One bigger blob of green in that sea of yellow. Wherever that code or text appeared, it was translated as ‘handshake’, with a note beside it. One one-thousandth of the text on screen was translated in this way.

Like her last name, Donna was a blunt instrument, turned to the undecipherable and unbreakable and set to the task with stubborn persistence.

The Overseer collected a tissue from a stack of tissues on Donna’s undecorated desk. She wiped a dribble of moisture from the corner of Donna’s mouth. There was no reaction, no change in Donna. The older woman breathed at a set rate, blinked at a set rate, and even seemingly filled the catheter bag attached to her chair at a set rate. She had much less work to do with the communications blackout in effect. No phone calls to track and take notes on, no emails to file.

Of the fifteen sub-windows, six were gray and frozen. There would just be the data stream, and the one sub-window with the countdown for when Precipice entered his dream room. There would be a burst of data as they connected, a burst of data when they left. Donna had already cracked that for the most part. The window had the ‘logs’ from the last access, along with notes and numbers about the room’s distribution of power across its visitors. In lieu of the power distribution table, the fifth occupant had a stress meter, akin to a heart monitor, but frozen in time.

“You’re better than Denton,” Miltona told Laurie, reassuring. “It’s why you’re day shift. If we accepted these ranks as fact—”

“They are fact, aren’t they? Not those names, but, they are,” Laurie murmured.

“—then Denton would be the dog, and you would be above Denton. He makes more errors regularly than you’ve made this afternoon. We’re not going to make you a…”

“A pig,” Laurie whispered.

“Not for innocent mistakes.”

“It’s higher stakes. We’re yellow book. Soon we go red. If I stumble and our cell can’t manage, they might.”

“They won’t,” Miltona said, smoothing Laurie’s hair back. “I won’t let them.”

“I get shaky when I dwell on it,” Laurie whispered.

“It’s not so bad. I was one, once. It’s like sleeping, for a very long time, and when you wake up, you feel like you’ve accomplished something and you were taken care of.”

Laurie shook her head slightly.

“You don’t have to worry,” Miltona said.

Laurie nodded, still typing, always typing. The Overseer looked.

Semiramis: Take him downstairs and out. Don’t cause a stir. We won’t bring it up to the people downstairs until he’s clear.

Laurie adjusted her headset. She hit a key combination, and the line was flagged. Not a red box around the line, but a green one.