Lexicon

it done again.”
    “What’s your ticket number?” She told him. There was a pause. “That data set has been recompiled.”
    “I know it’s been recompiled. But I want it re-recompiled, because it’s still wrong.”
    “The data set is accurate.”
    “Guy,” she said, “I’m looking at it right now. The p-graph is blank. I don’t know if you’ve got a format error, missing data, or what, but the graph cannot be blank.”
    “It’s not blank.”
    She opened her mouth, because that was preposterous. She had seen thousands of p-graphs and knew what they were supposed to look like: mountain ranges. Sometimes they had many peaks, sometimes just one, but the point was they were jagged. The lines went up and down. But as she looked at it again, she realized Labs was right. There was a line. She hadn’t noticed because it ran along the very top of the grid and was dead straight.
    “Clear?” said Labs.
    “Yes,” she said. “Thank you.” She put down the phone. She looked at the graph awhile.
    • • •
    She walked to Sashona’s desk. “Hey,” she said. “What’s synapsis?”
    “What’s the context?”
    “It’s in a new ticket. After ‘subject response,’ instead of a rating, it says ‘synapsis.’”
    “Well,
synapsis
is just compromise,” said Sashona. “But they shouldn’t use that term. That’s sloppy.”
    “Why?”
    “It’s the ideal. The theoretical state of perfect compromise. Doesn’t exist in real life.”
    “Oh,” Emily said. “I see.”
    “Tell them to say what they mean,” Sashona said, returning to her work. “Probably someone new.”
    “Right,” she said.
    • • •
    She did her best to write a meaningful report about the oddly flat graph and dutifully submitted it to the ticket system. Another ticket was waiting, but she felt distracted, and gazed at passing clouds instead. She had the feeling something was going to happen.
    Six minutes later, the power went out. She rolled her chair back from her dead monitor. Heads poked up from cubicles. “I thought we had a backup generator,” said Sashona. Her voice sounded loud. Emily hadn’t noticed the hum of the air-conditioning until it was gone.
    An alarm began to jangle. People’s voices rose. Rosenberg speculated about fire in Labs, which would be a problem, because a lot of those doors were time-locked. They made for the stairwells but Emily didn’t follow. Sashona hung in the doorway. “Woolf?”
    She shook her head. She was feeling stupid. She had waited too long. She should have walked out of this building six minutes ago. She should have done it the moment she saw that graph.
    “Woolf! It’s not optional. Time to go.”
    She ran through floor plans in her head. There was no fire escape. She hadn’t realized that before. No glass cases saying IN CASE OF EMERGENCY . No one had ever gathered them in a conference room and explained where to go in an orderly fashion in the event that they needed to evacuate.
    Sashona gave up on her and disappeared. Emily could go up or down. Those were her only options. She reached the stairwell and started climbing. She heard disembodied voices rising around her like departed spirits. A door boomed and there was silence but for her own breathing. She didn’t hear anyone else going down, she realized: no one from other floors. She stopped to kick off her shoes, which were helping no one. She climbed and climbed and finally saw daylight. She even jogged up the last few steps but found herself at a scuffed steel door that was chained and padlocked. She tried it anyway. She sat on the concrete and tried to figure out what next.
    Somewhere far below, a door clacked open, then slammed. This happened eight or nine times. She listened but couldn’t hear anything more. “Fuck,” she said. She was pissed at herself. She had spent too long in Broken Hill, not needing an escape route. She balled her hands into fists.
Think.
There was a skylight. It was secured, but how well? She went back to the door and put one foot into a loop of chain and pulled herself up, searching for fingerholds. Balancing, she reached for the skylight, but it was too far away. She heard a rasping. What the fuck that was, she did not know, but it was coming from below and getting closer. She managed to inch her way up until she was standing on the bar of the door. The chain swung and clanked like a bell. Like she was deliberately trying to attract attention. Her fingertips brushed the skylight but that