“Um, this is not a narrative. This is organized data, but it’s not a narrative. The Rhiz needs to know that we see Blithe as a full person. Didn’t you read the zine?” I stopped myself from saying, I would go to the Shadowlands again if this was how my life was narrated.

He shrugged.

I fumbled in one of the boxes and pulled out the slim, stapled document.

“A narrative is a river and the data points are molecules that make up the water. A narrative is a living body. A narrative is a—”

“Okay, okay, well, this is just a start,” he said, his cheeks reddening.

“You know what,” I said graciously. “The only way this is going to work is if we lean into our strengths. I’ll write the narrative report, and you can do the car rental and maybe find us some desert attire.”

“All right, sounds good.” He turned toward the door.

“You want to watch Chef’s Table with us to continue the team-building vibes?” Minna asked.

“K,” he said, smiling at her.

Minna scooted over on the short couch, and Aiden sat, blessing us with his dense, smoky scent. He was too close for me to soak in his full appearance, but I relished the clean fade of his haircut as he bent over his messenger bag.

Dashes of darling Demonides! I’d always assumed Minna was “straight-straight,” but here was Aiden, performing a decent-enough masculinity that she leaned toward him on the couch as the next chef, an egoic Russian, whipped up moose-lip dumplings.

Minna and Aiden left together. I figured he was less likely to hate me if he was crushing on my friend. I lit a Bohemian Woods–scented candle, and as the Bio-meter charged in its skin, I tried to parse Blithe’s gut data, because he’d signed up for one of those services to read his insides. The Rhiz had forgotten to include the analysis, and I scrolled through the universe inside his stomach, understanding nothing.

I went back to the zine article “How to Guide a Loved One Through the Shadowlands: Building a Narrative,” trying to cleanse my brain with its delightful and impractical use of metaphor.

After a while, I threw it down, got a seltzer, and opened Box 3: Pre-Hex Data.

March 10 was a typical workday for Blithe. He was a writer at Elemental, whose studio head eschewed adv-tech and was known for unorthodox views about creation. Elemental was funded by a group of start-ups, and the team could make whatever “content” they desired without much worry over advertising.

I felt a quiet rustle of jealousy as I read through Blithe’s wild ideas for the show’s pilot. His character, Margaret, was fleeing into the Sonoran Desert with one of the eight stolen gems of Catalpa. People from multiple dimensions were hunting her.