Part 9 — No One Gets the Off Switch
By morning the clip of Maya holding up a library card had done what quiet does when it’s honest—it traveled. People were calling it “ten seconds of oxygen.” The shelter turned off comments and left the video up. Anita taped a printout on the story-time door like a small flag: VOICE ≠ NOISE.
Cole and I rode the elevator to 3A with a thermos that tasted like decisions. He straightened his tie with the same gesture he uses to line up exhibits.
“Today is not a movie,” he said. “It’s a ledger. We lay numbers down until the math solves itself.”
“Boring,” I said.
“Saints preserve it,” he answered, and the doors opened.
Judge Hawkins took the bench at nine. Opposing counsel’s hair had learned new angles overnight. Ethan looked the way a man looks when a board meeting has not gone how he wanted: crisp, a millimeter off.
Cole started with Detective Ruiz because paper likes badges.
“Detective,” Cole said, “did your lab examine devices seized from Ms. Alvarez’s residence pursuant to a warrant?”
“Yes.” Ruiz’s voice was the kind of plain that makes a room trust its own ears. “We found a commercial air purifier retrofitted with a cellular module. Associated admin logs show thirty-seven remote commands labeled ‘Mindful Mode’ over sixty days. Time stamps correspond to changes in environmental controls—lights dimming, thermostat lowering—and to a system setting on paired phones consistent with Do Not Disturb.”
“Can that setting suppress emergency alerts?” Cole asked.
“It can suppress non-911 notifications,” Ruiz said. “It did in at least three instances we verified.” He referenced the daycare missed call. “We also recovered a pinhole camera in the window casing. Video files show activation concurrent with the mode changes. One clip captures Mr. Alvarez stating for the record the date and time of his visit.”
“Chain of custody?”
“Intact,” Ruiz said. “Signed and sealed from seizure to lab.”
Opposing counsel stood. “Detective, millions of Americans use wellness devices. Is any of this illegal?”
“Devices aren’t crimes,” Ruiz said. “What you do with them can be.”
Cole called Lena, then Marisol, then Taryn. They didn’t perform. They told the court about alerts when they picked an “angry” mood, about calendars labeled Reset, about sleeping under a thermostat that told them to be better women at sixty-six degrees. Taryn, steady as a metronome, explained how the admin panel worked. “You can push ‘Mindful Mode’ from a phone that isn’t even in the house,” she said. “It’s a universal remote for other people’s nervous systems.”
Opposing counsel tried to make it romance. “Would you agree my client wanted harmony?”
“I’d agree,” Lena said, “that he wanted quiet. Harmony is when more than one note gets to exist.”
June took the stand for twelve minutes that felt like a rulebook. She never used a word the law couldn’t carry. “Consistent with device wear,” she said. “Not diagnostic of abuse on its own. Significant when part of a pattern.”
Anita testified like a librarian reading a label in the stacks—dates, resources, the pathway from a circulation desk to a room with a lock a woman controls.
Opposing counsel rose with a flourish and tried to push the facts around. “Ms. Alvarez,” he said to Anita, “were you aware my client donates to literacy initiatives?”
“I am aware he knows what a book is,” she said, and the gallery pretended not to smile.
Cole called no one else. He didn’t need to. He sat, pen still, the way a man sits when he trusts the ledger.
Ethan took the stand, PR smile tuned to the wood paneling.
“Mr. Drake,” Cole said on cross, “did you propose marriage yesterday on a livestream?”
“My counsel has advised me not to speak to that,” Ethan said, angling the smile toward the judge.
“Did you know a protective order bars you from contact with Ms. Alvarez?”
“I am familiar with the order,” he said, keeping the words antiseptic.
“Do you consider a public proposal ‘contact’?”
His lawyer objected—relevance, form, the weather. The judge looked over her glasses. “We’ll get to it,” she said.
Cole shifted. “Who installed the cellular module in the purifier?”
“We outsource to a wellness contractor,” Ethan said smoothly. “I don’t know the specifics.”
“Who had admin access?”
“As CEO, I have visibility to our suite of tools,” he said. “Visibility isn’t control.”
“Do you deny pushing ‘Mindful Mode’ remotely thirty-seven times?”
“I deny any malicious intent,” he said. “My partner’s home was… dysregulated. Calm was an act of love.”
“Love doesn’t have an admin panel,” Cole said, and sat.
Opposing counsel tried to salvage a hymn from a book of fables. “Mr. Drake,” he said, “do you love the child at issue?”
“I want what’s best,” Ethan answered. “Boundaries are best. Our tools help families make better choices.”
In the back row, a woman put her hand to her mouth and then set it down again, choosing not to clap her sarcasm into the air.
Maya testified last.
“Ms. Alvarez,” Cole said, “do you want the court to silence anyone’s truth?”
“No,” she said. “I want the court to stop him from choosing my quiet for me.”
She didn’t cry. She didn’t aim for quotable. She told the judge that joy had been audited nightly and billed for. She described the feel of a thermostat you didn’t choose. She talked about signing a grocery receipt in the kitchen like a cashier while a man in a sweater nodded at “healthy boundaries.”
Opposing counsel kept it to a single question, as if small would harm less. “Ms. Alvarez, are you angry?”
“Yes,” she said. “Finally.”
The judge called a recess at noon. The room exhaled. Hallway air rushed in—the smell of hand sanitizer and vending machine pretzels and a copier someone kicked twice this morning.
My phone buzzed. Omar: board placed him on leave. Interim CEO named. Press release at 1. Investor wants to talk ethics code. A second text from the board counsel: Special committee invites submissions. Also, please preserve any correspondence re. proposed NDA. The words tasted like wood—dry, dependable.
Cole checked his watch. “Eat something with a fork,” he said. “Then we go back in and ask the judge to turn the off switch back into a wall plate.”
At the vending machines I bought a sandwich whose lettuce had already chosen its path. Maya stood beside me and didn’t pick anything. She stared at the far wall where a poster about mediation had a photo of two people laughing at nothing.
“Do I look like a person who would say yes to a ring on a stage?” she asked, not bitter, just checking the version of herself the world had been handed.
“You look like a person who held up a library card and it read like a flag,” I said. “You look like my kid.”
She took the sandwich and ate three bites because June told her yesterday that blood sugar counts as strategy. The shelter advocate handed her a cup of water and the court’s air conditioning did that thing cheap air does to a paper cup—made it sweat more than the people.
Ruiz found us near the elevators, a folder under his arm, tie imperfect. “We served a notice on his counsel about the stream,” he said. “We’ll let the judge decide if it’s contact. Separately, my lab caught an attempted remote wipe on the purifier’s module while it was in our custody. Blocked. That’s a different tree we can bark up if we have to.”
“Contempt?” Cole asked.
“Or obstruction,” Ruiz said. “Don’t plan around it. Just… don’t be surprised if a DA asks for a word later.”
Back in 3A, opposing counsel moved like a man who had memorized a dance and found the floor tilted. He argued that devices are neutral, that intent is pure, that my boots were loud. He said “boundaries” so many times the word sprouted blisters.
Cole didn’t argue poetry. He asked for the order: no contact, no remote commands, no altering of data, no third-party pickups without passwords, no public stunts meant to box a woman into consent. He used verbs that make clerks happy: restrain, enjoin, preserve.
Judge Hawkins stacked and restacked the papers in front of her and looked at all of us the way you look at an engine that has started to make sense.
“This is not a referendum on wellness,” she said. “This is not a referendum on motorcycles. This is a case about control. In this courtroom, calm is not a cudgel. A child’s laugh is not evidence of disorder. Devices that silence a home do not have a presumption of virtue.”
She turned to Maya. “Ms. Alvarez, your silence yesterday was… instructive.”
She turned to Ethan. “Mr. Drake, proposals are not court motions. You do not get to litigate via livestream.”
She shuffled the stack one more time like she was aligning something invisible.
“I am prepared to—” she began, and then the bailiff stepped forward with a note, the kind that moves a day sideways.
The judge read it. Her jaw did not move. “Counsel at sidebar,” she said, and the white noise machine near the bench hissed to life, irony and all.
We waited. The gallery craned and then minded its own business because the bailiff had a face that could curdle milk. The white noise purred like an expensive cat.
After a long minute, the judge looked up. “We will break until two,” she said, voice even. “Parties remain available.”
The gavel didn’t bang. It clicked again, a tiny metronome keeping the beat of boring.
In the hall, the note’s contents leaked the way notes do when people with ties and badges move too quickly. A junior DA passed briskly with a folder marked TECH. The clerk whispered to the clerk: contempt and proposal in the same sentence. Ruiz nodded to nobody and peeled off toward a side door as if summoned.
Cole’s phone buzzed. He read, then exhaled through his nose. “State’s attorney wants to be heard on a potential violation of the order,” he said. “This afternoon.”
Maya set the paper cup on a windowsill and watched a city move itself through lunch. “I don’t want a spectacle,” she said.
“You won’t make one,” Cole answered. “He did.”
Down the hall, a small boy’s laugh ricocheted off the tile. No one tapped a button. A clerk smiled into her sleeve like she’d been waiting all morning for proof that sound could behave itself without supervision.
My phone buzzed again. Pastor Lee: Soup’s on at five. No matter what. A second from Anita: If this runs late, I’ll keep the children’s room open. Lamps work as long as librarians do.
We stood there between wood and glass and paper and screens, holding a day that had decided to get complicated on schedule.
At 1:59, the bailiff opened the doors. We filed back in, a ledger of bodies in rows.
Judge Hawkins returned. The DA had taken a seat at counsel table with a folder like a thin anvil.
The judge lifted her pen.
“Before I rule on the petitions,” she said, “we will hear from the state regarding an alleged violation of this court’s protective order.”
Ethan’s jaw tightened a millimeter. His lawyer leaned in, the whisper version of triage.
The courtroom air changed—not louder, not quieter. Just the kind of alert that happens when you realize the off switch someone thought he owned might finally have a cover over it.
The DA stood.
“Your Honor,” she said, “the state moves for a finding of contempt.”
Part 10 — The Light, Chosen
The DA stood with a folder that looked thinner than the trouble inside it.
“Your Honor,” she said, “the state moves for a finding of contempt. The protective order bars contact. Yesterday’s livestream proposal—addressed to Ms. Alvarez by clear implication—was contact. We also note an attempted remote wipe on a device in police custody at 8:49 a.m. The lab blocked it. We are preserving that for separate action.”
Opposing counsel rose, already shaking his head. “A public wellness event cannot be construed as individual contact. My client named no one.”
The DA didn’t bother with theatre. She tapped the transcript. “He turned to Camera A and said, ‘You know who you are. You’re watching—everyone is.’ He proposed marriage. If that isn’t directed contact, then language has forfeited its job.”
Judge Hawkins looked at Ethan the way a mechanic looks at a bolt they know is going to strip if they give it one more try.
“Mr. Drake,” she said, “this court ordered you not to contact Ms. Alvarez. You do not get to engineer a loophole by speaking to her through a crowd. That’s not clever. That’s contempt.”
His chair creaked. The PR smile didn’t.
“As to the attempted remote wipe,” she continued, “that matter belongs to criminal court. I will not try it here. But I am not blind to what it says about respect for process.”
She took a breath that settled paper.
“Here’s the order,” she said, voice steady enough to hold the room between thumb and forefinger. “One: Respondent’s emergency custody petition remains denied. Two: Temporary protective order extended and expanded for one year. No contact means no contact—direct, indirect, public, theatrical, or by proxy. Three: Respondent is enjoined from initiating any remote command on any device in Ms. Alvarez’s home, vehicle, or person, and from causing any third party to do so. Four: Respondent will have no role—administrative or otherwise—in access to Ms. Alvarez’s accounts or devices. Five: Daycare and school are to use password-only pickup protocols; notarized letters are insufficient. Six: Respondent will remove himself from any bank account on which Ms. Alvarez is a co-signer within seventy-two hours and provide proof. Seven: The court finds Respondent in contempt for violating the order via livestream proposal. Sanction: forty-eight hours in county custody, suspended, to be imposed if any further violation occurs.”
Opposing counsel started up again. She lifted a palm. “Sit down, Mr. Holt. We are not playing with synonyms today.”
She turned to Maya. “You have the right to keep whatever volume keeps you safe,” she said simply. “You and your child are not dimmer switches. Preserve your evidence. Work with counsel. We’ll see you in two weeks for status.”
The gavel clicked once, soft as a metronome practicing patience.
In the hallway, air returned like a tide that didn’t apologize. Maya leaned her head to the glass and let it rest there long enough for the pane to learn her temperature. Then she stood up straighter.
Cole exhaled through his nose, a man watching numbers add up. “We keep walking,” he said. “No victory laps. Detective?”
Ruiz appeared with the knack cops have for finding the exact moment they’re needed.
“Board put him on leave,” he said, almost conversational. “Press release in twelve minutes. Committee wants your counsel to route materials to their ethics review. And the DA will open an investigation into the attempted wipe and the device installs. Don’t plan your week around it, but don’t be surprised.”
“Not planning anything that isn’t soup,” I said.
We walked out into daylight that had made up its mind. Reporters waited, pens ready to turn breath into angles. Cole handled it with oatmeal: “We respect the court’s order. We encourage anyone experiencing tech-enabled control to speak to law enforcement, advocates, and—yes—librarians.” He didn’t give them a name to hang us with. Good.
By five, the press release hit: CEO Placed on Administrative Leave Pending Independent Review of Product Ethics and Governance. Words like values and accountability took a walk through a paragraph. There was a line about pausing promotional streams “until further notice.” Investors like to see verbs.
At the library, Anita kept the children’s room open late. Lamps hummed. Paper foxes multiplied. The sign over the desk read VOICE ≠ NOISE in a marker that was giving up the ghost and refusing at the same time.
Pastor Lee’s “soup no matter what” promise turned the meeting room into a canteen for tired courage. Nova slurped like a violin learning to be a trumpet. Maya ate slowly, the way you do when your stomach is negotiating a truce with your nerves.
“Do we have to be calm now?” Nova asked, noodle mustache bold as daylight.
“You have to be you,” Maya said, and the room picked up its own quiet and moved it to where it belonged.
I took the helmet from the velvet box and threaded a new liner through, my thumbs working the way men’s hands work when we need to fix one thing we can fix. The purple star had started to peel at the corner. I pressed it down like a promise.
A woman I didn’t know stopped by our table on her way out. She had a tote bag full of returns and a face that had learned to be brave in rooms without signs. “I didn’t think a library card could be a flag,” she said to Maya. “Thanks for making one.”
Maya nodded. No speech. Just a quiet that belonged to her.
Omar slipped in late with a draft: Community Tech Safety Night: How to Keep Your Voice Yours. He’d built a checklist without condescension: passwords, account ownership, what “Do Not Disturb” actually does, how to ask a judge for language that mentions devices. Anita made copies. June added a line: Blood sugar counts as strategy. Pastor Lee added one: God is not a thermostat. People smiled without needing to defend it.
The board counsel emailed Cole: Special Committee invites input on a remedial plan. Ideas? Cole forwarded it to the group. Anita wrote back first, because librarians understand budgets before they see them.
“Fund library-based ‘Volume Variable’ programs,” she wrote. “Grants for shelters to buy Faraday sleeves and cheap flip phones. Train daycares on password protocols. Pay nurses for documentation clinics. Create a simple ethics code: No feature that can mute someone else without their consent.”
June added: “Buy heaters for rooms where someone told the thermostat to be a sermon.”
Pastor Lee added: “Underwrite neutral community spaces so people can tell their stories without paying at the door.”
Cole hit send. Wood traveled.
The next morning, an editorial landed from a business paper that usually prefers earnings calls to ethics: Tech’s New Mandate: Don’t Build Off Switches for People. Someone had finally found the sentence we’d been trying to say with our hands.
A week later, the board announced a review panel with a professor of ethics, a domestic violence advocate, and a librarian from two counties over. They called it governance. I called it a chance to stop pretending knobs are virtue.
The DA filed charges: misdemeanor unlawful surveillance, plus an obstruction count tied to the attempted wipe. Nothing that would collapse a building, but enough to put caution tape where it belonged. Ethan’s lawyers promised to “vigorously defend.” The courts would take their time, as they should. We kept ours.
Maya and Nova moved from the shelter into a small second-floor apartment with a stubborn radiator and a lamp with a pull chain you can only reach if you’re the one in the bed. We helped carry boxes up stairs that had opinions. Nova hung paper foxes above her pillow. Maya taped a copy of the court order inside the hall closet where she could touch it before she left for class.
On a Tuesday that remembered how to be Tuesday, we went back to the diner. The waitress slid us pie and didn’t charge us for the extra sprinkles a five-year-old claimed as a constitutional right. People didn’t stare. A few nodded. A man in a city work jacket said, “Library card,” and lifted his coffee like a toast.
“Soup Tuesday soon,” Nova said, even though we were eating pie. I told her soup and pie are cousins. She accepted it as doctrine.
Later, in the shop, I mounted the old helmet above the counter. The star faced the door. Under it, I hung the coffee punch card in a little frame I built from pallet wood and stubbornness. Six holes, two holes, one hole—02–14–2PM—grease pencil math that turned into a window.
People noticed. Some asked. Most didn’t need the story; they had their own.
On a Saturday ride long after the worst of it, Maya came by in a denim jacket that looked like it had found its owner again. She ran a palm along the tank, the way you pat a horse before it decides whether you’re worth trusting.
“Can we just… go around the block?” she asked.
“We can,” I said, and handed her the spare helmet with the new liner. Nova watched us from the stoop with Pastor Lee like a small queen with two bishops. Anita waved from the library steps with a stack of returns and a pen behind her ear. June lifted a coffee. Omar took a photo with no faces, just motion, because motion is a kind of prayer.
We rode. Slow. Boring on purpose. The wind did what wind does when you aren’t asking it for a miracle—it reminded us we had skin. At the second light, Maya laughed. Nobody tapped a button. Nobody asked permission. The laugh didn’t ask to be improved. It chose itself.
When we pulled back in, Nova climbed into my lap and yelled “Again!” the way joy does when it forgets it’s supposed to be polite. Pastor Lee pretended to fine us for excessive happiness. The ticket was an orange.
Maya leaned against the wall and looked at the helmet on the counter, at the punch card, at the way a small town had decided to be big where it counted.
“I used to think calm meant being quiet,” she said. “Maybe it means getting to choose your volume.”
“Maybe it means knowing you can,” I said.
The board’s ethics code came out a month later. It wasn’t perfect—nothing written by committee ever is—but the first line said: No product shall be designed to suppress the communications of a person who has not chosen suppression for themselves. A grant followed for libraries and shelters. Anita bought more Faraday sleeves and a better lamp. June printed “documentation day” flyers. Pastor Lee printed schedules for soup.
People sent me screenshots of comments and headlines and think pieces. I kept two on the wall. One was the business paper’s line about off switches. The other was a hand-lettered sign a kid made at story time: LOUD IS ALLOWED.
When Nova asked me weeks later if truth pictures win when liars have more dollars, I told her what I believe now, down in the grease that keeps my bones from squeaking.
“They win,” I said, “when we keep holding them up.”
We don’t live in a movie. We live in a ledger—day after day, boring and brave. Judges click gavels like metronomes. Nurses take photos with pennies for scale. Librarians print forms. Cops bag rings of light. Pastors peel oranges. Mechanics reline helmets. Little kids cackle at rhymes. And somewhere a man who confused calm with control learns that the town put a cover over the switch he thought he owned.
I locked the shop for the night and stood in the doorway while the diner’s neon OPEN leaked into the dark. The helmet’s purple star caught it and tossed it back. The wind moved through the street like a thing with nowhere better to be.
Some people try to dim the light in others. The rest of us make room.
We don’t choose the weather. We choose the lamp.
And in this house—in this town—you don’t need permission to laugh.
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This story is a work of fiction created for entertainment and inspirational purposes. While it may draw on real-world themes, all characters, names, and events are imagined. Any resemblance to actual people or situations is purely coincidenta
