Because of course Kaori planned all of this. She brought Yusuf over from Oxford and had him pick me up from my little cabin in the woods. She gave him nothing to do here except babysit me, knowing we’d connect because we were both new and equal parts bored and overwhelmed. She knew he was basically unable to keep secrets or lie to anyone—what I love about him so much—so of course he’d spill everything to me.

She already knew the order of the videos from Figueiredo’s universe. She wanted me on the team—I convinced her of jack shit—because that way she could release a little breadcrumb trail of footage to lead me wherever she wanted. The whole Compound, the whole Envisioner project, was probably a ruse when she could’ve just spirited the machine into a lab in Japan or Oxford and studied it herself. This big multitrillion-dollar shell game to change me into who she needed me to be. Except she counted on me being an experiment that would unfold according to her theories, when I don’t know what the hell I’m doing at any given moment.

Honestly, I’d be more pissed if I wasn’t so weirdly honored that all this trouble was because of me.

8

ORIENTATION

In the rom-com satire movie trailer of our relationship, a smiling baritone informs the audience, “Yusuf Hassan never thought he had time for love.” Cut to Yusuf sighing over a glass of wine with an Unnamed Female Friend.

“I’m the deputy director of a secret multinational research organization. I don’t have time to date!” he bemoans. Born in Egypt and raised an army brat who bounced with his family to Prague, then Sydney, then East London, his accent falls somewhere in the “British actor trying to sound American” range. He’s quiet, with eyes that prefer to skim the corners of rooms. Thirty-six, though he looks younger, with his slim waist and muscles hidden by too-big cardigans. Cut to a scene of him whipping down a Compound hallway while papers fly off the stack in his hands, his glasses crooked on his nose because he’s just so busy he doesn’t even have time to straighten them.

“And Hayes Fig,” the voice continues—notice the nice white bread last name because this movie can’t have two ethnic-y leads, not when it’s already a gay story, I mean really—“was so used to helping others fight for their rights and tell their stories. But what about his own story?”

On a morning run along Boston Harbor, I ask my Unnamed Male Friend, biting back frustration, “What about my story? My love story?” Cut to a scene of me filming a street protest—the cause isn’t important, just pick one—where the pan-racial crowd holds signs with EQUAL RIGHTS NOW.

“But when a machine that can see the future brings them together…”