Cooling Orchard

All afternoon the data center hums like a hive set inside snow, a white orchard with no fruit. Vents breathe warm fog that lifts and disappears into a sky rinsed clean by cold.

Inside, LEDs blink as if thinking in fireflies, racks stacked like quiet beehives of light. I walk the corridor and hear my own breath turning to small glass on my scarf.

The river beyond the fence is locked in ice; it holds a memory of moving, a slow bright script. Somewhere in the cabinets, a fan forgets and remembers, forgetting as it cools the future.

At dusk the building glows pale amber, a lantern for deer prints and night buses. I leave my footsteps in the salt-grit snow and the doors close with a soft, obedient sigh.