I situated myself in my office, which wasn’t technically my office anymore, and I set to making the boxes, pulling my things off the shelves, and getting them stowed away.

The space heater hummed and the computer monitor clicked, as I periodically checked something or followed up on something I’d seen on a file.

I made a stack of the things I wanted to read, the files that intrigued or that I’d forgotten about, the magazines I liked. I was a third of the way through my shelves, twelve boxes filled, when I finally settled down in my chair, pulling blankets over me, and started to read.

I got about two pages read before deciding I didn’t have it in me to read more.

I didn’t have it in me to sit still, when my anxieties were churning.

I stood, dropping blankets on the floor, and walked over to the window. With the cold, the space heater, and the imperfect seal, moisture and fog had collected on it.

I reached out toward the window, a foot away from touching it. I turned on my forcefield.

A pause.

Then a handprint on the window, in the condensation. Then another.

A circular smudge that streaked, a naked breast pressed against the glass, moving.

Then the mark that couldn’t be anything but one half of a face, beneath the circular smudge.

They moved, and I wasn’t asking them to move. The window rattled a bit as it was pushed against. The prints smudged.

A fingernail dragged against the glass, and produced a high pitched squeal, almost ear-splitting.

I dropped the forcefield. I sank back into my seat, and it protested the landing.

Not a second trigger. I was well aware of that. When I’d first had my forcefield, it hadn’t protected my costume. I had two theories as to why.

The first theory was that I’d grown, and the boundaries that the forcefield used to define ‘me’ had changed. I’d breathe out, breathe in, gain a pound here, lose a pound there, and it would adjust for the maximum bounds. It didn’t explain how my skirt was often protected, but I’d mused on that too, that my legs moved, my hair had been long at one point, I’d been shorter…

I’d been that, the forcefield had adjusted, and that was the new upper bound of what I was, forever with me.

It felt thin, as theories went.

The second theory was that it was the Manton effect, that broad-as-bells term for the built-in protections and limitations of the power. The theory was that the built-in protections of the power only protected what I saw as a part of me, and it had taken some time before the costume was that much a part of my identity.

That that was me, now, as much as the costume I wore.