After watching Figueiredo, my reflection in the bathroom mirror looked different, with my eyes too blurry, and my edges soft and watery. Like this whole thing was a funhouse mirror, only I was the one that was squat and warped.

I tried to shake the doubt monster during the evenings I hung out with Kaori in the Theater. We’d ask the machine a million questions, calibrating it to me, she said. Which hand is this pen in? Which card will I draw next? I’d ask the machine, with its answers coming quicker, like it was learning from us. We didn’t really ask, we spun. A roulette wheel, the Wheel of Fortune tarot card that I’d lay flat on the beer-stained bar of Genesis’s latest drag show. I had the Wheel of Fortune tattooed on the top of my right foot. Me making up stories with a deck of cards so that I’d have something to talk about when I hit on some guy at the bar, so that I could seem more interesting. I didn’t need stories with Yusuf.

Yusuf and me were basically an arm’s length away from each other when we weren’t working. Most nights, he’d swing by the Theater while me and Kaori were there and then I’d watch their academic buddy comedy where the genius and her sidekick solved secrets of the universe while slinging sarcastic zingers. I tried to wheedle my way into their in-jokes during margarita club, which we left the Compound for on Saturday nights unless Kaori was slammed. I felt special that I could at least leave the Compound if it was with the two of them, unlike the others. Me and Yusuf didn’t bother hiding our feelings for each other in front of her or lie about why we both showed up to and left Envisioner sessions at the same time. One night, while the AI nav of one of the electric cars whizzed us home from Indian Springs and Yusuf was asleep against the window, she bobbed her head over at him.

“You might have to tuck him in,” she said. A wink. “Again.”