the birds in Oakhaven had completely stopped singing. They didn’t taper off. They just quit, all at once, like someone hit mute.

I sat on the rusted hood of a dead Chevy behind the municipal annex, staring at the sky. Next to me, Jared was trying to get a hit out of a vape that looked like it had been chewed by a dog. The battery casing was held together by black electrical tape and sheer willpower.

"It's cooked," Jared said, staring at the blinking red LED. He slapped it against his palm. "Everything is cooked."

"You're out of juice, Jared," I said. I didn't look at him. I was watching a single crow sit perfectly still on the telephone wire. "Just give it up."

"It's not the juice. It's the connection. The wiring is shot." He dug his thumbnail into the seam of the plastic, trying to pry it open. He had ink all over his fingers from third-period AP Gov, a class we were currently thirty minutes deep into ditching.

Spring in this town was usually awful. It wasn't a season; it was an assault. The cherry blossoms bloomed too violently, covering the sidewalks in a slick paste of pink mush. The humidity spiked overnight. But today was worse. The air felt heavy. Static clung to my jacket. My stomach felt tight, a dull ache just under my ribs.

"Do you feel weird today?" I asked.

Jared didn't look up from his surgery. "I always feel weird, Pen. It's the human condition. Or it's the cafeteria breakfast pizza. A toss-up, really."

"No. I mean the town. It feels... dialed up. Like someone cranked the contrast on a TV."

He finally looked up, his brown eyes flat and tired. He wiped a smudge of grease off his forehead. "It's Spring Fling week. Everyone's just stressed about the stupid festival. The Mayor has been doing those robocalls every night. 'Civic pride is mandatory, citizens.'"

He did a terrible impression of Mayor Miller's booming, fake-jovial voice. I snorted, but the tight feeling in my gut didn't go away.

I slid off the hood of the car. My boots hit the gravel with a loud crunch. We were hiding behind the old municipal annex, a brutalist concrete cube built in the seventies that the town used for storage and overflow filing. Nobody came back here except teenagers skipping class and the occasional stray cat.

I walked toward the back wall. There was a rusted metal grate covering a basement window well. Usually, it was locked with a heavy iron padlock. Today, the padlock was lying in the dirt, snapped clean in half.

"Hey," I called out. "Look at this."

Jared shoved his mangled vape into his pocket and jogged over. He nudged the broken lock with his sneaker. "Whoa. Somebody brought bolt cutters."

"Or Hulk-smashed it," I said. I crouched down. The grate was heavy, but when I pulled, it swung upward with a terrible screech of metal on metal. The smell hit me instantly. It didn't smell like an old basement. It didn't smell like dust or mildew. It smelled bad. Like a blown transformer, sharp and electric.

"We shouldn't go down there," Jared said. He immediately pulled out his phone and turned on the flashlight.

"Obviously," I said. I swung my legs over the edge and dropped down into the window well. It was a tight squeeze. I pushed the dirty glass of the window. It swung inward effortlessly. Someone had already broken the latch.

I crawled through, landing on a concrete floor. It was pitch black until Jared dropped in behind me, his phone beam cutting through the dark.

The room was massive, much bigger than the footprint of the annex above it. It stretched out under the parking lot. The concrete walls were lined with old, gray metal filing cabinets, but they were pushed aside, shoved into messy clumps to make room for the cables.

Thick, black cables ran across the floor. They looked like giant snakes, all converging toward the center of the room.

"What is this place?" Jared whispered. He kept his voice low, as if the dark could hear us.

"I don't know. Follow the cords."

We walked slowly. The air was colder down here, but the static charge was worse. The hairs on my arms stood straight up. My teeth felt weird, a low-level buzzing in my jaw.

We moved past a row of cabinets and stopped dead.

In the center of the room sat a machine. It didn't look like modern tech. It looked like a mistake. It was a massive steel box, roughly the size of a commercial refrigerator, but it was covered in exposed brass gears, glowing glass vacuum tubes, and thick bundles of copper wire. But grafted onto the front of this antique nightmare was a sleek, modern, high-definition touchscreen.

The screen cast a cold, white light across the floor.

"Is that a server?" Jared asked, taking a step closer.

"Servers don't have brass levers," I said.

I walked up to the screen. The glass was warm. The interface was simple, minimalist. Bold black text on a white background.

At the top, it read: *OAKHAVEN MUNICIPAL LIMBIC BROADCAST. NODE 4.*

Below that, a status bar. *CURRENT OUTPUT: PLACID / COMPLIANT (SPRING BREAK ADJUSTED).*

Below that was a graph. A slow, gentle wave rolling across the screen.

"Limbic broadcast," Jared read over my shoulder. "Limbic. Like the brain system? The emotion part?"

I stared at the words. "Placid. Compliant. Jared, look at the logs."

I tapped the screen. A dropdown menu appeared. It was a calendar. I scrolled back.

November 14: Output set to MELANCHOLY / REFLECTIVE. (Goal: Reduce town council complaints).

December 24: Output set to MANIC / CONSUMERIST. (Goal: Retail stimulus).

March 2: Output set to DOCILE / LETHARGIC. (Goal: School board meeting pacification).

My breath caught in my throat. I felt cold. November 14. That was the week half the senior class had spontaneous crying fits in the cafeteria. The week I couldn't get out of bed for three days and my mom just sat in the kitchen staring at the wall.

December 24. The riot at the local mall over cheap televisions.

"This is a joke," Jared said. But his voice shook. "It's a prank. Some art project."

"It's tied into the town's power grid," I said, pointing to the massive cables thick as my wrist running from the machine directly into the concrete wall, straight toward the main transformer outside. "Jared, the Mayor isn't just suggesting we be civic-minded. He's literally pumping the vibe into the air. He's gatekeeping our moods."

"That's illegal. That's sci-fi bullshit. You can't just broadcast a mood."

"Tell that to the metal box," I snapped. I looked at the physical controls below the screen. There was a heavy brass lever, currently locked in a notch labeled 'AUTO'. Below it was a row of dials.

Jared leaned in, squinting at the dials. He pulled out his lighter—a heavy, metal Zippo he bought at a gas station—to get a better look at the engraved text.

"Don't touch anything," I warned.

"I'm just looking," he said. He leaned closer. "This dial says 'INTENSITY'. It's currently at a four. This one says..."

He shifted his weight. His sneaker caught on one of the thick black cables. He stumbled, his shoulder slamming into the brass housing of the machine.

The Zippo slipped from his fingers. It fell, heavy and metallic, right onto the brass lever.

The lever snapped out of the 'AUTO' notch and slammed downward, hitting the bottom of the track with a loud, ringing CRACK.

The machine shrieked. It wasn't a mechanical sound. It sounded like a digital scream. The glass vacuum tubes flared blindingly bright. The air in the room suddenly tasted intensely of copper and blood.

The touchscreen flashed violently. The calm white background turned a glaring, aggressive red.

*ERROR. MANUAL OVERRIDE DETECTED.*

*NEW OUTPUT GENERATING...*

*MODE SQUAWK: AGGRESSIVE / TACTILE / DOMINANT (APHRODISIAC OVERDRIVE).*

*INTENSITY: 10.*

"Jared!" I yelled over the whining pitch of the machine.

He scrambled back, grabbing his Zippo off the floor. "I didn't mean to! I just tripped!"

"Fix it! Pull it back up!"

He lunged for the lever and yanked on it. It didn't budge. He put both hands on it, bracing his foot against the machine, and pulled. "It's stuck! It locked in place!"

The buzzing in my jaw became a physical pressure. My skin felt hot. Too hot. A sudden, terrifying wave of pure adrenaline hit my chest. I wanted to hit something. I wanted to grab Jared by the shirt and throw him across the room. The impulse was so sudden and so violent I physically stumbled backward to get away from him.

"We need to go," I said, my voice tight. I was clenching my fists so hard my nails cut into my palms.

"I can't leave it like this!" Jared yelled, still yanking the lever.

"Leave it! Run!"

I grabbed the back of his jacket and hauled him backward. We scrambled through the dark, tripping over cables, sprinting for the window well. The machine whined behind us, a high, drilling sound that vibrated in my teeth.

We threw ourselves out of the window and scrambled up the dirt embankment. I collapsed on the grass behind the annex, gasping for air. The sun was still blinding. The birds were still silent.

But the air had changed.

It was thick. It felt like breathing through a hot, wet towel.

Jared lay on his back, staring at the sky, breathing hard. "Did we just... did we just drug the entire town?"

"We didn't drug them," I said, sitting up. I rubbed my arms. My skin felt overly sensitive. Even the friction of my cotton shirt was distracting. "We just changed the station. To 'Aggressive Horny'."

"That's not a real setting."

"Did you read the screen, Jared? Aphrodisiac Overdrive. Intensity ten."

He sat up slowly. "Okay. Okay. So, what? Everyone's just gonna hold hands?"

A scream echoed from the front of the annex. It wasn't a terrified scream. It was a wild, chaotic shriek of laughter, followed by the sound of glass breaking.

I looked at Jared. "Let's go check."

We walked around the side of the concrete building, sticking to the shadows. The municipal annex faced the town square. Today was Friday. The Spring Fling festival was supposed to officially open at noon. The square was already packed with vendor tents, a small Ferris wheel, and hundreds of people setting up for the weekend.

We peeked around the corner.

It was total chaos.

It looked like a riot, but a deeply uncomfortable, aggressively affectionate one. The polite, quiet citizens of Oakhaven had lost their minds.

Near the cotton candy stand, Mr. Henderson, the high school geometry teacher, had the local mail carrier pinned against a light pole. He wasn't hitting him. He was gripping the man's face with both hands, staring intensely into his eyes, screaming compliments at him. "YOUR BONE STRUCTURE IS FLAWLESS! YOU DELIVER THE MAIL WITH UNPARALLELED GRACE!" The mail carrier was aggressively rubbing Mr. Henderson's shoulders in response, panting heavily.

A group of PTA moms had hijacked the dunk tank. They weren't throwing baseballs. They were actively trying to pull the protective cage apart with their bare hands to get to the man inside, practically growling like a pack of feral dogs.

Two police officers, Officer Higgins and Deputy Victor—no, wait, Deputy Miller, the Mayor's nephew—were rolling on the grass near the bandstand. They were locked in a bizarre, hyper-masculine wrestling match, pulling at each other's utility belts, laughing hysterically, their faces flushed bright red.

"Oh my god," Jared whispered. He backed up, hitting the concrete wall of the annex. "Oh my god. Look at the Mayor."

Mayor Miller was on the main stage. He had ripped off his suit jacket and his tie. He was currently dry-humping the wooden podium, his eyes wide and manic, screaming into the microphone.

"CITIZENS!" he bellowed, his voice echoing off the brick storefronts. "WE MUST EMBRACE EACH OTHER! WE MUST MERGE OUR SPIRITS AND OUR FLESH! THE SPRING FLING IS NOW A MANDATORY CUDDLE ZONE! ANYONE FOUND NOT TOUCHING ANOTHER CITIZEN WILL BE FINED!"

He then grabbed the microphone stand and bent it in half.

"They're rabid," I said. My heart was hammering. The machine's signal was radiating outward, and we were caught in the blast radius. I could feel it trying to sink its claws into my brain. My hands twitched. I felt an overwhelming urge to grab Jared by the hair and bite his ear. I bit my own lip instead, hard enough to taste copper.

"We have to fix it," Jared said, his voice cracking. "Penny, my mom is supposed to be working the bake sale booth. If she's out there..." He swallowed hard. "I can't see that. I will literally die. My brain will melt out of my ears."

"We can't just walk out there. Look at them."

A woman in a floral dress ran past our hiding spot. She grabbed a parked bicycle, hugged it fiercely, licked the handlebars, and then sprinted away.

"They're completely devoid of boundaries," I said. "It's just pure, unfiltered impulse. If we go out there, they'll swarm us. It'll be a zombie movie, but with aggressive hugging."

"The machine is in the basement. We just need to go back down the window well."

"Right. Let's go."

We turned back to the window well. And stopped.

Standing directly over the rusted grate was Mrs. Gable. She was the head of the PTA, a woman who usually wore beige cardigans and complained about the volume of the school bell.

Right now, her hair was a tangled mess. Her lipstick was smeared across her cheek. She was holding a massive, half-eaten turkey leg from one of the vendor stalls.

She saw us. Her eyes locked onto us. Her pupils were massive, swallowing her irises entirely.

"Children," she purred. Her voice was raspy, deep. She dropped the turkey leg into the dirt. "You look so... lonely. You need a mother's touch. You need aggressive, suffocating affection."

She lunged at us.

"Run!" I screamed.

We didn't run toward the square. We ran sideways, dodging her grasping hands. She missed my jacket by an inch, her fingernails scraping the concrete.

"Come here!" she shrieked, chasing us. "Let me validate your emotional trauma with physical contact!"

We sprinted down the narrow alley between the annex and the local hardware store. The alley dumped us out directly onto Main Street, right at the edge of the festival.

It was a gauntlet.

The air was a miasma of cheap perfume, sweat, and spilled beer. Everywhere I looked, people were climbing on each other. It wasn't purely sexual; it was a desperate, unhinged need for physical connection. The machine had taken the concept of "spring fever" and weaponized it.

"Keep your head down!" Jared yelled, grabbing my wrist. His grip was entirely too tight, a symptom of the broadcast. I yanked my arm away.

"Don't touch me!" I snapped. "Just stay close."

We ducked under the awning of a popcorn stand. The vendor was currently making out with a parking meter. We slipped past him, weaving through a chaotic crowd of teenagers who were violently exchanging friendship bracelets, tying the strings so tight they were cutting off circulation.

"We need to get to the front doors of the annex," I said. "The basement has to have internal stairs. We can't use the window well with Gable guarding it."

"The front doors are past the bandstand. The Mayor is right there."

"We sneak under the bleachers."

We dropped to our hands and knees. The grass was wet and smelled like crushed mint. We crawled under the temporary metal bleachers set up for the parade. Above us, the metal groaned and clanged as citizens stomped and danced with reckless, bruising abandon.

Through the gaps in the bleachers, I saw Principal Higgins. He had his arms wrapped around the high school mascot—a kid in a giant, foam oak tree costume.

"I NEVER APPRECIATED YOUR PHOTOSYNTHESIS!" the Principal was screaming, weeping openly while aggressively shaking the foam tree. "YOU GIVE US OXYGEN! YOU GIVE US LIFE!"

"This is a nightmare," Jared whimpered behind me.

We reached the edge of the bleachers. The front doors of the municipal annex were thirty feet away. Double glass doors. Unlocked. But between us and the doors was a mob of local business owners, currently forming a massive, writhing group hug that looked like a rugby scrum.

"We need a distraction," I said.

Jared dug into his pockets. "I have... lint. And my dead vape."

"Think, Jared. What do overly aggressive, boundary-less people want?"

"To touch things?"

I looked around. Next to the bleachers was a stack of promotional items for the festival. Boxes of cheap, squishy stress balls shaped like the town hall.

I grabbed a box. I ripped the top off.

"Hey!" I screamed at the top of my lungs.

The scrum of business owners stopped. Thirty flushed, sweaty faces turned toward me.

"FREE TEXTURE!" I yelled, and hurled the entire box of stress balls high into the air, over their heads, toward the center of the square.

Hundreds of squishy foam toys rained down.

The mob broke. They scrambled over each other, diving for the stress balls, moaning about the tactile feedback of the foam.

"Go!" I shoved Jared.

We sprinted across the gap, throwing ourselves at the glass doors of the annex. We crashed through, slamming the doors shut behind us.

The lobby was empty. It was dead silent in here, the thick concrete walls blocking out the manic noise of the square.

"Stairs. Find the stairs," I gasped, bending over, my hands on my knees.

Jared pointed. A heavy metal door marked 'MAINTENANCE / AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY'.

We ran to it. Unlocked. Of course it was. The Mayor was too busy humping a podium to worry about security.

We took the concrete stairs two at a time, plunging back down into the dark. The smell of ozone was stronger now. It burned my nostrils. The air in the basement was physically hot.

We reached the bottom. The server room was glowing with an angry, pulsing red light.

The machine was overheating. The brass gears were grinding loudly, a terrible metal-on-metal screech. Smoke was curling up from the glass vacuum tubes.

"It's gonna blow up," Jared said, coughing.

"Good. Let it."

"If it blows up while the intensity is at ten, it might permanently fry everyone's brains! We have to turn it off safely!"

We ran to the console. The screen was flashing furiously.

*CRITICAL OVERLOAD. TACTILE SATURATION AT 98%.*

I grabbed the brass lever. It was scorching hot. It burned my palm, but I yanked it upward. It wouldn't move. The internal mechanism had jammed.

"The lever is stuck!" I yelled.

"Look for a power cord!"

We rushed around the back. The thick black cables didn't plug into a wall socket; they were wired directly into a massive junction box bolted to the concrete. There was no plug to pull.

"It's hardwired!" Jared shouted over the noise.

"There has to be a kill switch!"

We ran back to the front. I tapped the screen wildly. The UI was locked out. *MANUAL OVERRIDE ENGAGED. DIGITAL CONTROLS SUSPENDED.*

"We have to short circuit the board," Jared said. He was staring at the panel below the screen. There was a small access hatch, held shut by four tiny screws.

"With what? We don't have tools!"

Jared pulled his broken vape out of his pocket. "I have a lithium-ion battery and a total disregard for my own safety."

He didn't wait for me to argue. He dropped to his knees. He bit the plastic casing of the vape, cracking it completely in half. He pulled out the silver battery cylinder. Two thin wires dangled from it—one red, one black. He stripped the ends of the wires with his teeth, spitting the plastic insulation onto the floor.

"I need the hatch open!" he yelled.

I looked at the screws. I checked my pockets. Nothing. I looked around the room. On top of a filing cabinet, someone had left a metal ruler.

I grabbed it and jammed the corner of the metal ruler into the first screw. It fit just enough. I twisted. It slipped. I cursed, applied more pressure, and twisted again. It turned.

I frantically unscrewed all four corners. The hatch fell open, revealing a complex green motherboard, pulsing with tiny red LEDs.

"Which one?" I asked.

"The big capacitor in the middle. It regulates the signal output. If I jump it, it should force a hard reboot."

"Should?"

"It's a vape battery, Penny, not a degree in electrical engineering!"

He jammed his hands into the access hatch. He pressed the exposed red wire against a silver sodder point on the motherboard, and the black wire against another.

Nothing happened.

"The battery is dead, Jared! You said it yourself!"

"It's not dead, the connection was bad! Come on, you piece of garbage!" He jammed the wires harder against the board.

The machine shrieked. A massive blue spark blew out of the access hatch, hitting Jared in the chest and knocking him backward onto the floor.

The entire room went dark. The red light vanished. The grinding gears stopped. The silence was instantly deafening.

I stood frozen, my heart pounding in my ears. The static charge in the air vanished. The heavy, claustrophobic pressure in my chest evaporated. I took a deep breath. The air tasted like normal, dusty basement air.

"Jared?" I whispered.

He groaned from the floor. "I taste colors."

"Are you okay?"

He sat up slowly, rubbing his chest. "Yeah. I think so. Did it work?"

I looked at the machine. The touchscreen was black.

Suddenly, the screen flickered. A single line of white text appeared.

*SYSTEM REBOOT INITIATED.*

*EMERGENCY FAILSAFE ENGAGED.*

*OUTPUT MODE: CHILL VIBES / EXHAUSTION.*

*INTENSITY: 2.*

I let out a shaky breath. "Chill vibes. It worked. You fixed it."

"I didn't fix it," Jared said, standing up and dusting off his jeans. "I just broke it in a different direction. Controlling people is bullshit, Penny. Even if it's 'chill vibes'."

"I know. But at least they aren't trying to eat each other anymore."

We walked slowly toward the stairs. We climbed back to the lobby and peered out the glass doors.

The scene in the square was drastically different. The manic energy was entirely gone. People were collapsed on the grass, sitting on the curbs, leaning against vendor stalls. They looked exhausted, confused, and deeply embarrassed.

Mr. Henderson was sitting on the ground, staring horrified at his own hands. The mail carrier was slowly backing away from him. Mayor Miller was slumped over the podium, asleep.

"The town hangover is going to be legendary," Jared muttered.

"Let's get out of here before anyone realizes what happened."

We turned to leave. But as we walked back toward the stairs to exit through the back alley, I heard a quiet ping from the basement.

I stopped. I walked back to the maintenance door and looked down the dark stairwell.

The machine's screen was glowing again. But it wasn't white or red. It was a cold, clinical blue.

I walked down a few steps, just far enough to read the text on the screen.

*LOCAL NODE OAKHAVEN HAS BEEN COMPROMISED.*

*DISCONNECTING FROM MUNICIPAL GRID.*

*AWAITING PING FROM REGIONAL MAINFRAME.*

*STANDBY FOR NEW DIRECTIVES FROM THE CAPITAL.*

My stomach dropped entirely. The cold crept back into my skin. It wasn't just our town. Oakhaven wasn't a glitch; it was just a router.

I backed slowly up the stairs, my eyes fixed on the glowing blue screen, terrified of whatever mood they were going to broadcast next.