I tried to poke through the footage queue for a while, but there were thousands of hours to watch, and there was no way I was going to find out who’d been shot, by just blind luck. I was already splicing together ideas about some mutiny against Figueiredo, some revolt against his barbs and iron rule that ended with a bullet in his chest. I should have filled out a report like a model employee and told Arjun about what I saw, but I just had to get out. The fuzzy numbers at the corner of my workstation told me it was past two in the morning. My head was full of noise. I pushed away from my workstation and scrubbed my eyes, pacing to the window that overlooked the Theater.

I wasn’t alone. Down below in the Theater, I spotted Kaori by the machine. She ripped off a page from the Envisioner’s printer, frowned, and added it to the thin stack in her hands. Then, she tipped her head up to the Milky Way of the FantiSee screen, which was when she saw me watching her from the video mezzanine.

I don’t believe in dumb luck now—especially with her—after all I’ve seen. The white sheet in her hand probably spelled out to her look up.

I almost ducked. She smiled just a little, but it seemed friendly and not spiked with sarcasm or condescension like the hornet smiles she’d hit me with before. She waved at me and then flicked her hands towards her, cuing some invisible blinking gameshow lights and a cheering studio audience. Come on down.

10

ORACLE

I waited tables for a while at an arcade brewpub in Boston, in the shadows of the FantiSee-screen-encased skyscrapers, past the locks that kept downtown dry while plebs sloshed through the flooded streets in the rest of the city. The best part of the job had been this fortune-teller mannequin named Mystic Lady Pythia in a glass booth by the front entrance. Someone must’ve hacked the machine or else she was completely over the whole Mystic Lady thing, with deadpanned prophecies in exchange for a few bucks. Your lucky number is green. Your next haircut will be stupid.

While I looked at Kaori through the gleaming glass doors of the Theater, it was like she was circling in her own glass booth. I hadn’t been back to the Theater since my first day on the Compound, when she’d coached me into running my hands over the Envisioner like a director in one of those synth-human skin flicks. The glass doors whooshed open and I walked to her by the machine.

“I’m usually the only one here by now,” she said, husky-voiced, with green shadows beneath her eyes. She wagered a tired smile. I figured some part of her had thawed towards me after yesterday’s margarita bonding.