Lexicon

we can measure your brain activity, okay?”
    “Yeah,” she said, although she was thinking
no, no, no
. She sat. Even the plastic was icy. The steel box had no lid. Not that she could see. Around its sides were thick vertical rods. Pistons? She stared because she could not imagine what the deal was with this box.
    The tech touched her hair. She flinched. “Just relax.” He began to fit the helmet.
    “Hey, what is this again? What kind of—”
    “Just a product.”
    “Yeah, but it, you know, seems pretty weird for a product. So what kind of product is it?” He didn’t answer.
Turn him
, she thought
.
“Strongly important”: she had read a hundred tickets from this guy and he was segment fifty-five, no question, and she had figured out words for that. She could compromise him in two seconds flat and make him walk her out of here. She didn’t know what next. There was no next in that scenario. Not one she wanted. But why was there a box? Why the fuck was there a box?
    “Almost done, Jessica.”
    She had not anticipated a box. She’d thought maybe an envelope. A man sitting opposite, preparing to read a word. And before he could, she would take it from him, because he wouldn’t be prepared for a poet. These guys, these isolated techs, she didn’t think they even knew what poets were. They just did what they were told. But that plan was clearly fucked, because whatever was in this box, this thing that turned a person’s p-graph into a flat line, caused
synapsis
, was too important for an envelope. She had been foolish to imagine that.
    “There’s a small needle in this one.”
    She felt a sliver of cold enter her skull.
    “All done.” The tech moved to the video cameras and began turning them on. Red lights gleamed at her. “Just clear your mind and look at the product.”
    “What product?”
    “The product that will come out of the box after I’ve left.”
    “What do you mean, it will come out of the box?”
    “I can’t tell you without—”
    “Without polluting my reaction, I know, but why is there a box? What’s inside it?”
    “Don’t worry about the box.”
    “Just tell me why there has to—”
    “I don’t know what’s in the box,” he said. “Okay?”
    She saw it was true. And now that she looked, did she notice how the video cameras were covering only her? Not the box. It was so that later, after it was done and the box had closed again, people could study the tapes without being exposed. Did she notice the tech had been avoiding eye contact? She knew what that meant, right?
    He placed a black device on the floor. “This is a speaker. I won’t be able to hear you, but I’ll keep talking to you throughout the process.”
    “I changed my mind,” she said. “I don’t want to do this.”
    He glanced over his shoulder. The man in the gray uniform hovered outside the vault door.
Volteen
, she thought.
Carlott sissiden nox, save me from that guard
. It might work. The two weren’t far apart; the tech might reach him before he drew his gun.
    The guard said, “We have a problem?”
    “No,” she said. “No, I’m okay.”
    “Time,” the guard said. “Thirty seconds.”
    “Just relax,” the tech told her. He stepped out. Shortly afterward, the vault door began to move. She expected it to clang but it closed as gently as a shadow. Then bolts fired like gunshots and she jumped. The echoes lasted forever and then all she could hear was her own breathing.
Harry
, she thought.
Harry, I may have fucked this up.
    The black speaker the tech had left on the floor emitted a burst of static. It took her a moment to realize it was talking. “
Jessshhhica
.” It sounded like he was broadcasting from the moon. “We’re going to give you a few minutes to relax.” Drenched in static, it sounded like:
relaxssschh
. “Please breathe normally and remain in a calm, natural state.”
    She began to peel the helmet from her head. Part of it resisted. When she finally got it off, she saw that it was the needle, which was four inches long and wet with clear fluid. She put that on the floor and tried not to think about it. There were thin wires coming out of the helmet in a bunch of places and she followed these to a tiny gray container strapped to the underside of her chair with nothing inside but a chip and a battery. Everything in this room was self-powered, she realized. The cage lights, the video cameras, the radio speaker. They were so careful to let nothing in or out, the room