It was a g-sharp on a g: held indefinitely. The buzzing and cracking of the failed streetlight outside his bedroom window hummed at a discordant g-sharp on G cord. Nearly impossible to ignore. UNless you were Public works, it would seem. Francis Carmina figured he probably ought to complain; it wasn’t reasonable to expect someone would just come along, hear the baleful chord, and fix the busted bulb, or starter, or whatever it was that made the damn thing drone on one lone set of unhappy notes all night long, throughout the night. It would come on at different times each night, dependent on the time that enough daylight faded to activate the streetlights on the block. He’d noticed that all the streetlights blinked on at the same time the sound started. He assumed that there was a master streetlight at some point on the block that told the other streetlights when to activate. It just didn’t make cost effective sense to put a photo-sensor in each light. And then each light would come on at a little different time, right? and wouldn’t the lights cancel each other out if each one was photo sensitive to the other? But a master light could be programmed smartly. And it explained the lights on the street’s unison behavior. But why didn’t the light outside his bed room come on? Why did it, instead, drone on a sustained, never ending g-sharp on G. Always humming. Forever Humming. Never stopping. He’d tried throwing things at it, but his aim was poor and his arm was weak, so even when he did hit the light, it changed nothing. He thought about getting a slingshot or making some kind of a potato gun or somehting, but his nanny would certainly punish him severely if she ever caught him with anything as foolish and dangerous as a shooter. So the droning carried on. Never ending. Never slowing down, except with the new day’s light, it was g-sharp on G untill the wheels fell off.