The terminal blinked.
Here’s a short piece built around the motif — treated as a fragment of code, a log entry, a half-erased memory, or a cryptic address. 200.xxx.b.f 200.xxx.b.f
The sysadmin stared at the log line. 3:14 AM. No one else on call. The trace route died at hop 14, then dissolved into asterisks. The terminal blinked