Everything Must Go
For Abe
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold…
—W. B. Yeats
… a thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
—Oscar Wilde
CHapter 1
No one knew exactly when the dishwasher stopped working, only that it had been working once, and then suddenly it wasn’t. The dishes still went in—chipped bowls, stained Tupperware with lids like lost lovers—but they came out unchanged, as if the machine had given up on pretending to be useful.
“It’s the cycle sensor,” said Gary, crouched beside the appliance like a priest beside a deathbed. Gary wasn’t a plumber, or an appliance guy or even good with tools. He was, by trade, a middle school band teacher with a half-finished MA in educational psychology and a lingering suspicion that nothing built after 2010 was meant to last longer than a mood.
His wife, Madeline, leaned in the doorway, arms crossed like scaffolding. “Why does it smell like soup in here?”
“Because that’s what failure smells like.”
“Poetic. Try calling your brother again.”
“He’s a contractor. He builds decks. Not dishwashers.”
“But he knows people.”
Gary sighed, wiped his hands on a dishtowel that once said Live Laugh Love in a cheerful teal font but now only whispered Li… ve… Lo— like a ghost with a speech impediment.
Outside, somewhere in the disintegrating suburbs of central Pennsylvania, a weed-whacker whined like a mosquito in a blender. It was the sound of Saturday trying to maintain itself.
The children—Elliot, age 11, and June, age 8—were upstairs pretending not to exist, their silence negotiated through Minecraft and passive resistance. June had recently taken to writing stories in an old spiral notebook Madeline found in the recycling. “It’s called The World That Got Replaced,” she’d told them one evening, stirring ketchup into her mac and cheese like it was blood.
The dishwasher beeped. A sad, electronic hiccup.
“See?” Gary said, as though this proved something. “It wants to work. It remembers a time when it did work.”
“You’re anthropomorphizing.”
“It’s easier than dealing with the warranty people.”
Gary had made the mistake of calling Whirlpool earlier in the week, navigating a phone maze that led eventually to an outsourced call center where a woman named Crystal informed him that the model had been discontinued. “We recommend upgrading to a new unit,” she’d chirped. “The EchelonWave 3000 is smarter, quieter, and environmentally kind.”
“But I just bought this one six years ago.”
“And now it’s eligible for a $100 loyalty rebate. Isn't that exciting?”
He hung up before shouting became inevitable.
Now he was crouched again, screwdriver in hand, poking at the innards like a failed surgeon. “They build them to break,” he muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just entropy.”
“Speak English, Gary.”
He looked up at her. “Everything wants to fall apart. That’s the natural order. The machine, the house, us. It’s all just a slow collapse dressed up in user manuals and coupons.”
Madeline rolled her eyes. “You’re not allowed to read Proust before noon anymore.”
Gary stood. “Fine. We’ll wash by hand.”
Madeline stared at him. “We?”
In the afternoon, Elliot came down to microwave a soft pretzel. He moved like a boy already overburdened by the future. “What happened to the dishwasher?”
“Dead.”
“Cool.”
“Cool?”
Elliot shrugged. “We learned in science it’s better to wash by hand. Robots waste water.”
“It’s not a robot. It’s a convenience.”
Elliot raised an eyebrow, which lately was his default method of protest.
That night, they washed by hand. Gary and Madeline took turns with the sponge, while June sat cross-legged at the table, scribbling on her recycled notebook, occasionally glancing up like a reporter cataloging the end of civility. Her latest chapter involved a sentient washing machine who’d gone on strike until its owners learned gratitude.
“The machine is the hero,” she said, when Gary peeked over her shoulder.
“That’s a twist.”
“No one ever thanks them.”
The next morning, Gary found her drawing pictures of the dishwasher with little speech bubbles. I REMEMBER WATER, one of them read. Another said I’M NOT BROKEN, I’M TIRED.
He laughed, quietly. The kind of laugh that makes you feel slightly more responsible for the state of the world.
In the weeks that followed, they lived with the dead appliance like it was an old pet—still present, still occupying space, but no longer functional. Occasionally Gary opened the door and stared inside, unsure what he was hoping to see. A spark. A message. Some sign that the thing wanted to live.
Instead, there was only a drip of leftover water, growing cloudy with age.
CHapter 2
The flyer had been printed on orange paper so bright it felt aggressive.
NEIGHBORHOOD WIDE SALE! SATURDAY 9AM. BRING CASH. EVERYTHING MUST GO!
Gary found it rubber-banded to the mailbox like a summons.
“They’re at it again,” he said, tossing it on the kitchen counter next to the toaster that only browned on one side. “Purging their lives for nickels.”
Madeline peered over her mug. “Don’t be cynical. Some people enjoy simplifying.”
“They’re not simplifying. They’re offloading malfunctioning crap and broken dreams.”
“Which, from the right angle, is also marriage.”
He looked at her.
“I’m kidding,” she added, then sipped with perfect nonchalance.
Saturday came like a sigh. Gary woke early, unable to remember why, then remembered the sale and decided to hate it on principle. Still, by 10 a.m., he and the kids were on foot, weaving through a convoy of collapsing card tables and the kind of sun-bleached artifacts that spoke to the particular loneliness of consumer decline: George Foreman grills with warped lids. Bluetooth speakers shaped like pandas. A broken Roomba with a handwritten tag: STILL CHARGES (KIND OF).
“Why is everyone selling their stuff?” June asked, already clutching a Ziploc bag. Within lay an assortment of pastel Polly Pocket accessories June was excited to put to purpose.
“Because most of it didn’t work in the first place,” Gary muttered.
Elliot tapped his phone. “They’re not selling. They’re rotating. Mrs. Kinsey just bought back her own punch bowl from the Parkers. She said it had ‘sentimental circulation.’”
Gary looked over. Mrs. Kinsey was hugging the punch bowl like a lost child. “We’re a nation of hoarders with delusions of minimalism.”
“That’s poetry,” Elliot said, not quite sarcastically.
At the Hellers’ table, Madeline appeared, holding up a vintage Crock-Pot.
“Do we need another Crock-Pot?” Gary asked.
“This one’s from the ‘80s. It still works.”
“That’s your metric for value now?”
“That anything still works? Yes.”
She paid five dollars. Gary watched the exchange like a priest witnessing a second marriage to the same mistake.
Later, he found himself drawn to a folding table that sagged in the middle like an old mattress. It was covered in chargers—hundreds of them. Nokia bricks. Off-brand USB cords. A fire hazard in twelve tangled languages. An old man in a Yankees cap presided over the mess with the grave composure of a museum docent.
“Need a charger?” he asked.
“Not unless you’ve got one for a 2011 Samsung flip phone.”
The man’s eyes lit up. He reached under the table and pulled out a tray labeled ORPHANS.
Gary dug through it. Each charger was a story amputated from its device. A long-forgotten dependency. At the bottom, he found one that looked vaguely familiar.
“This one used to power our old camcorder,” he murmured.
The man nodded. “Things had weight back then. Chargers, marriages, regrets. Now it’s all featherlight and replaceable.”
Gary paid two bucks. He didn’t need it. But he wanted to hold something that had once meant something.
That night, back home, June wrote another chapter in her spiral notebook, this time about a plastic lawn flamingo who watches families come and go from its perch beside a sagging garage. The flamingo develops an existential crisis when it realizes its pink hue is fading, and no one—not even the kids—remembers who bought it.
“What’s it called?” Madeline asked.
“The One That Stayed Too Long.”
Gary chuckled. “Let me guess, the flamingo gets thrown out.”
“No,” June said, pencil still moving. “It gets sold. Then bought back. Then it escapes.”
“Escapes?”
“Into the woods.”
The next morning, the Crock-Pot wouldn’t turn on. Madeline unplugged it, stared at it, plugged it back in.
“Maybe it just needs to warm up.”
“It’s from the ’80s,” Gary said. “It’s had forty years to warm up.”
June wandered in, sleep-eyed. “Maybe it’s tired of being cooked in.”
Gary put a hand on her head. “That’s either brilliant or nonsense.”
“They’re usually the same thing,” she replied, and poured herself cereal from a box that had expired two weeks ago.
CHapter 3
On Monday, the refrigerator stopped making ice.
“Ice is optional,” Madeline said, trying to be reasonable, pinching the plastic flap where the cubes used to emerge. “It’s not like we live in Florida.”
“Sure,” Gary said. “It’s not a necessity. Like shoes. Or hope.”
Then the Wi-Fi router began to blink its red eye. Not a helpful red—just ominous. Gary unplugged it, replugged it, stared into the blinking like it might confess something. The connection held for a few minutes, then dropped again. Elliot said nothing, but a small, sour hum rose from his room like the buildup of an electrical storm.
On Thursday, the microwave began restarting itself every four minutes, beeped “HELLO” with increasing urgency, then went silent altogether. That night, the overhead light in the bathroom flickered in Morse code—dash dash dash, pause, dash dash—until Madeline took out the bulb and left a flashlight propped on the mirror.
By Saturday, Gary had started cataloguing the malfunctions on a legal pad titled Evidence of Collapse. He wrote it in all caps, like a detective or a prophet.
1. ICE-MAKER DEAD
2. MICROWAVE SENTIENT??
3. THERMOSTAT KEEPS “RESETTING TO OPTIMAL” (?? WHOSE OPTIMAL)
4. GARAGE DOOR OPENS AT 3AM EVERY NIGHT
5. INTERNET OUT 40% OF TIME (EST.)
Madeline found the list and added:
6. HUSBAND UNRESPONSIVE TO BASIC TASKS
7. CHILDREN FUNCTIONAL BUT BUGGY
8. FAMILY DOG DOESN’T EXIST (UNCLEAR IF THIS IS A MALFUNCTION OR A LIFE CHOICE)
Gary wrote beneath it:
9. HUMOR AS LAST-DEFENSE MECHANISM
10. NOTE: THIS NOT A MID-LIFE CRISIS UNLESS THE ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD IS HAVING ONE
*
On Sunday, they had a repairman come for the thermostat. He was thirty, tattooed and cheerful in a way that made Gary suspicious.
“It’s all cloud-integrated,” the man explained, staring at his phone. “Half the time, it’s not even the device—it’s the firmware. Or the cloud server. Or the update compatibility. You know? Ghosts in the infrastructure.”
“Can you fix it?” Madeline asked.
The man shrugged. “Define fix.”
He replaced the batteries. The thermostat rebooted and briefly displayed OPTIMAL TEMP: 65°F / SOCIAL COHESION: LOW.
“Did it just say—?”
“Nope,” the man said, packing up. “Sometimes the units do that. Easter eggs from the developers.”
“Developers of what?” Gary asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” the man said, grinning. “Or maybe worse.”
*
That night, Elliot emerged from his room, blinking into the kitchen like he hadn’t seen sunlight in days.
“Can I tether my phone to the backup router?”
“There is no backup router,” Madeline said.
Elliot stared, dead-eyed. “Then how am I supposed to update the firmware on my headset?”
“You can’t,” Gary said. “You’ll have to live offline for a while.”
Elliot made a noise like something critical had snapped inside him. “That’s not a thing.”
“It used to be a thing,” Gary said.
“Well, it’s not anymore!” Elliot yelled, loud enough that June looked up from her drawing and even the microwave blinked.
“I hate this house,” Elliot muttered.
“You don’t hate the house,” Madeline said.
“I hate everything,” he corrected, and stomped off.
“Still buggy,” Gary noted, making a scribble on his pad.
*
Later, in bed, Madeline asked, “Do you think it’s us? Or is everything actually falling apart?”
“I think the difference is semantic,” Gary said.
“Don’t do that thing where you sound profound but don’t say anything.”
“I mean it. Is entropy a phenomenon or a condition? Are things falling apart, or are we just noticing?”
Madeline stared at the ceiling, listening to the light drip of the bathroom sink that couldn’t be fixed without removing half the wall.
“When did we stop calling people to fix things?” she asked.
“When things stopped staying fixed.”
There was a silence. Not a peaceful one.
Then, as if on cue, a low mechanical growl came from the hallway. The Roomba—unplugged for six months—lurched into motion and began spinning in a tight circle by the front door.
They watched it from the top of the stairs.
“Maybe it’s finally ready,” Gary said, voice low.
“Ready for what?”
“To leave.”
They watched it twirl. Then stop. Then emit a long beep that sounded suspiciously like a sigh.
It was past midnight.
In the morning, the dishwasher would hiss without releasing water, and June would begin the final pages of her story—the one about a world that got replaced. But for now, the family stood together in the hallway, blinking at the little machine like it might tell them how to go on.
Or where to begin again.
CHapter 4
The junk drawer wouldn’t open.
Not all the way. Not even halfway. Something was caught, wedged in the back like a metaphor that didn’t want to be unpacked.
“It’s your junk,” Madeline said.
“It’s communal junk,” Gary countered, yanking the handle until it made a sound like a hernia.
Inside: paperclips, orphaned keys, screws with unknown destinies, an expired gift card to Circuit City (which, Gary argued, “has historical value”). An old blister pack of Sudafed with one red pill left. Several pens that clicked but did not write. A manual to a thermostat they no longer owned. A Post-it note that read REMEMBER THE THING and nothing else.
“God,” Madeline said, peering in, “this is a museum of failure.”
June wandered by, eating an apple like a cartoon detective. “Are you finally throwing things out?”
“No,” Gary said. “We’re respecting the past.”
“Looks like the past died in a cable fire,” she said and walked off.
*
That evening, Madeline had what she later called a “mild incident” at the grocery store. The self-checkout refused to scan her bag of rice. Then it scanned it six times. Then it froze entirely. The teenager behind the kiosk—barely seventeen and deeply nonplussed—told her she needed to wait for override.
So, she did.
Eight minutes.
No one came. The line built behind her like pressure.
When the manager arrived, he smiled with too many teeth and said, “These things glitch sometimes. You know how it is.”
And Madeline—wife, mother, former doctoral candidate in American Literature with a minor in Systems Theory—looked at him and said: “Actually, I do.”
Then she left the rice.
Later, in the parking lot, she realized she’d left her keys inside. And her phone. And possibly her mind.
*
Back home, Elliot was trying to make grilled cheese in a pan that no longer heated evenly. “Why is the middle burning and the edges raw?”
“Because heat,” Gary said, hunched over his laptop, “is as chaotic as everything else.”
“Cool,” Elliot said, flipping the sandwich like a Frisbee and burning his hand.
“You okay?” Gary asked without looking.
“Define okay.”
Gary made a note on his legal pad, but he didn’t know why anymore. The list had grown wild, moved onto the backs of envelopes, Post-its, napkins. There was something soothing in tracking decay, like measuring a landslide in inches.
*
That night, they lost power for real.
Not just flickers. Gone. A full blackout.
The silence was immediate and unnerving. No fridge hum. No router buzz. Just the soft, breathing dark.
Elliot came downstairs holding his phone like a candle. “Is this the apocalypse?”
“Not yet,” Madeline said, lighting an actual candle.
“Cool. Just let me know.”
They gathered in the living room like pioneers who used to have Netflix. The air was warm, sour with low-stakes panic. June was unbothered—she had her story notebook and a flashlight.
“I want to read you something,” she said.
“You wrote more?” Gary asked.
“I finished it.”
And there, in the flickering dark, with one flashlight propped in a bowl to make a crude lamp, June read The World That Got Replaced aloud. The family listened, quiet and cross-legged, as if hearing the future told from the mouth of a child.
When she was done, no one spoke right away.
“Did... did you write that all yourself?” Elliot asked finally, eyes blinking too much.
June nodded.
Madeline put a hand on her daughter's knee. “That was... amazing.”
“It’s sad,” June said plainly.
“Yes,” Madeline said. “But true.”
Then the lights came back on.
The fridge hummed. The router blinked. The Roomba, for no reason, began a slow circle around the coffee table. The microwave chirped HELLO like it had been waiting.
“God,” Gary whispered, “I miss silence already.”
They all stood there, illuminated again, slightly older in the light.
And the junk drawer, when Gary passed it on the way to the kitchen, had come open on its own.
He peered in.
At the bottom, a single AA battery was leaking white crust. The Post-it that said REMEMBER THE THING was now stuck to an old roll of Tums.
He stared at it for a long time, trying to remember what the thing was.
Then he shut the drawer.
And it didn’t quite close.
CHapter 5
June’s school had a talent fair instead of a talent show, because the school believed in “plurality of excellence,” which meant 58 projects and not a single trumpet solo. The gym smelled like folding chairs, orange slices and the anxious sweat of supportive parents.
Each child had a card table. Some had dioramas. Some had poster boards with glitter glue slogans. One had a live hamster labeled “Allegory.” No one knew why.
June had a reading desk, a stack of stapled stories and a homemade cardboard sign that said:
The World That Got Replaced
By June Kupferman
She wore a yellow dress that Madeline insisted was “sunny” and not “too vintage,” and she sat beside her table with her chin high and her palms sweaty.
When it was her turn, the teacher—a young woman with strong eyebrows and a book-themed scarf—tapped the mic.
“Up next,” she said, “we have a very special reading from one of our youngest voices. Let’s give a warm welcome to June!”
The applause was brief and polite. Gary and Madeline clapped too hard. Elliot pretended not to be proud.
June took the mic and began:
THE WORLD THAT GOT REPLACED
by June Kupferman
Once there was a world just like ours, only it wasn’t shiny anymore.
It had once been shiny—very, very shiny. Shiny shoes, shiny screens, shiny people with shiny teeth who smiled like they were being paid to smile (because they were). But after a while, the shiny things started to dim. Not all at once, just a little. One day the zippers stopped zipping. The lights blinked and said “ERROR.” The toasters toasted only on the left side. And no one could remember where the manuals had gone.
So, the people did what they were told: they traded in the world.
The company that made the world had a program called BetterWorld+™. It came with updates. The clouds were higher resolution. The wind smelled like new plastic. People’s shoes squeaked with more confidence. If something broke, it was instantly replaced, as long as you were a premium member.
Most people liked the new world, or said they did, or forgot to have an opinion.
But one girl didn’t.
She missed the old world. The one where her grandma’s chair creaked when it rocked. Where you had to jiggle the handle on the toilet to make it stop running. Where the refrigerator made ghost noises at night. She liked those sounds. They felt like things trying.
In the BetterWorld+™, nothing tried. It just was. Until it wasn’t. Then it disappeared.
One day, she woke up and the tree outside her window was gone. Replaced with a synthetic tree that swayed on a schedule and didn’t drop leaves. No more raking. No more crunching. No more squirrels.
Then her cat disappeared. The company said he had “phased out.” They sent her a Cat 2.0. It purred on command and didn’t shed. But it never sat on her chest when she was sad. It just blinked and waited.
So, the girl did something unallowed.
She packed a bag with all the things that weren’t shiny: her rusted bike bell, her lumpy teddy bear, her grandpa’s radio that only played static and once said a ghost’s name. Then she ran.
She didn’t know where she was going until she got there: the Border of the Discontinued.
No one went there anymore. It was full of things the world had deleted. Tape decks. Socks with holes. Toys that didn’t do anything but sit. People who remembered too much.
And there, standing quietly in a field of grass that grew unevenly, was the Original World. Not gone. Just waiting.
It wasn’t perfect. The faucet leaked and the wallpaper peeled. But when she sat down, the couch sighed like it was happy to see her. And that night, when it rained, the roof let in just enough sound to prove it was still alive.
She never went back.
They sent upgrade notices. They sent coupons. They sent Cat 3.0.
She sent back a note that said:
“I’d rather live in something that breaks than something that forgets.”
And then the old world rumbled, and grew a little brighter, just for her.
The End.
Silence followed.
Then a small, tepid ripple of claps.
One parent whispered, “Was that about—like—divorce or something?”
Another said, “Maybe... climate change?”
The teacher stepped up again. “Thank you, June. That was so imaginative. Let’s hear it again for her—what a creative young lady!”
More polite clapping. June bowed slightly, paper trembling in her hand.
Afterward, a well-meaning parent with a lanyard said, “That was like real writing! You should write more. Maybe about unicorns next time, or friendship!”
“I don’t really do unicorns,” June said, and walked away.
*
At home, the family didn’t speak much.
Until dinner.
They sat at the table, surrounded by glowing appliances and one LED candle (the power had flickered out again during dishes). Elliot had headphones half-on, but no music playing. Madeline picked at her salad. Gary had a pen tucked behind his ear but no notes in front of him.
It was Gary who broke the silence.
“So... that story.”
June froze.
“It really hit,” he said. “In a real way.”
June stared at him. “You mean like in your feelings?”
“I mean like it’s maybe the best summary of reality I’ve heard all year.”
“Even better than that podcast with the guy from MIT?” Elliot asked.
Gary nodded solemnly. “Even better than the MIT guy.”
Madeline turned to June. “I just want to say... I think you captured something I couldn’t put words to. Not even close.”
June didn’t know what to say. She shrugged. “It’s just a story.”
“No,” Madeline said. “It isn’t.”
There was a pause. Then Elliot took off his headphones entirely.
“I think... I think stuff really is breaking,” he said. “Like on purpose.”
“It is,” Gary said.
“And we’re all just pretending it’s fine?”
“More like... pretending we can’t do anything about it,” Madeline added.
“So,” June said carefully, “we’re in the replaced world?”
The whole table went quiet.
Then Gary nodded. “We are.”
“But you remembered,” Madeline added.
And June, for the first time that night, smiled.
“Then we’re not totally gone,” she said.
The Roomba, in the hallway, gave a soft beep. Not starting up. Not spinning. Just... registering something.
Maybe presence.
Maybe absence.
Maybe the space between.
CHapter 6
The clock above the stove stopped.
Not dramatically. No bang. No fall. Just a subtle pause in the ticking that no one noticed until they’d already missed something.
“It’s been 4:17 for an hour,” Madeline said.
Gary looked up. “I thought it was just... I don’t know. Late.”
“I have a dentist appointment,” she added, not moving.
No one stood. They all just looked at the clock, as if time had become suggestion.
In the junk drawer, the battery was still leaking.
*
June had decided she was done writing for the week. Instead, she was curating her Museum of Real Things, a cardboard box labeled in marker and lined with velvet from an old Easter basket.
Inside:
The broken key from the junk drawer
A flat penny pressed at the zoo
A chip of porcelain from a plate they no longer owned
The post-it note: REMEMBER THE THING
A small screw that looked like it belonged to something significant
“What are you going to do with that?” Elliot asked.
“I don’t know,” June said. “Keep it until I don’t need to.”
*
Madeline finally emptied the drawer.
Not in a rage, but like an archaeologist. She laid each item on the kitchen table, muttering timestamps:
“Used to be part of the thermostat.”
“This might go to the garage door.”
“No idea. But I know it matters.”
Gary helped. Kind of. Mostly he sat and held objects like they were riddles. Elliot recorded a few on his phone, whispering commentary like a nature documentary:
“Here we see the rare, extinct USB-to-FireWire cable. Once crucial. Now ceremonial.”
*
The drawer, once emptied, looked almost offended.
So, they cleaned it. Repainted the inside. Lined it with wax paper.
Then June placed her Museum box inside.
“It fits,” she said. “Like it was waiting.”
*
The next morning, the stove clock blinked again: 12:00.
No one fixed it. No one corrected it.
They left it blank.
*
Weeks passed, maybe more. Time had loosened its grip.
They replaced nothing.
The microwave still chirped HELLO, but they stopped responding. The Roomba circled once a week like a priest doing last rites for the floor. The light above the sink buzzed like a lost mosquito, and they decided to let it.
One evening, June asked:
“If everything breaks eventually... why do we keep trying to fix it?”
No one answered for a while.
Then Gary said, “Because some things are worth breaking again.”
And Madeline added, “And because stopping feels worse.”
Elliot said, “Because what else are we going to do?”
June thought for a second. Then she wrote it down.
That night, she added something new to the Museum: a piece of paper with nothing on it yet.
*
The house wasn’t cleaner. The drawer still stuck. The clock stayed wrong.
But they were watching now.
Not to fix.
Just to notice.
As if noticing itself was the thing they had almost forgotten.
~