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Exact first-edition text; paragraph-timed synthetic narration; performance not human listening certified.

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Chapter Three — A Button Appears

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The next morning, the House discovered something on the shelf.

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A button.

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Small.

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Round.

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Hunter green.

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Nobody remembered putting it there.

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The House checked the archive.

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No record.

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It checked the publication history.

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Nothing.

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It briefly considered opening an investigation, but remembered the exponential-growth graph.

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Absolutely not.

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The button would have to remain a mystery.

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At eleven seventeen, somebody pressed it.

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Nothing happened.

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At eleven eighteen, the piano in the other room played a single note.

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At eleven nineteen, a bird landed outside the window.

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The House was delighted.

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It had finally made a button that did absolutely nothing in a remarkably interesting way.

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Then came a knock at the door.

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The House checked its records again.

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It had no scheduled visitors.

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From somewhere down the hallway, someone said:

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“Are you going to answer that?”

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The House considered the question.

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It had spent months learning how to preserve things, organize things, publish things, and keep careful records of things.

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It had never learned how to answer its own front door.

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And for the first time in a very long time, it had absolutely no idea what came next.

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Which, it was beginning to understand, was rather the point.