My first semester in film school, I’d roamed the neighborhood on trash day and had hauled a bunch of ancient TVs into my truck. Then, I’d duct-taped them together, wedged some cherry bombs in between, and filmed the thing blowing up on super slo-mo. A classmate named Rachel, who I’d really wanted to like if she hadn’t been so unbearably pretentious, had said something like, “I love that it’s a commentary on the destructive power of technology.” Sure, I’d told her. That was completely what I’d meant.

Really, I’d just wanted to blow shit up.

The machine looked like the big brother of my duct-tape craft project, here for revenge.

“Sorry about all the tests,” Kaori said. She hovered close enough by me that I could smell some whiff of eucalyptus. But she didn’t seem like the perfume type.

“Yeah. What’s my deal? Radioactive blood? Am I a superhero?” My Storyteller voice, again. I must’ve been playing it up for the machine, waiting nearby like a spider crouching to pounce.

“Not unless your superpower is mild hypertension.”

“That’s pretty boring.”

“Yes.” She paused. “Would you mind stepping closer? And grabbing those two dials there?” she asked so casually, nodding to nubs on the machine that could’ve been volume controls of a huge stereo.

Sweat pricked in one of my armpits.

“I am one-hundred percent not touching this thing until you give me a little more to go on.”

She pressed her lips together in a hard line. “What do you want to know?”

“What does that… thing…”

“The Envisioner.”

“Sure. What does the Envisioner do?”

“It’s a modeling device that determines the most probable expected outcome of a given situation.”

Even though I flunked my Stats for Idiots class before I dropped out of college, I could wrap my brain around her annoying vaguery.

“You’re kidding me. You’re saying this machine tells the future?”

“I’m saying that this is about probability and—”

“How are you keeping this away from the rest of the world? They deserve to know.”

“We’re testing foreign technology in a secure environment.”

“I call bullshit. And I still don’t know how you got that footage of the—the other me.”

“The device has a recording function and we’ve been able to access some of the existing footage. This is already far more than you have clearance to know. I think I’m being very accommodating here. Now, please touch the dials.”

On one of the Envisioner’s domed screens, my face was warped, like it was reflected on the surface of a green bubble. For all the cameras pointed at the machine and recording everything happening here, the machine was watching right back with spider eyes of its own.

“I’m not touching shit. You touch them.”