“He thinks you’re dead,” she says, so low I can barely hear. “You made him soft. I could see when I picked him up from the hotel, and the way he shook when I told him about you, how different he is. I know you think that’s a compliment. But…” She sighs. “I suppose you’re here to Hotel-Selene me? Blow the whole Compound and everyone here just to take me out?”

“No. You’re not that important.”

She actually laughs, sending the uneven lengths of her hair swaying. When the sound dies down, there’s only the low hum of the ventilation between us. She narrows her eyes just a little.

“I take it you removed Figueiredo from the equation?”

“Something like that.”

“Fuck that guy, right? You know, he gave me such shit about what a good start I was running here, but if I wanted to understand the true nature of reality, I could be his research monkey.” She pauses again. “But no, that’s not it. Something’s different.” Her eyes dance just a little. “You didn’t. You did? Did you?”

I shrug. Overhead on the FantiSee screens, seabirds flap their wings through their perfect sky, laughing again. Quem é? Quem é?

“Now you get it,” she continues. “Adjacent realities seek a zero sum. You sent the asteroid into another Earth?”

“I made a calculated decision.”

“I didn’t think you had that objectivity in you. I’m surprised and… I don’t know. Proud?”

“I’m not nondescript anymore, I guess.”

“Well, don’t get ahead of yourself.”

She asked the machine about me even before I got here the very first time. I can see her gritting her teeth at the microphone and spinning the dials again and again. Trying to force some order and predictability on me when all I do is floor it around the corner into a giant puddle of entropy, splashing it everywhere. I can see her spinning webs in her head of all the things she can do with the machine now that we’re all safe. But she won’t admit that she doesn’t understand love and that she doesn’t know what I will do for it. Or if I am as dumb as she and Figueiredo think. Too late to wonder, anyhow.