Grinbeam prefers being called a wall ornament. A relief, honestly.
It’s bolted to the stairwell between Levels 3 and 4, where it harvests echoes:
boot clangs, coffee sighs,
Who keeps unplugging the damn scanners?
Crack a good joke –
it blinks: slow, golden, a cat’s lazy wink.
Tell a bad joke –
it dims politely, like it’s coughing into a fist.
Engineers debate if it’s glitching. Still, they’ve begun timing their breakroom anecdotes to the stairwell.
Yesterday, someone lobbed a pun about solar coils. Grinbeam glowed for 10 straight minutes.