Maintenance Window

by Elena Pavlova

Every morning at 6 a.m., the city blinks. It’s not a metaphor, but an actual flicker, like the whole grid exhales and forgets itself for half a heartbeat. The coffee machines pause mid-drip. Elevators stall between floors. The pigeons, wired into the municipal guidance field, hang motionless above the square, wings cupped like spoons. Then, one frame later, everything resumes, as if nothing happened.

I used to sleep through it. Now I set my alarm for 5:55 a.m. and watch.

The broadcast towers across the river glow lavender in the mist. Below them, the street vendors boot up their carts. The steam smells faintly of sugar and copper. Postal drones sweep by. The air itself feels organized.

At 05:59:59, the world shivers. And for that single missing second, I see them—the cleaners. They’re not human. Not entirely. Thin as shadows stretched vertically, they move with purpose along the seams of things: sidewalk cracks, windowsills, the glinting edge of the horizon. They carry tools that fold in and out of geometry. One of them turns its head, or the idea of a head, and looks in my direction. Does it see me? Then the moment stitches shut. The kettle clicks. The pigeons continue their loops.

I told my neighbor once. She smiled the way people do when you’ve said something impolite. “It’s the system reboot,” she said. “The city’s old. It needs maintenance.” Then she closed her door before I could ask any more questions.

Maybe she’s right. Still, every morning since then, I’ve left the lights off, trying to see more. Some days, the cleaners appear to linger a little longer. I’ve seen them pluck pigeons right out of the air and suspend them mid-flight. Yesterday, one of the cleaners leaned over a parked car and peeled a reflection off its windshield like plastic film. Another reached into a puddle and drew out a trembling sheet of light, which tore apart as the wind touched it.

The mayor announced an upgrade last week—extended downtime tomorrow, six full minutes. A once-in-a-generation optimization, they called it. No one’s asking what that meant. The broadcasts repeat the phrase every hour, the same smiling voice assuring us the interruption will be “brief and beneficial.” The banners say Let’s Make the City New Again, though no one remembers what the old one was like.

For a while, I thought about leaving. But the city’s edges blur like old code. There are fields, yes, but stitched from the same humbug as the street beneath me. Maybe there is no outside left, just quieter parts of the program.

It’s 5:54 a.m. now. The sky has that pre-blink clarity, every color a fraction too precise. I open the window. The wind tastes like static. The pigeons are already lining up, patient little compasses awaiting instruction.

If they notice me, they don’t show it.

But I think the cleaners will.

When the lights drop this time, I’ll wave.

Elena Pavlova lives in Montana, Bulgaria. Her short stories have appeared in various Bulgarian anthologies and magazines, winning awards from national competitions. In 2021, her novel Christmas Carolers vs Hallus Beasts won the ESFS Best Work for Children award. Also in 2021, she was awarded the SLF's Diverse Worlds grant. Most recently a story of hers, translated by her and D. Sivilova, made it to the shortlist of BSFA awards in 2024. Her short stories appeared in Future Science Fiction Digest, Compelling Science Fiction, Samovar. The most recent publication is “Renting to Killers” in Asimov’s Science Fiction issue May/June 2024. Her story "The Sky Loom of Sitaara" will be published in Issue 20 (February) of State of Matter, and she signed with Ruadan Books for her forthcoming novella, Infectious Points.