Behind Kaori by one of the workstations, I saw Yusuf shift his weight and look down, trying to hide a smirk. In one clipped motion, Kaori folded her tablet in half and slipped it into the front pocket of her white lab coat.

“Fine. You want a demonstration?”

“Sure. Gaze into your crystal ball.”

She plucked a pen from her coat’s breast pocket.

“Hide this pen somewhere in the Compound. Here, take my badge and you can scan into wherever you want. Then I’ll ask the machine a question.”

She actually smiled. With her high cheekbones, she looked for a second like a hornet just before the sting.

I plucked the pen and her badge and breezed out of the Theater. I figured with the security cameras, there was no place in this whole facility that Kaori couldn’t see. I dropped the pen in a tank in one of the toilets in the nearby all-gender restrooms, betting Big Sister at least wouldn’t spy on people on the can.

When I circled back to the Theater, her hornet smile hadn’t faded at all.

“Ready?” she asked.

“I still call bullshit.”

“You want to take a peek at that sheet of paper, over there?” She bobbed her head at one of the machine’s panels, where a sheet of paper dangled from a thin slit.

I tore the sheet off at its perforated edge. When I flipped it over, I saw a single printed line, the letters made up of tiny dots.

I still call bullshit.

Someone sucked all the air out of the room. I heard a high whine, that day-after-a-concert ringing of slaughtered ear cells. When I looked up, Kaori actually winked.

“Care to know what I asked?”

*   *   *

Yeah, I touched the dials.

They were slick and cool in my hands. I spun them, holding my breath and waiting for lightning to lance me in the gut. Kaori hovered at my side, guiding with, could you place your hands there, and there? I ran my palms over the facets, each tiny cliff a drop in my stomach. Nothing. I watched Kaori’s unreadable, brown eyes move from me down to the swirling lines on her glass tablet. At least the facets kind of warmed under my touch. She gave me nothing.

“Thank you for your time, Mr. Figueiredo,” she said, stepping back after a few agonizing minutes of silence while I brailled the machine. “It’s getting late. You’re welcome to stay here the night while we work on your travel arrangements home.”

And then she turned on her chunky white sneakers and whooshed through the sliding doors of the Theater, with the tails of her coat flapping behind her. The other researchers in the room were still as pillars of salt.