Jonas texts me one word—rehearsal—and a location pin that pulses like a tiny warning light. I grab the “Linen” drive for talisman more than function and take the stairs two at a time, the elevator screens in the shaft whispering: “Warm-Up Show Today: Compassion Theater Returns.” The building breathes disinfectant and hot sugar; someone is baking in the basement café while a janitor swabs citrus across the rails. The air tastes like contradiction on my tongue.
In the control room, I find him crouched under a folding table with a travel router and a nest of labeled cables. “You’re late by three heartbeats,” he says without looking up, and nudges a headphone cup toward me with his shoulder. “They’re loading a new asset.”
“New how?” I kneel beside him. The carpet fibers bite my knees; the AC moves air across my neck like cold breath.
“Title’s coy.” He taps the trackpad and the file list blooms on a monitor’s corner panel. Compassion Overlay v2 sits there with a fresh timestamp and a green checkmark that reads synced.
My scalp prickles. “They used ‘overlay’ before for lower-third graphics.”
“This is not a lower third.” He double-clicks.
The screen opens on a clean gray interface with rounded sliders and a halo watermark so faint I only catch it when I lean. Labels bloom as my eyes adjust: Comfort (μ), Suggestibility, Latency Gate, Recovery Fade. On the right, an icon of a wrist cuff pulses with a stylized heartbeat. Each pulse brightens the cuff; each brightening kicks the Comfort (μ) slider up a hair.
My stomach contracts. I reach for the cup I forgot to bring. My mouth tastes like cotton and old pennies. “Show me the binding.”
Jonas pinches and drags the window into the router’s traffic view; he narrates like a sportscaster in a slow game. “Cuff’s on a private band. Host’s cuff. See the MAC? That last byte—A7—matches the prop inventory sheet from sponsor day.”
“They swore the cuff was a gesture reader for prompter.” I hear my voice and dislike its thinness.
“Gesture’s now a drip.” He flicks a slider with the trackpad; on the top-left rehearsal feed, the host lifts her hand while a stand-in guest answers a bland question about “growth after conflict.” The cuff lights faintly, like a wink. The guest blinks, tips their head right, and exhales in a perfectly even stream—as if a yoga teacher pressed play inside their lungs.
I taste salt. The bay must be pushing fog through a seam in the window frame because the room smells suddenly like low tide and sterilized plastic. “What’s the latency?” I ask.
Jonas hovers over the Latency Gate and the tooltip pops: 90–180 ms. He whistles. “That’s quicker than the chair.”
“Live enough.” I swallow nothing and hear my throat click. “Open the training deck.”
He does, and Gray’s voice slides into the room through a B-roll explanation track, warm and scolding in the way that makes audiences call him gentle. “Remember,” Gray says, “people confuse pain with honesty. Our task is relief first, concordance second. If the halo detects strain inconsistent with stated narrative, guide them.”
He says guide like he means bend. I grip the armrest of the nearest rolling chair until the vinyl squeaks. On the monitor, the deck flips to a page with animated arrows showing thumb taps on the cuff: one for calm, two for release, three for reset. The panel on our screen echoes the taps, Comfort (μ) ratcheting by neat increments.
“They’re mapping it to beats,” I say. “To questions.”
Jonas nods. “Watch the script column.”
The script scroll binds taps to lines: Tell me about the moment you forgave… (tap), That must have felt… (tap-tap), Take your time. (tap). The choreography hangs there, a ballet for pushing people through holes.
Hook: My phone vibrates against the metal table leg—three short buzzes that announce Rowan. I open the message and find a single skull emoji, cartoon-clean, no caption. Then another line: “board v2 patched”. A follow-up: “cuff = live drip”. My pulse tilts.
I type, “confirm: implants during interview?”
The typing bubble appears and disappears twice. A minute later I get a photo shot at a diagonal, the board’s micro-dosing panel visible through a reflection of someone’s knuckles. Comfort (μ) shows 0.25, Suggestibility 0.08, Recovery 4s. In the corner, a sticky note reads “host cue only”.
Jonas sees over my shoulder and breathes one word through his teeth. “Damn.”
I record a quick room-tone strip on my phone—AC pitch, distant wheel squeal, someone’s throat clear, the clack of the director’s ring on the console. I name the file WarmUp_StudioB_control_rt and slide it into the folder with the chimes from 7A. I need the sound of this room the way sailors used to need the stars. The halo claims optics; I take audio.
On the main stage feed, the host laughs at something that reads like a joke but lands like a test. The cuff lights in rhythm to the laugh’s tail. The stand-in’s pupils flare and contract with the regularity of a metronome. I watch the Comfort (μ) slider and try not to anthropomorphize a number.
“We can outflank this,” Jonas says, though his jaw works like the word outflank is tough meat. “Overlay spectral alarms on our counterstream. Show micro-dosing latency in real time. Red text, clean. We don’t accuse; we demonstrate.”
“No adjectives,” I say. My voice drops into that steady register I use when my heart is crawling ceiling. “We publish the panel and the cuff mapping protocol. We show what a tap looks like on the waveform. We name Comfort (μ) and Suggestibility and the range where people start saying the words the board requests.”
“Rowan can give ranges,” he says.
“Rowan can’t be named,” I answer. I rub my thumb against my palm, seeking linen texture that isn’t there, only the shine of sanitizer dried on skin.
Jonas scrolls through more of the deck. A page labeled “Audience Concordance” displays a split screen: on the left, heart rate and galvanic curves for the guest; on the right, a “warmth meter” for the studio audience. The note: “Boost Comfort (μ) during dips to reinforce alignment.”
“They’re dosing guests to control the crowd,” I say.
“And dosing the crowd by dosing the guest.” He clicks the Latency Gate values again. “There’s a tail. Recovery four seconds means an answer can ride the drug like a surfboard before the wave falls under them.”
I’m dismayed enough to taste it—metal thickening in saliva—then focus comes like it always does when I move my hands. I open my notebook and start a list in block caps:
- CAPTURE THUMB TAP TIMING
- MAP TAP → μ INCREMENT
- LIVE LATENCY OVERLAY (ms)
- COMPARATIVE ROOM-TONE WOBBLE UNDER DOSE
- HOST CUFF CLOSE-UP SOURCING
- SAFETY PHRASE FOR SERA/LEO IF DOSED
I say the last line out loud because saying it makes me responsible for it. “We need a safety phrase.”
“You already have storm words,” Jonas says.
“We need one that evokes nothing.” I shake my head. “Storm words are ours. If they surface on air, they’ll become content.”
“What word evokes nothing?” He tries to laugh and fails. He looks at my hands. “Linen?”
“Linen is everything.” I smile with half my mouth and it aches.
Hook: The rehearsal switches to a mock segment about “rebuilding trust after digital harm.” Gray steps into frame to calibrate camera contrast, no lab coat, just a dark jacket and a smile engineered to read as apology-ready. The halo rings above him flare then soften to pearl. His mic crackles as he speaks to the host: “If a subject resists with rote scripts, consider a hint of comfort to loosen recall.” He taps his own wrist, a mimicry of the cuff without wearing one, and the host nods.
I lean toward the monitor as if I could smell his cologne through glass. I smell disinfectant and my own coffee breath instead. “We need a camera on the cuff,” I say. “A feed we can cut to when the tap lands.”
“I can steal a rehearsal iso.” Jonas’ fingers tick across keys. “If I burn a credential, we get thirty seconds before they notice the echo.”
“Thirty seconds is a life,” I say.
Rowan pings again: “cuff requires host touch. board operator cannot trigger” and then, after a full sixty seconds in which I count three foghorns from the bay and a fan belt squeal from a loading dock, “unless override engaged”. The second line arrives with a second skull.
“Override is Gray,” I say.
Jonas nods, eyes on code. “Or whoever’s at his elbow.”
The control room door opens and a breeze brings in corridor talk—families trading rep scores like weather reports. “Amber now, green by Sunday, if he smiles enough.” I hear the code words for scan outcomes the way other people hear prayer. I list them in my head unconsciously—clean, restored, reconciled—the grammar of capture. A production assistant slips in with a tray of coffees stamped with the halo icon; the paper cups sweat rings onto a receipt that bears the same two rings, embossed like a quiet brand of obedience. He sets a cup near my elbow without asking whose I am and leaves. The coffee smells like burnt caramel and I drink it anyway.
“You’re not on the list,” Jonas says softly.
“I’m on all their lists.” I tap the receipt. “This too.”
The rehearsal shifts to audience inserts. The board arranges cutaways of faces looking up with scheduled empathy. The Compassion Overlay v2 panel, docked in a corner, ticks in micro-steps as the host practices lines that will frame a sister as ungrateful and then forgive her. The Suggestibility slider touches 0.12. The stand-in smiles like they’ve been given permission to stop remembering.
“I hate that number,” I say.
“Then make it speak,” Jonas replies.
I pull on the headphones and isolate the cuff taps from the ambient. There it is: a cluster of high-frequency ticks atop the host’s mic signal, small but regular, mistaken for jewelry chatter unless you know to listen. I loop them, lower the background, and build a quick preset—CuffTap Extractor v1. The spread looks like teeth. I export a test clip and drag it onto our counterstream pre-roll. When the tap lands, a red blip flashes with μ: +.03. The blip looks like the dot of blood you get when you prick a finger to prove you’re real.
“Show me the iso,” I say.
Jonas wins us thirty seconds. A new feed blooms: close-up of the host’s cuff, all shine and subcutaneous tech. Each thumb stroke presses across polished dots that aren’t decorative; their spacing matches the panel’s triple-tap option. The cuff hums through the recording with a soft coil song the room mics don’t hear. I record that too. I need the hum like I need the bay’s foghorn, a warning wrapped in patience.
“We’re going to war with a cough drop,” Jonas mutters, staring at the Comfort (μ) increments.
“We’re going to war with a cough drop and a metronome,” I answer. “And linen.”
The host laughs again. The cuff glints. Gray in the wings lifts his chin in a movement so economical it must be rehearsed, and the director calls, “Perfect, hold that.” The studio lights shift a degree warmer, a trick the network loves to sell “safety,” and my skin crawls.
I text Rowan: “we’ll visualize taps live. need confirm on μ thresholds that alter lexical choice”.
Rowan replies: “depends on host rapport; watch for μ > .05 sustained 6s. lexical conformity spike.”
“Six seconds,” I repeat, writing 6s and circling it until the paper shows dents. “That’s the surf window.”
“We can ride it,” Jonas says, and for a second his mouth is so close to the mic that his breath fogs the capsule. He leans back. “We feed the audience the taps every time the host says ‘take your time.’ We pair it with your guide’s lines. We put the board’s empathy on a scoreboard.”
I picture Sera and Leo under the rings, the cuff pulsing like a polite heartbeat while “comfort” lowers the floor under their feet. I picture my storm words, salt and linen, fighting a number the audience cannot smell. Dismay drains to a hard edge. Focus tightens my ribs.
“Then we need our own tap,” I say. “A beat I give Sera that tells her when to speak our null word. A rhythm no cuff can steal.”
“You’re going to drum the table on air?” Jonas almost smiles.
“I’m going to drum the world.” I set my fingers on the console and tap the pattern I have carried since we counted thunder at the kitchen table: count, cradle, low. I don’t say the words. I let the rhythm write them.
The control room doesn’t notice. The board doesn’t know my hands. The halo cannot decode the roll of knuckles across vinyl. Not yet.
Rowan sends one more line: “live implants possible. deniability: ‘ambient support’. i can trip ad loop if needed but only once.”
“Ad loop,” Jonas says. “That’s our panic cord.”
“That’s our last resort,” I correct, and angle the cup to see the ringed logo smear with condensation until it looks less like purity and more like shackles blurred by sweat.
The director calls a five and the host steps offstage to powder. Gray speaks to someone off-mic; the boom still catches him. “We don’t manipulate; we create conditions for honesty.” He says honesty and my jaw tightens hard enough to throb.
I pack the iso, the cuff hum, the tap preset, and the panel screenshots into a folder labeled cuff_v2 and mirror it to “Linen.” I feel the small weight of the drive in my pocket like a coin from a country that stopped existing.
Jonas looks at me over the top of his screen. “Battle plan?”
“Louder, faster, smarter,” I say. “We show the taps. We show the μ. We show the six seconds. We teach viewers the cough drop’s song in under a minute. And if Gray triggers override, we make the override the headline.”
The bay coughs fog against the window and a news blimp reroutes in a stuttering arc that looks, from here, like indecision. Families in the corridor whisper their codes—green, restored—and the halo’s light under the studio doors washes the carpet a forgiving white. My phone screen holds Rowan’s skull like a tiny memento mori.
I keep my voice steady and ask the only question that matters to the part of me that still believes sound can beat spectacle. “Now that I can hear the cuff’s rhythm and name the drug by its slider, can my storm beats reach Sera and Leo inside six seconds—or will the host’s thumb buy obedience faster than I can teach the crowd to hear the tap?”