I left the cliff-backed harbor behind me and watched the fog unspool across the freeway like gauze being tugged from a wound. Downtown’s neon softened in the rearview; the city’s hush became engine drone and dry field heat. The bakery’s sugar stuck to my tongue even after coffee; the salted caramel ghosted the air vents. I cracked the window for clean air and got dust and sunburned hay, a smell that says old money pretending to be simple.
The farmhouse sat on a low rise as deliberate as a logo: white-cube rooms grafted onto weathered wood, glass panes reflective enough to turn me into a pitch deck. Gravel ground under my tires—mic drop applause—and a wind sock licked the breeze with the same mouthfeel as a ring light: ozone, sterile, hungry.
Inside, the receptionist smiled with the temperature of good data. Her blouse had micro-hex stitching along the cuffs—hive as uniform—and her nails matched the brand’s off-white. She slid a brochure across the desk. “We specialize in storyboarding your soul,” she said, like the sentence had been A/B tested for conversion.
I picked up the brochure and let the satin paper squeak between my fingers. The cover showed a silhouette inside concentric hexes, a body made of cells and corridors. I didn’t blink. “I’ve been looking for an architect,” I said, voice airy and bright. “My audience is…restless. I’m ready to scale devotion into something cleaner.”
“We love devotion,” she said, and I watched the word light her irises—training complete. “Can I get your name?”
“Mara,” I said. I gave her a last name that belonged to a storage unit I’d rented years ago. “I consult; I’m ready to build.”
She tapped her keyboard. I heard the soft pop of phantom notifications from somewhere—a ghost-click chorus—and I logged the cadence for later. She handed me a clipboard with a honeycomb logo watermark and a pen that felt heavy for its size. The barrel flashed a tiny etched mantra: DANGER ≈ DEVOTION.
“Great weight,” I said, lifting it so it caught the gallery lights. “You make even ink feel cinematic.”
“Our founder believes the hand should feel the arc,” she said. “Would you like a tour while I ping the team?”
I smiled like I’d dreamed of this for months. “I’d love the full choreography,” I said.
Micro-hook: I slipped the pen into my tote without looking down.
She led me along a hallway that smelled like cold eucalyptus and hot plastic. The walls were white enough to audition for a hospital, clinging to silence in a way that made sound feel uninvited. On my right, glass opened onto a control room: a wall of screens—portrait, landscape, stacked—showing grids of storyboards and color timing wheels, crowd heat maps, and something that looked like a heartbeat superimposed over a comment waterfall. My skin tightened.
“Previsualization,” she said, hands steepled. “We map arcs before we touch reality.”
“You mean,” I said, close enough to fog the glass with a polite breath, “you test panic like lighting cues.”
“We test attention,” she said. “Attention self-organizes around meaningful risk.”
I counted the monitors in sets of six, neat as a rosary. One screen held a deck slide skeleton; another looped a countdown morphing into product carousels; another showed an empty barn dressed in police tape and faux concrete rubble, a ring light set to cool blue. “Who designs the rubrics?” I asked.
“We co-design with talent,” she said. “We never take authorship.”
I washed my face with a neutral smile. “Such respect.”
She led me through an open door into the barn, now a white cube with wooden ribs like the inside of a whale. Props leaned in organized stacks: foam bricks dusty with theatrical scuffs, neon script signs resting on their backs like fallen phrases, confetti cannons tagged with QR codes and serials, a row of aprons on a garment rack—the white one stitched with honeycomb thread, the hem whispering HUSH/USH if I let my memory speak. I touched nothing. Touch transfers need lawyers.
“Our archive,” she said, inhaling the smell of paint and old glitter with pride. “We believe in keeping material culture alive.”
“Graveyard,” I said, warm, admiring. “Everything you can resurrect on demand.”
In a corner, a whiteboard waited with a blotchy eraser and two dried-out markers. The phrase hit me before my eyes finished reading it. Danger ≈ Devotion. Approximate. Not equals—approximate. Close enough to sell. I tasted iron under my tongue, the way anger tastes when it wants to sprint.
“That equation,” I said lightly. “To what power?”
“Depends on the audience,” she said. “And if they get to participate.”
“Participation heals,” I said, hearing the whisper from the unlisted call bleed into this room. “So I’ve been told.”
“You’ve worked with narrative before,” she said, assessing the edges of my face for telltales. “I can bring the founder for a hello if you’d like.”
“If he’s available,” I said, friendly, thirsty, unthreatening.
We moved into a smaller gallery where success stories hung like saints. Frames held metrics instead of faces: retention curves, cohort notes, revenue bands colored like sherbet. A honeycomb shelf displayed branded gifts—the pen, a notebook with embossed hexes, a jar-shaped paperweight. I let my hand float over them, then withdrew. Heat pumps hummed through the walls, a careful white noise that aspirated the building like breath.
“Restroom?” I asked.
“Down the hall, second left,” she said.
I walked softly enough that my feet didn’t create plot. The bathroom was opera-house clean. The mirror ran edge to edge, the soap smelled like bergamot peeled by a machine, and the stall doors were the kind that conceal ankles—privacy as product. I stood at the sink and watched myself not react.
Then I saw it: a pinhole above the mirror, the faintest red blink, a heartbeat I didn’t consent to. My shoulders cooled, the exact temperature of stainless steel. I held my eyes on my eyes and fixed a wisp of hair with too-slow care.
I spoke at my reflection with my mouth barely moving. “You record everywhere,” I said. “Good. Record this.”
I washed my hands like a person trying to do right by a new relationship. The air hand dryer sounded like a small jet taking off, masking the soft click at my tote’s edge as I palmed the branded pen back into sight—visible—then tucked it again, this time under the notebook pad I’d brought to look earnest. I left the room with a bland smile, pulse even, breath tidy.
Micro-hook: I pictured the pen listening as the farm breathed.
When I returned, the receptionist had acquired a new posture: straighter, smoothed, microphone-ready. A man stood beside her as if he’d always been standing there—good entrances are just well-timed edits. Cass Rainer wore clean denim that wanted to be called heritage and a shirt a stylist would call quiet-luxe. No tie. Wrist bare. He smelled like cedar lacquered with citrus, a scent that denies guilt.
“Mara,” he said, tasting my name like he was adding it to a forecast. “Welcome to the workshop.”
I managed a small laugh. “Workshop? That feels humble.”
“Humble is cost-effective,” he said. “We reserve grandeur for our clients.”
He didn’t offer a seat. He didn’t need to. Power sits with or without chairs. I kept my tote strap firm against my shoulder, aware of every gram.
“Your receptionist says you’re ready to architect,” he said. “Tell me the headline.”
“I want to trade panic for purpose,” I said. “My audience has been trained to twitch. I’m ready to make them breathe deeper for longer—and then act.”
“Conversion is breathing’s true name,” he said. “We don’t punish the reflex; we choreograph it.”
The whiteboard ghosted behind my eyes. “And devotion?”
“Is the arc across time,” he said. His voice had the smooth friction of a leather belt. “We offer scaffolding. Souls climb it.”
I smiled with my useless teeth. “Your brochure promises soul storyboarding.”
He glanced at the desk. “We beta test language with care,” he said. “Are you camera-shy?”
“Camera-literate,” I said. “I’m comfortable with edges.”
He watched that line land and filed it where he files things that might explode later. In a glass room to our left, a junior staffer dragged a digital rectangle across a timeline and little reaction emotes popped like soap bubbles—sad, shocked, relieved, pay. My mother’s bakery heat ghosted my hands, and I fought the urge to wipe flour I wasn’t wearing onto denim I didn’t own.
“We can begin with a map,” he said. “Identify anchors in your history, translate them into moments. We prefer low-stakes rehearsals first—objects, places, scents. Audiences remember smell more than plot.”
“The pier,” I said, too fast. “Salted caramel steam.”
His eyes warmed. “Good. Specific. Your body knows your arcs.”
I let a beat of vulnerability show and then zipped it closed. “What’s your intake timeline?” I asked. “I have a vote to navigate and a community to settle.”
A corner of his mouth ticked. “I do admire operational elegance,” he said. The phrase cracked open a trapdoor behind my ribs—the call, the praise. He enjoyed recognition like a cat enjoys a mirror.
“It’s my day job,” I said, and softened the grin. “You’re known for speed.”
“Speed is mercy,” he said. “And profit. Let’s not insult either with false modesty.”
“What’s your protocol for off-platform escalation?” I asked, light, curious. “Say…if a safety narrative outgrows its container.”
He tilted his head in a way that said not yet, but he talked anyway because men like Cass love the sound of their own thesis finding a new host. “We previsualize,” he said, and angled his chin toward the screens. “We load redundant rails. We test end states. Crisis is a stage; exits can be rehearsed.”
My tote strap dug into my shoulder. The pen felt heavier, newly awake. I angled my body to the nearest glass so the tote faced the wall, no camera. I needed the pen to hear this. I needed a court to hear this. I needed Lyla to know I’d walk into the mouth and still keep my hands clean.
“I’d like to see how you storyboard,” I said. “Even just the bones.”
“We share decks after NDAs,” he said smoothly. “We don’t do free consultations.”
I made a little face like I’d been too forward. “Of course,” I said. “I’m a grown-up.”
“We’ll send paperwork by end of day,” he said. “We’re selective. You may be, too.”
“I love mutual selectivity,” I said. “Consent is conversion’s true name.”
He laughed, genuine enough to register as skill. “You’ll do fine,” he said, and extended his hand.
His palm was cool and dry, the handshake short enough to avoid intimacy, long enough to register dominance. I matched the grip. His thumb pressed once into the bone at my wrist—pressure of a man who knows geography. I let his eyes read nothing there.
“One more question,” I said, light as buttering a bun. “Where do you hide the cameras?”
The receptionist made a small sound; he pretended not to hear it. “Everywhere,” he said pleasantly. “That way we don’t have to remember.”
“Saves money on rehearsal,” I said. “Captures the offbeats.”
“Exactly,” he said, and nodded toward the barn again. “Out there is where we practice endings.”
I did not look. Endings are better faced when you’re writing them. Surfaces gleamed. The room tasted like toothpaste and statistics. I slid a fingertip along the edge of the brochure and let it whisper against my skin, a paper cut that didn’t bleed.
“Thank you for your time,” I said. “I look forward to the paperwork.”
“We look forward to your yes,” he said.
I turned, walked past the whiteboard—Danger ≈ Devotion—and past the pen cup where another dozen hex pens waited like needles in a pincushion. The receptionist held the door. Her perfume was green and bitter. I almost liked her; she had the steadiness of a metronome and the look of someone who thought a perfect system would keep her safe.
Outside, heat slapped the back of my neck. The glass reflected a woman I recognized enough to drive: smile closed, shoulders easy, eyes like a ledger. Bees stitched through the lavender beds, real ones, not logos; their song was simple, indifferent, clean.
I slid into the driver’s seat and rolled up the window. The pen lay in my tote like a small animal listening for the heavy footfalls of its maker. I set the brochure on the passenger seat. Dust motes pirouetted in the sun stripe across the dash, and from far off, a gull’s cough smuggled the harbor into farmland.
I didn’t start the engine. I pulled out my phone, opened the notes app, and typed three words I didn’t send anywhere yet: He records everywhere.
Then I wrote, He rehearses exits.
Then I wrote, We rehearse entry.
I started the car. Gravel applauded me again, then swallowed my tracks. I timed my breath to the turn signal click—countdown in miniature—and drove toward the gauzy edge where neon would begin again.
At the stop sign, my phone buzzed with a blocked message: Ready to storyboard your soul? The pen in my tote shifted with the curve. I imagined it waking, hearing, sending.
I didn’t reply. I let the unresolved stretch between farmland and harbor like string across a corkboard and took the road that would carry his deck to my doorstep—or to a court—without him knowing which door I planned to open first.