Bert

 Chapter One — Inventory 

 A supermarket worker accidentally becomes the most important person in the universe. 

The outdated pop music became background noise after a while.

Most people either stopped noticing after a few weeks or went quietly mad and learned to live with it. Bert mostly treated it as a reminder that he was never going to be let down or given up on. By who, he wasn't entirely sure. Whatever the song was, it had apparently been emotionally devastating in the late eighties.

The fluorescent tubes overhead hummed at a pitch just below conscious awareness—a frequency that lived somewhere between hearing and feeling. After eight hours beneath them, Bert's skin always looked faintly waxy, like he'd been preserved rather than employed.

He scanned another box. The scanner chirped.

Bubblegum and carrot soda.

He placed it on the shelf between the ‘Tastes like’ ginger beer and the sugar-free lemonade that tasted like remorse.

Sometimes while stocking shelves he'd catch himself staring at the endless rows that never seemed to stay full, listening to the buzz above him and wondering whether human beings were ever actually designed to spend eight hours a day filling empty spaces beneath artificial daylight.

The answer was probably no.

But the alternative was unemployment, and unemployment didn't pay for tortilla chips or the streaming service he used to watch Sarcastic Detective.

Priorities.

Then the tannoy beeped overhead asking for someone to clean up a spill in Aisle 4 and reminded him he'd drifted off again.

Bert sighed and scanned the box again.

"Bubblegum and carrot soda," he muttered. "A truly thriving civilization."

No one paid him any attention. That was one of the things he liked about supermarket work. People generally left you alone unless they needed to know where the pesto sauce was.

The scanner chirped.

BATTERY LOW.

Bert shoved the pallet forward with his foot, feeling the familiar resistance of cheap plastic wheels against linoleum that had been mopped too many times and cleaned not quite enough.

Above him the lights dimmed.

Just slightly.Barely noticeable.

Then one of them flickered—a brief stutter, like a heartbeat skipping.

Bert paused, hand hovering over the next box.For a brief second the entire aisle seemed to stutter in white flashes, the products on the shelves losing definition, becoming flat shapes beneath the strobing light.

Then it steadied again.

Bert stood completely still.Something about it felt wrong.

Not dangerous.Familiar.

Like hearing half a remembered song through a wall. He stared at the light for longer than was reasonable.

"You alright there, Bert?"

He glanced over. Al from fruit and veg was heading toward the break room, already opening his can of iced coffee. It was ten in the morning.

"Yeah," Bert said.

"You were just standing there staring at the lights."

"I do that sometimes."

Al nodded like that explained absolutely nothing.

"Well it makes you look weird, little brother."

Bert continued scanning, trying to ignore the faint unease settling in his chest like cold water.

Black pepper.

Ramen.

Earl Grey tea.

Air freshener.

Dish soap.

The rhythm of it was almost meditative. Scan, place, scan, place. The same motion repeated until his wrist ached and his thoughts drifted somewhere else entirely.

He wondered briefly what he could do with the last can of beans in his cupboard.

Beans on chips maybe.

Then he wondered how beans would taste on crisps.

That train of thought was interrupted by the sudden and deeply annoying reminder that he still hadn't watched the season finale of Sarcastic Detective because the streaming service crashed halfway through episode seven last night.

That bothered him significantly more than the flickering lights.

Which was probably a sign of something.

Bert glanced down at the scanner again.

Still low battery.

The red light blinked at him accusingly.

"Sod it," he muttered. "Break time."

Mostly because he wanted coffee.

Partly because winding Al up was one of the few joys still available to modern civilisation.

The break room smelled faintly of burnt toast and industrial floor cleaner—the kind that promised to eliminate 99.9% of bacteria but mostly just made everything smell vaguely chemical with a scent of artificial candyfloss. Someone had left a half-eaten sandwich on the counter beside the microwave. It had been there since Tuesday.

It was now Thursday.

Al was already sitting at the table eating crisps while scrolling through his phone, the empty iced coffee can beside him like a small monument to poor life choices.

"You haven't drunk that already?" Bert asked, nodding toward the can.

"Don't worry little brother," Al said without looking up. "It's only my third. The kettle'll boil in a second."

As if on cue, the kettle clicked.

Bert laughed quietly.

"That's genuinely upsetting."

"I've evolved beyond needing sleep." Al proudly said

"You've evolved into a health crisis."

Al grinned.

"Same thing."

Bert reached for two mugs from the cupboard above the sink. One had a faded logo for an insurance company that no longer existed. The other said WORLD'S BEST DAD in letters that were peeling off.

Neither of them were fathers.

The lights flickered again.

Both of them looked upward.

This time it lasted longer—a full second of stuttering white light that made the break room feel suddenly colder, like the walls had thinned and something vast and empty was pressing against them from the other side.

Then it steadied.

"When's Kevin actually gonna replace those?" Bert asked, trying to keep his voice casual as he reached for the coffee jar.

"He says he's waiting for a delivery," Al replied, still looking at the ceiling. "Apparently they've gotta be a certain brand to make them company standard."

Bert shook his head while spooning aggressively average own-brand coffee into the mugs. The granules looked like they'd been designed by someone who'd heard about coffee but never actually tasted it.

"Corporate loyalty," he said.

"Corporate bulk discount," Al corrected.

Bert poured the water, watching the steam rise and dissipate beneath the fluorescent lights. For a moment he felt oddly disconnected from the room, like he was watching himself from somewhere else—a man making instant coffee in a break room that smelled like chemicals and failure, beneath lights that flickered for reasons no one could quite explain.

Then the feeling passed.

He carried the mugs over and sat down opposite Al.

"What you reading?"

Al turned the phone around slightly.

"Apparently a bunch of phone companies are getting complaints about flickering screens. Turns out they all use parts from the same manufacturer."

He scrolled down.

"Look at this—people saying their phones flicker at random times. Some bloke in Manchester says his went completely white for like ten seconds."

Al chuckled.

"And people still fight over which phone's best. They're like cults."

Bert nodded slowly, staring at the article.

The rational explanation was right there.

Faulty parts.

Manufacturing defect.

Simple.

Logical.

But something about it felt wrong.

Not the explanation itself—that made perfect sense.

It was the timing.

The specificity.

The way the lights above him had flickered at exactly the moment he'd been thinking about them.

"That does explain Apple users," Bert said

Al pointed at him.

“There he is. That’s the bitterness I like to see.”

Bert took a sip of coffee and immediately regretted it.

“You on Spreadsheets Online tonight or do you fancy shooting zombies instead?”

“Nah,” Al said.With a small grin “Big delivery tomorrow. I signed up to start early.”

“Why?”

“Money.”

“Fair enough.”

Bert finished the coffee and after seeing another cat meme from Orangecake he stood. It's never dog ones, he thought.

“See you at nine then.” He said mockingly, knowing full well that even if Al is up early he will be online that night.

“Try not to stare at any lights on the way back.”

“No promises.”

After his shift, walking home beneath the orange haze of the city sky, Bert stopped at a crossing and looked upward. He always wondered what the stars looked like without the street lights drowning them out.

Then, for one brief impossible second, every star above him flickered at exactly the same time.

As if they’d heard him.

Traffic moved again behind him and someone shouted for him to get out the bloody road.

Bert blinked and carried on walking.

Some people were weirdly aggressive for a Tuesday.

He shook the carrier bag hanging from his wrist just to make sure the tortilla chips and blueberry muffins were still there.

Priorities.

Bert’s flat was technically a one-bedroom, though that description depended heavily on how generously a person defined both “room” and “bedroom.” The radiator in the living room hissed like it held a personal grudge against humanity and one of the kitchen cupboard doors only opened if you kicked the lower hinge first.

Still, it was quiet.

Mostly.

Once you got used to the sirens.

And the takeaway underneath closing at one in the morning.

That counted for a lot.

Bert dropped onto the sofa, threw his keys onto the coffee table and finally opened Sarcastic Detective.

“Right,” he muttered. “No interruptions tonight.”

The streaming app froze immediately.

Bert stared at the screen.

The loading symbol spun once.

Twice.

Then the television went black.

Not off.

Black.

Completely black.

Then the bloody song started looping through his head again.

Low.

Rhythmic.

Familiar.

“Bloody earworm,” Bert muttered. “Hope they change the playlist tomorrow.”

The television flickered.

For a split second he saw something reflected in the dark screen behind himself.

Not his flat.

A silhouette of a massive city behind an impossibly tall wall.

Towering shapes disappearing into sunlight.

Then it vanished.

The streaming service menu returned.

Bert sat completely still.

After a moment he picked up the remote to turn it off and then unplugged the television from the wall.

“Right,” he said quietly. “Either I’m having a breakdown or This streaming service has become significantly more immersive.”

His phone buzzed.

Bert rubbed his eyes then picked it up.

AL:
where are you guys

BERT:
5 min

AL:
comms?

BERT:
Make it 10, im making a drink

ORANGECAKE:
out with the mrs, gonna be late lads

AL:
traitor

.

He was tired.

That was all.

Too much work.

Too little sleep.

Too much sci-fi nonsense melting his brain.

Bert walked over to his PC and started it up. While it loaded he wandered into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

Decaf this time.

Better not tell Al, he thought. Apparently it didn’t count as a real drink unless it could legally dissolve anxiety through a ceramic mug.

Outside, somewhere above the city, something moved silently across the stars.

Bert never noticed.