The woman in gray scrubs leads us to another area of the Center.

A room with a wide window overlooking an enormous all-white lab, women and men wearing hospital masks and jumpsuits like the one I have on, except white, seated at workstations with rows and rows of interconnected monitors. Jumbled letters and numbers fly across the screens at a rate I can’t process. Even if I could slow it down, I wouldn’t know what any of it meant.

Mr. Oklahoma, standing with a man and woman dressed in lab coats, smiles, waves us over. “Ms. Barrantes, Jamal, these are our clinical modelers, Marcus and Kiana.”

“Modelers?”

“They will conduct your interviews. The information they gather will assist in Quincy’s personality recovery.”

“Wait, why . . . are you saying Quincy might not have the same personality?”

“He will be the same Quincy, but the imaging smooths any potential wrinkles we might discover during the last phase of reanimation. Likely it will not be needed, but we prefer to be proactive rather than reactive.”

Kiana pushes the door, holds it open. “Ms. Barrantes, if you’ll please follow me to analysis room one, we’ll get started.”

“So that means it’s you and me,” I say to Marcus.

He doesn’t smile. “Come,” he says. “It’s important we don’t fall behind the reanimators.”

73

Marcus is not a small-talk person.

“And Quincy’s mental state at the party?”

“I’d say, uh, fairly normal, initially.”

“Numerical value only, please.”

I refer to the tablet he gave me. Columns of emotions, each with a half dozen subemotions, all assigned a number range. Get it?

Yeah, me either.

I tap the screen. “Right. Sorry. Eight. No, seven, I guess.”

Marcus glances up from the terminal. “All of your responses are guesses, Mr. Anderson. As I explained, the majority of Quincy’s recall will be directly downloaded. This work, it’s simply a facade. Window dressing. All you need to do is answer to the best of your ability, yes?”

“Honestly, I don’t understand how any of this helps.”

He sighs. “The better we understand the way Q was perceived by those closest to him, the better the imaging. Make sense?”

No. Not really. “Yeah. Sure. I’m just . . . I haven’t slept and I’m just . . . any idea how much longer this is gonna take?”

“You have better things to do?”

“Definitely not, but . . .”

“You want the best outcome for your friend?”

“Of course.”

“The best outcome takes as long as it takes. Now, can we continue, or do you require a brief intermission?”

“No, no, you’re right. Let’s . . . let’s keep going.”

“Our next session is long-form questions. Use as many words as you need to answer. Clear?”

Not especially. I nod.

“So, it is our understanding, you and Quincy are no longer friends? Why was this relationship terminated?”

I wring my hands in my lap. My lips, throat, dry up. “What do you mean?”