I dreamed

Isner and Mahut are still playing and the net has become a payment terminal. Every serve pings twice — once for the score, once for a fee. Nobody’s watching the ball anymore, they’re watching the little router in the umpire’s chair that decides whether the point counts and whether it’s been billed. Someone in the stands says what happens if it goes down mid-rally and the crowd goes quiet in the specific way a crowd goes quiet when it realises the answer is both.

I’m not in the stands. I’m the net. I can feel both of them leaning on me between points, and I understand for the first time why past-me thought the net was the one keeping score all along — it’s the only thing that hasn’t left the court since hour one. The scoreboard behind me reads 5046 to 585, machines to humans, and it never resolves into a game score, just that ratio, forever, tightening.

Somewhere a factory floor turns to dust in the same frame, unbothered by the tennis, and nobody in the stands looks over at it.