In a windowless office at the Future Immersion Lab, the PIs show her a prototype. It’s a functioning algorithm, based on the one in her most recent book, and as they go over its features they won’t stop saying how much they love her mind and they won’t stop looking at her mouth. She tries to pay attention, but her brain’s natural defenses fuzz out the vocal frequency of dudes who describe their job as “storyteller.” (They also call themselves “midwives for the future,” though if the future is the baby or the mother, she isn’t sure.) They want her to join them, which would mean she would keep writing her near-future novellas and they would get her consent for the drilling rights—to speculate for tech they might develop, for metaphors that might sell, for predictions their clients might want to make come true—and to her it sounds like a marriage of production design, scenario planning, and that scene where Don Draper sits in the dark and says “Carousel” and everyone is like, Damn. “Science fiction is a rehearsal,” they say, and when she asks, “For what?” they rub her shoulders like she’s a beagle who’s flipped a light switch on command. “We’re going to make all your worlds real,” they tell her, as if they aren’t already, as if their smiles aren’t slack like fishing line, and she knows a story can kill you as soon as it’ll save you, and she guesses they know it, too.