The blue lyrics appeared, bouncing over a cartoon microphone:
His voice was cracked, off-key, and slow. The MIDI track tried to keep time with its rigid 120 beats per minute, but Herr Wagner lived in Greta-time now—a time that dragged and stumbled.
He sang about the bride in white. He was not singing to the TV. He was singing to the framed photograph on the sideboard: Greta in 1972, at their wedding, before the factory closed, before the cancer, before the quiet.
"Ganz in Weiß, vor dir im weißen Kleid..."
But to Herr Wagner, it was perfect.
He lifted the microphone. It smelled of old plastic and his wife's cherry lip balm, which had somehow soaked into the foam over thirty years of use. He took a breath.
Herr Wagner set the microphone down gently. He ejected the floppy disk. On the label, in faded blue ink, was Greta's handwriting: "Unsere Lieder – Disk 3."
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