Delaney had stopped breathing. Her memory of them at her bedside was so vivid. They’d read to her, sang to her.

  “We wanted to come,” her mother said. “But you know how the store tracks our carbon impact. The company is pretty serious about StayStïl goals. So when your vitals were stable …”

  “We could access them any time,” her father interjected. “You were never in any mortal danger. We followed closely.”

  “You understand,” her mother said. “You have a higher-level sort of job than we do. At the FolkFoods level, the Personal Carbon Impact limits are pretty strict. And we took that trip to Mexico last year, so …”

  Delaney told them she understood. Completely. It was fine, fine, she said. She was fine, all was fine, and finally they left her alone. She stared at the ceiling, her teeth grinding, her mind imploding, and when she was sure they were asleep, she slipped out, borrowed her father’s car, a 1998 Subaru, left her phone and a note for her parents, and drove, as untrackably as she knew how, into Oregon. For the next nine hours she thought a thousand thoughts of destruction and revenge. She drove in a state just short of hypnosis, seeing only the occasional truck or Every delivery van, and it was not until she crossed the Oregon border that the fear of what she would encounter blew through her like an icy wind.

  At best, Professor Agarwal would be emaciated and bald, at home with caretakers, maybe graduate students. At worst, she would be dying or dead. What was the utility, Delaney wondered, of seeing someone days before death? Agarwal had no belief in an afterlife, so for whom was a visit like this? If Delaney sat with her on one day and she died the next, in what ways did that matter? A kind of shallow self-satisfaction, to be able to say she visited—did the right thing, just in time? She stopped the car two blocks away from Agarwal’s house. It was five in the afternoon. She’d driven all night, all day, and was still wide awake. She still had a vague fear of being discovered. How and by whom she had no idea. And how leaving the car two blocks away would create some bewildering fog for whoever might be watching her … It was absurd.

  There were wet branches all over the neighborhood, black slashes on lawns and the road; there had been a storm, she surmised, no more than a day ago. A tree near the sidewalk had dropped a great branch onto the ground. It lay there, as though it had fallen straight down, too tired to be flung. Delaney walked through curled leaves toward Agarwal’s house, and had to remember to breathe and breathe evenly. She was already overcome. She’d planned this arrival a hundred times, knowing that the best thing would be to rush to Agarwal and embrace her. Any hesitation would allow Agarwal to see the agony in Delaney’s eyes, and everything after would be a struggle to regain some equilibrium.

  At the steps, she saw that the main door was open; only Agarwal’s broken-down screen door separated them. Delaney took the first step and a light went on inside, but only by chance. Then she was at the door, smelling the undefinable musty smell that Agarwal complained about and apologized for. No matter how much she aired out the house it lingered; it had been there, she said, when she moved in.

  Delaney looked through the windows, thinking she might find Agarwal lying on the couch by the front window. Or in a hospital bed. She had the frantic thought that the home seemed much too open for Agarwal in her condition—that Agarwal was dead and a new family had moved in, had replaced her.

  But the house, for all its light, was quiet. Delaney knocked on the warped screen door frame. No response. She turned to the street, knowing the visit was wrong. She should have called. Who surprises a dying woman like this? Normal people call, they write, they give warning. When she turned to the house again, thinking she’d leave a note, Agarwal was at the door.

  “That’s not Delaney?”

  Agarwal looked the same. Her face at least looked precisely the same, utterly alive and radiant. The door flew open and Agarwal was in her arms. Now Delaney could feel the illness. She was so small. She had lost weight—twenty pounds or more—but her skin was aglow.

  “I’ve been writing to you for so long!” Agarwal said. “Come inside. Tea or wine or something? Sit in the living room and I’ll come right out. Or stay close to me.”

  Agarwal’s hair was far shorter than Delaney remembered but stylish, silky. She wore a sleeveless blouse, showing off her toned arms, which looked, somehow, more fit and ageless. And a skirt! It flared a bit, and seemed to be made of black pleather. And then her boots, the same boots that Delaney knew well, with the carved cacti and sagebrush. From twenty feet she would look like a teenager.

  Delaney lingered by her side as Agarwal filled the kettle. Delaney remembered this kettle, dented and most assuredly unsanitary.

  “This thing still,” Delaney said.

  “Shush, it works. You got my letters then?” Agarwal asked.

  “I did. I’m sorry. I couldn’t write back.”

  “That’s fine. I didn’t expect a one-for-one ratio,” she said.

  “I want to explain. There’s so much I have to tell you. Two main things, really. But first I have to know what happened. The last you wrote …”

  “It was dire, yes. I’m sorry to have burdened you with that.”

  “No, no. I was so glad. Humbled. I mean, you were open about it and I felt lucky you thought me worthy …”

  “Stop. Don’t get saccharine. I was worried about you, and I wrote, and I was confused, too. And then I was sick, and in some cases it all got wrapped into the same letters.”

  “But then, what? Some miracle cure or …?”

  “No. Nothing like that. But I am in remission. They put me on a very aggressive regimen. Steroids and Pembroli-something. It doesn’t work for everyone but it worked for me, and Delaney, don’t. Don’t cry like that. It’s not …”

  Agarwal’s small hands were on Delaney’s back, circling. “Thank you,” she said. “It moves me that you were this worried.”

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Delaney said. “I couldn’t do anything.”

  “Well, you’re not a doctor, Del.”

  “I know. I just—”

  “These doctors I had were unbelievable. They’re nuts, in a way. They’re renegades. I gave them carte blanche and they did some radical things. And you? I almost came to see you when I heard you’d been hurt in the bombing.”

  “I’m fine. Just a concussion, really.”

  Agarwal noticed the burns on Delaney’s hands. She took Delaney by the elbow. “No residual effects? Dizziness?”

  “No. And you’re not that kind of doctor.”

  Agarwal slipped her hand to hold Delaney’s. “When I heard about the bombing I just thought of you immediately. And I had the worst thoughts. Just horrible images.” She gave Delaney’s hand one more squeeze and let it go. The kettle whistled and Agarwal filled two cups, both chipped. She handed the less-chipped to Delaney.

  “And the second bit of news?” Delaney asked.

  “Oh gosh. Well, it’s related, actually. And so strange, really, given everything I’ve been writing to you about. I don’t think I told you, but some unsettling things have happened here on campus. The main thing is that from now on, tenure will be determined by AI. So—”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. It’s been in the works for some time. Here and everywhere. The younger professors prefer it that way. You may have heard that a war on subjectivity is on?” She chuckled grimly. “Well, we have not been able to remain neutral. After so many complaints of bias and caprice, so many lawsuits, the powers that be have determined that their best defense is to cede the process to algorithms.”

  “But for you—”

  “I’m fine. I’ve been tenured for thirty-two years. But I lost a friend to this new philosophy. I don’t think you knew her. Lili Ulrich? She got here after you. Anyway, she’s been an associate professor for years and should have gotten tenure last year, and this new system just sent her over the wall. The tenure process became too contentious, so they left it to algos. No one wants the responsibility. The blame. The algos didn’t see her value to the school, and that was that. Del, this is where it’s going. All of it. She took her life a month ago.”

  “Jesus. I’m so sorry.”

  “Six students this semester, too. And an adjunct. I’m assuming it’s the same sort of thing that’s affecting people all over the world. And at your company, too. Having ceded all control to algos, it’s the last decision a person can make.”

  Delaney’s eyes must have betrayed her concern, because Agarwal smiled and said, “You were worried about me? Taking my life? No. That wouldn’t be my path. I enjoy the fight too much. But I’m in the minority there. We’ve lost most of the art faculty, too—not suicides, but just a mass exodus, after the students refused to be graded by humans. This place is collapsing. It’s all collapsing, really.”

  “They should have listened to you,” Delaney said.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Agarwal said, and sighed. “I don’t know. It came from both sides. I didn’t quite see the complicity coming. The motivations of the companies, yes, to consolidate and measure and profit from the data, I saw that. But the everyday human side, no. Our overwhelming preference to cede all decisions to machines, to replace nuance with numbers … It surpassed all my nightmares. Every day, we make another machine that removes more human agency. We don’t trust ourselves or each other to make a single choice, a diagnosis, to assign a grade. The only decision we’ll be left with is whether to live or die. This is the changing of the species from a free animal to a kept pet. Like so many others, Lili chose not to be part of where the species is going. The last resisters will either be co-opted or will fall away. So I’m leaving, too.”

  “Leaving what?” Delaney asked. “The world?”

  “The college,” Agarwal said. “I’ve told them. But it’s actually for something better. You really don’t know? I thought maybe they would have told you.”

  “Who?” Delaney said. In a brief moment of blindness, she had no idea.

  “The Every. You’re still there, I hope! They gave me a grant and offered me a job. You truly didn’t know? I’m allowing myself to be co-opted. To be digested by the monster. I can’t believe you didn’t know.”

  The floor seemed to tilt. The ceiling sagged. Delaney needed to sit but the kitchen had no chair. She leaned against the sink.

  “You okay?”

  Of course they’d found Agarwal. Of course they’d subsumed her.

  “When did this happen?” Delaney managed to say.

  “I guess the first call was three weeks ago. Do you know someone named Gregory Akufo-Addo?” Agarwal asked. She was riffling through a drawer of tea boxes. “He calls himself the ‘Ostensible’ something. I have his business card somewhere. Here it is. Do you know of the Reading Room?”

  “I think so,” Delaney said hoarsely. Agarwal didn’t hear.

  “Well, if you haven’t visited that part of campus, you should. They seem very scholarly, and the man in charge is quite formidable and sincere. Apparently they’ve been studying my work, and they want me to take my criticisms and help them make the company better. Isn’t that just remarkable? I see how you’re looking at me. Of course I’m skeptical. Of course it’s safer to have me inside than out. But my ego allows me to think I can make a difference. You sure you’re okay?”

  “Can I lie down?” Delaney asked, and didn’t wait for a yes. She stumbled to the couch, where she was overwhelmed by the smell of Rasputin, Agarwal’s cat, now five years dead.

  Agarwal followed her to the living room. “Are you all right?” With a click she placed Delaney’s tea onto the glass coffee table and sat beside it on the table, facing Delaney.

  “And if not for you, I wouldn’t have considered it,” she said. “The fact that you went to work there got me weighing that old dichotomy about change: are we more effective agitating from outside, or creating structural change from within?”

  Delaney couldn’t think of a rational thing to say. She was unmoored. “So you’re coming to California?” she finally asked.

  “Well, I don’t know about that. I’m not likely to be bunking with you anytime soon. I’m still recovering, and this is my home. But they’ve been so accommodating. They want to see everything I write, when I write it, and they want to set up monthly calls where we discuss my ideas. They really seem committed to reform.”

  Delaney didn’t mention that she’d seen Agarwal’s paper at the Reading Room. There was no point. She looked out the window, at a black bough stripped of its leaves. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to look into Agarwal’s eyes again.

  “I know it sounds incongruous,” Agarwal said, “but things here are untenable, and … What’s wrong?”

  “Is that a smart speaker?”

  A next-generation HereMe stood on Agarwal’s windowsill.

  “I know, it’s madness for me to have one. But they sent it for free. Someone even came out to set it up. And if I’m going to work there, I might as well get used to the devices.”

  Delaney had no choice but to pretend. “Yes,” she said. “They’re so generous.”

  “I mainly use it to play music,” Agarwal said. “They taught me how to do that, too. Now I get it. To be able to simply tell it to play ‘The Long and Winding Road’ and it begins … I mean, that is life-changing.”

  The song began, and they both smiled. Delaney knew that Agarwal hadn’t said “HereMe”—that the device had been listening all along.

  Delaney was numb, hollowed out. There was nothing she could say to Agarwal that would have any effect on the course of events, not now at least, so she could only think of leaving. She turned the conversation away from the Every—to Agarwal’s son, a pediatrician living in Portland, and finally to Delaney’s own family.

  “Well, my parents always said twenty minutes is the limit for an unannounced visit,” Delaney said. She thought Agarwal might push back on her departure, but she didn’t. She looked tired.

  “So you’ll come to Treasure Island sometime?” Delaney asked brightly. “Even if just to visit?” And soon she backed away, to the door, held Agarwal tight, then was gone.

  XLIV.

  DELANEY DROVE THROUGH THE NIGHT, adrenaline animating every moment. She encountered few fellow travelers along the way; only twice did a trucker’s headlights scream from around a bend and light her world on fire. Darkness and quiet followed each time, and with each mile she grew more determined and more serene. She had nothing left, and nothing left to lose.

  “You’re back!” her mother said, when she arrived just after dawn. “How was Agarwal?” Delaney gave her mother a thumbs up and went to her bed. She needed to sleep, even for an hour. She napped in the feral warmth of her old room and when she woke, her father was in the kitchen. He was playing poker on his phone.

  “You leaving again, Del?” he asked.

  “Just a bike ride,” she said. She clicked her helmet strap and stepped onto the porch. Her mother was sitting on the swing, her head lowered to her tablet, which emitted screams from zombies being beheaded by the planet’s last sentient heroes.

  “You’re leaving your phone?” she asked.

  “I am,” she said.

  “Okay,” her mother said. “Be safe out there!”

  Delaney had insisted on meeting Mae on a trog trail off a trog road, fifteen miles north of Ghost Canyon. The bike ride was sublime, utterly silent but for her own dusty rattling, and she found her mind wandering, then empty, then at one with the sun. She hadn’t been like this in months, maybe years—body and brain in one place, thinking of nothing but the turns in the path and the pressing of foot to pedal. I could live out here, she thought. Why had she put herself in the middle of the fight for the soul of the species? It was useless. Wes was lost, Agarwal was lost, her parents were lost. I am alone and will be alone, she thought. No one else wants what I want.

  She made it to the trailhead thirty minutes early, and had time to rest, splaying herself on a vast flat stone to warm in the late morning sun. She decided to play out the day, to pitch Mae one last idea, the idea that would end all ideas—that would finally drive the company over the cliff. On the one hand, thinking it would make any difference at all was absurd. Somehow she had a perverse gift for conjuring ideas that sounded terrible to her but tickled the rest of humanity. This last one, though—if there were any bite left in any nations, any regulatory bodies, any monitors of global trade—it should trigger an avalanche of revulsion. She held out the remote hope that this final proposal would finally trigger the collective outrage she’d expected so many times. This would go so far that any free being would be rattled into rebellion.

  She expected Mae to love it, and if the people of the world wanted it too, so be it. Delaney could live out her days in a place like this. The Every, with the wholesale complicity of humanity, wanted a different world, a watched world without risk or surprise or nuance or solitude. Why not just let them have it, and she could have this? She could build a cabin, be alone, drift away, and leave the ruined world to those who had created and embraced it.

  When Mae pulled up, alone, in a burst of gravel and dust, in a car she’d driven herself, Delaney was surprised. Twice now Mae had shown herself to be a person of integrity. She kept promises. She was precisely the person she seemed to be. Delaney felt a brief flash of shame, given that of the two of them, only she had ulterior motive. Mae stepped out and looked around her, at the carpeted hills surrounding them and the jagged peaks beyond.

  “It’s beautiful out here,” she said.

  She was tying her boots on, and Delaney couldn’t help noticing how big they were. They seemed intended for a man—a large man.

  “They’re weighted,” Mae said, double-knotting her laces and standing up. “I’m trying to boost the cardio impact. And you? Your feet are healed enough for a climb like this? It was your soles, right?”

  “They’re okay,” Delaney said.

  “You’re so strong,” Mae said, and seemed to mean it.