Her face was as blank as if she’d been working her calibrations. I could read beyond her eyes, though, and the tired patience in her voice. This was the closest she would get to letting on that she was lonely, sometimes, even if for a few scattered hours at night. I know it’s frustrating because I’m talking about her from my perch here on the beach after all that’s happened. It’s hard for me not to superimpose the image of Kaori the projectionist onto Kaori my friend. But back then, I didn’t know what we were in for. All I saw was this brilliant, interesting, and occasionally unintentionally hilarious woman who was running this whole show basically alone, and for some reason wanted to hang out with me. Call it self-importance, or maybe she had me a little star-struck from the moment we met.

“Goodnight, Kaori.”

“Sleep well, Hayes.”

I left her by the machine to head back to my little steel dorm. I only remembered in the hallway that I was still holding onto the stack of Envisioner printouts that Kaori had handed to me. I leafed through a dozen premonitions of her death, and at the bottom of the stack found a different answer: Drowned, trapped by debris from a crumbled building.

Jesus. I had no idea what she’d asked to get that answer, but what a shitty way to go. I chucked the stack of papers into the kitchenette trash, except the last one, which I stuffed into my pocket with the other printouts. On my bed, I unfolded all the pages, letting the moonlight from the open window fall on the words. You are alive.

*   *   *

I’ve never asked the Envisioner how I’d die. There’s some stuff I never wanted to know, and who knows if it would even give me a straight answer.

Even Kaori admitted that the Envisioner’s answers got wonky when she asked about me. Too many variables, or too many versions of myself that it confused me with. All I could hope for was something quick. A bus could hit me while I crossed the street, distracted by the music that blasted through my headphones and that would be it. Blam. One second an electronica crescendo was rippling goosebumps down my arms, and the next I’m gone.

I wasn’t obsessed with how I was going to die like Kaori, even if she’d argue that she was only asking the Envisioner as a calibrating question with a fixed answer. I was more into how I was going to live, especially with Figueiredo staring me in the face, wagging his finger at all my screw-ups.

I can almost see the perfect, alternate version of myself that I’ll be, any day now.