There’s a question I could’ve asked Kaori, at the podium for one of her press conferences. I’d be sitting in one of the rows of folding chairs with the other reporters, in my newsman drag of a trench coat and a fedora with Press written on a card and tucked into the hatband. I’d raise my hand and she’d nod for me to stand.

“Good morning, Dr. Nakamori. I’m Hayes Figueiredo with Stating the Fucking Obvious News. My question is, if I hadn’t seen that footage, would I have known just how to rip through the barriers myself? Or that I even could?”

“Mmm.” Kaori would nod. “Great question, but what we should really talk about is the troops.”

Since I couldn’t ask Kaori that, I tried asking the Envisioner once, but the maybes and would’ves fractaled down into forever.

I know I said she’d been the one really calling the shots here. But honestly, me finding footage of Figueiredo showing off how he could cut windows into other universes didn’t seem like it was a part of her plan. It was my escape.

Less than a month after she’d left, she was back like it was just another snoozer of a day. From my spying spot at the window of the Footage Farm, I saw her by the Envisioner. I bolted down the stairs and tried to corner her to ask how she was, but she waved me off saying that she had too much catching up to do. Yusuf filled me in that night—actually able to tell me through the side of his tight lips how frustrated he was with her. She was back with zero warning and already she’d given some vague pep talk to the staff, thanking Dr. Hassan for his leadership in her absence and how they were ready to resume predictive work.

I watched him unravel into a breathless annoyance, saying she was undoing all his progress. I was happy to listen, but there was only so many times I could say that sucks. I could’ve screamed that for such rocket-scientists, they could be completely dense if they didn’t see that the only way to hash all of this out was to—christ on a cross—talk to each other about their feelings.

After a few days of the weird tension between them like an invisible barbed wire, I cribbed a plot-point from some buddy movie and decided to trap them together, forcing them to hash things out. “Let’s get out of here for an afternoon like old times,” I told each of them. Yusuf met me at the small electric car the next afternoon and I told him to wait in the back. Only when Kaori walked into the garage a few minutes later, opened the car door, and spotted Yusuf already inside did they realize this was a setup.