The chair rolls into light like a confession on casters.
I feel the roof’s grit grind under my knees as I lean toward the laptop. Fog beads on the trackpad and smears under my palm. In the studio, two grips in black shove the Reframing Chair to center, wheels squeaking once, and stop at Gray’s small nod. The cranial mesh hangs from the headrest like a silver nettle. A faint citrus climbs my throat; the studio air circulators have started pushing their brand of calm again.
“Publishing interface,” I say into my mic. My finger lands, and the counterstream blooms. On the left, the rig’s UI fills a clean rectangle: comfort injection, narrative seam, recall guidance, each with a slider and a tiny lock icon. On the right, I pin the consent clauses we collected: Participant agrees to framed recall guidance, Comfort dosing may be delivered during narrative distress, Data rights retained by sponsor unless contested. Two fonts, same meaning.
Gasps light the room like matches.
“We’ll walk through the toolset,” Gray says, keeping his tone in its velvet register. He gestures to the chair like a museum docent introducing a sculpture that has never harmed anyone. “These are supportive parameters.”
“Read them,” I whisper into the city, and I pray the mic inside Sera’s charm still carries. “Say the words out loud.”
Sera steps toward the standing mic set for her, hands still linked with Leo’s until the last possible millisecond. I see the separation like a tendon snapping in slow motion, and then she steadies her fingers on the mic ring. The halo’s light skims her cheekbone, cool and unkind.
“I’m supposed to talk about healing,” Sera says, voice catching once on her first vowel. She breathes. She looks past the lens and finds the camera I left on the roof—the one with no LED, my one-way eye. “I want to read what you call healing.”
Gray’s smile tightens a molecule. He tips his head toward the host. The host locks jaw and stays put, reading the room before earnestly reading any prompter.
“Read,” I say again, like I can hold her throat open across blocks of fog and wires.
Sera reads. “Comfort injection,” she begins, the phrase scraping in her mouth like gravel. “Sub-parameter: micro-dose. Slider range: 0.00 to 0.40.” She swallows, steadies. “Narrative seam: Insert pre-authored phrase under elevated distress; timing tolerance: ± 1.2 seconds.” Her cadence shifts into the classroom tone I grew up with, the one that made fifth-graders stop chiseling their desks and look up. “Framed recall guidance: Suggest preferred memory pathways; weight sponsor-approved themes.”
The audience answers with a sound that is not approval and not full revolt—yet. Phones rise, forbidden by etiquette and rules both, but rising anyway. At the Strand food hall, I know the edge-seaters lean over their dumplings and narrate the moment despite the no-filming signs; the etiquette dies under the heat of a clause this stark.
I place the clause text beside the sliders and highlight, line by line, in yellow that glows like crime-scene tape. “Left: interface,” I tell viewers. “Right: consent.”
The halo hangs colorless above Sera’s head, its double rings like wedding bands taken off and left on a cold counter. On my roof, a drone blunders into the wind tunnel near the marina, its propwash faltering; I hear the pitch shift from assertive to worried. Blimps recalc their routes and drift out over the bay, tiny rumor zeppelins hunting a calmer sky. The city smells like salt and hot sugar, disinfectant riding both like a quiet bully.
“Comfort injection,” the host repeats, testing the phrase with his careful broadcaster teeth. “That sounds—”
“Administration,” Sera reads, before he can dress the word. “Delivery method: audio-tactile cue set paired with—this says it right here—micro-chemical prompt.”
Gray moves, not far, but quick, like he’s protecting a child who isn’t a child. “Let me explain the context,” he says, voice pitched to soothe. “Language in interfaces is notoriously—”
“Authorized benevolence,” I say, and I throw the settlement clause into the corner again, small but legible. “You taught the city to trust the pretty words.”
“You’re editorializing,” Gray says toward the air, which for him means toward me. He keeps his poise, but he’s blinking more; the micro-muscles at the eyes always go first. He turns to the host and then to Sera. “We structure support so that people who are suffering don’t drown on live television.”
“I can swim,” Sera says, voice steadier now, heat under steel. “My brother can swim. Comfort injection is not a life raft; it’s a leash.”
A wave of sound rolls the first two rows: a yes-snap, a no-hiss, a low-boiled boo from somewhere near the aisle. Families trade reputation scores like weather—ears fill with whispered codes: green, red, clear, storm—and I watch mouths check each other for what to post. Elevator screens in glass towers nearby whisper, too: Live: HaloStage Special — Integrity Update Pending, the halo icon perched on the corner like a smear of toothpaste you missed.
“Next term,” I say, and I flip the button labeled narrative seam so the slider pulses. The UI highlights a tiny question mark; I open its tooltip bubble for the room: suggested phrasing to smooth conflict.
“Read the examples,” I ask the air, and Sera obliges because she has always known how to weaponize a rubric.
“Example seam,” she reads, calm now. “I can see that from your side. Example two: I’m ready to take responsibility. Example three: What matters is moving forward.” She looks up. The look is not staged; it is hunger and decision. “You embed these in people while you scan them and call the results truth.”
Gray lifts a finger toward the host’s mic. The host clutches it tighter without visibly clutching. He’s not brave; he’s frozen.
“We call that therapy,” Gray says, louder. “We call that care.” He steps into the host’s space, palm out. “Give me the mic.”
The mask strips a shade. I can hear it in the way he drops sibilants; the polished vowels chip. “People need to be guided,” he says, and the sentence lands with the heavy thunk of a lid sealing a jar.
There’s the line. I pin it in a caption bar: “People need to be guided.” — Dr. Lucien Gray. I do not add commentary. The sentence is its own blade.
Sera hears it and doesn’t blink. She keeps reading. “Recall guidance: escalate when resistant memory paths persist. Suggested weights: family duty, closure, forgiveness.” She taps the word weights with her fingernail against the printed clause on the stool. The mic catches the click; the sound is clean, like chalk knocking a blackboard.
Leo, who has been sitting quiet, fingers flexed on his knees, shifts closer to her and breathes through his nose in fours—inhale two three four, exhale two three four—the pattern our mother taught for thunder nights. His pupils, steady since the compassion channel died, hold their line. I watch his throat; I watch it not swallow any new drug.
Gray wrests the host’s mic now, a lunge he sweetens with a laugh meant to make it seem friendly. The laugh fails. “Let’s not alarm our audience with interface jargon,” he tells everyone. “This is a supportive tool. These are supportive phrases. At churches, at hospitals, we—”
“Churches don’t hide sliders,” Sera says, and the room’s laugh is not warm.
The bay coughs a thicker ribbon of fog down the avenues; drones blink hazard and brake. News blimps tilt away from the wind tunnel, heading for the outer harbor where gossip will repackage itself as explainer threads. The smell of frying batter from the Strand rides over the block; it makes the antiseptic in the studio unforgivable.
I zoom the micro-chemical prompt paragraph until the molecule icon sits like a blue bruise on the projection. “This is the part,” I tell the city, “where the market adds taste to your memory. Citrus, sugar, thunder. You feel better. You call it truth.”
Gray speaks directly to my camera now, the one he can’t see. “You are harming vulnerable viewers by misrepresenting best practices,” he says, voice flexing toward angry father. He takes a step toward Sera without touching her; the step is possessive. “This is about families.”
“This is my family,” I say into the feed. My mouth is dry; the linen between my fingers itches the way threadbare cotton always did when I sat by our mother’s bed, counting thunder to time the pain. “My permission is no longer for sale.”
“Next tool,” Sera continues, uncompelled. “Compassion overlay.” She looks toward Leo, then to the chair. “Admin note,” she reads from the tooltip I cracked open earlier. “Boosted during audience resistance.” The audience reacts to being named with a sound like chairs lifting and putting down. She tilts her head, a principal about to suspend a program. “So when people don’t like where a story is going, you dose comfort and call the resulting confession brave.”
Gray’s face closes the way a wound scabs. He raises the mic high, preacher at a revival. “We offer people a path away from shame.”
“You offer them a script,” I answer, and I lay the Edit Bible’s seam list back over the UI for two beats. “You weigh forgiveness heavier than testimony because forgiveness sells.”
“Enough,” Gray snaps, at last out loud and not in the micro-muscle language only staff can read. He points toward the control room glass. “We’re cutting to a package.”
In the booth, a hand flashes a triangle sign: standby. Another hand razors across a throat: execute. The house lights edge brighter to bleach the cameras. I see the floor manager’s eyes flick from Sera to the chair to Gray’s lifted mic. He counts with his fingers without meaning to. Three. Two.
“Wait,” I say, and I know the city hears me because the comments on the counterstream spike like a heart.
I shove one last pairing into the frame: the tribunal clause I lost at and the recall guidance tooltip we just read. Therapeutic discretion vs. suggest preferred memory pathways. I set them side by side, same font size, same white, same black. My hands shake but not enough to miss.
“Read it all,” Sera says, and her voice is rock now. “Read what you sign when you chase a clean halo for your kid.”
Gray leans across the host and aims the mic at her like a spotlight meant to burn. “You are escalating a situation with a vulnerable young man,” he announces, gesturing toward Leo. The halo reflects in his corneas, two tiny rings wobbling. “This chair can help him integrate traumatic contradictions. People need to be guided.”
He repeats it. He needed to repeat it. The repetition removes the polish. It makes the belief a habit, not a philosophy.
“We were guided,” Leo says, softly, into the space Sera leaves for him. The mic catches him anyway; the room leans. “We were guided to forget.”
The sound in the studio changes key. It is no longer murmurs. It is a chord that includes anger and a few stray sobs and the unmistakable clatter of a security earpiece hitting a collarbone because a hand went up too fast.
The elevator screens between floors in my building whisper, “We are experiencing technical difficulties,” while the halo icon spins like a cheap coin and then stutters. Families on couches trade code under their breath: red, storm, clear—and in apartments across New Halcyon, people reach for their wrists the way citizens reach for passports.
I see the cut coming: the A-bank tally light snaps from green to red in the booth window. The floor manager’s finger drops. Gray smiles a real smile for the first time tonight, teeth fine, eyes dull.
“We’ll be right back,” the host says, or tries to; Gray holds his mic too close, and the phrase distorts into a hot electronic rip that tastes in my mouth like tinfoil.
“One more line,” I tell the city, and I pin it in huge, monochrome block beneath the UI before the blade falls: HEALING DEMANDS REMEMBERING.
The studio feed flickers. A black bar claws up from the bottom of my monitor, hungry. The halo overhead blinks twice, a dying lighthouse. The boos crest into a long, unbroken wave.
“Stay with me,” I say, because I can feel the switch moving in a hand that doesn’t belong to me. “If they cut, we keep recording. If they cut, we keep naming.”
The picture stutters, Gray’s face slices into fields, Sera’s mouth mid-word, Leo’s hand reaching, my overlays paling to gray, and the last thing I hear before the silence tries to sell itself as peace is the chair’s wheels squeal one inch forward—toward my sister.
The screen goes midnight.
I don’t blink.