Park turned away. The way Jimex stepped aside reminded her of the time her nanny Sally had taken her on a field trip to a living history museum, with a tour that showcased homes from before the Comeback. There was an apartment building that terrified Park, with real windows and wood. It had seemed so small, so fragile, so penetrable. No wonder things had fallen apart so quickly, when the disaster had come. She remembered thinking that even when she was six.

The tour guide had been dressed in blue, waist-high pants made out of some kind of canvas. She’d pointed out the gas-powered ovens and cans of hairspray, and then the building’s elevator, designed in the old fashion, with buttons you had to press. Park had refused to go in, feeling that it would put her in some kind of real, unspeakable danger.

“This is against the directives of the tour,” Sally had said calmly, her cool fingers limp in Park’s resisting hand. “We are here for education. You cannot be educated if you don’t go inside.”

“What pulls those things?” Park had demanded. She’d imagined the leaves of an old grandfather clock, the gears brass and brittle, flaking off like dead leaves. “What if it drops us?”

“I will not allow any harm to come to you,” Sally had said. She didn’t explain the mechanics of the elevator, or give the statistics on how many tours had passed through it without incident. But it was belief in that truth that had coaxed Park inside.

She remembered standing in that box of metal and light, sweating. The way Jimex stepped aside reminded her exactly of Sally telling her to go in—there was that same assurance, that feeling that he would not tell her to do something that would harm her. But that was ridiculous. Sally’s sole purpose in life had been to protect Park. She no longer knew what Jimex’s purpose was.

“What’s down there?” she asked him again.

“What you’ve been looking for,” Jimex said. He looked into her blurry eyes. “He won’t harm you. He wants your help.”

I bet you say that to all the girls, Park thought then, absurdly. But the words had a familiar cant to them, that edge of android-truth, so she had to trust him—and she couldn’t deny that she was burningly curious about what was down there. And Jimex would never knowingly send her into danger.

So, without thinking much more about it, Park found herself climbing into a gravity chute she had never seen before, descending smoothly into the bowels of the ship with only the slightest, tingliest resistance. Lights passed dimly overhead, then receded. Again the tunnel felt too close, gullet-like, the ceiling and walls shifting overhead. Park felt as if she were being digested. As if her body were disintegrating.