Chapter 1: Score 42

The calibration unit chimes at 6:14 a.m. The same pitch it's chimed every morning since my eighteenth birthday. Soft, inoffensive, precisely engineered to wake without startling.

I press my thumb to the reader. A brief warmth behind my left ear as the implant syncs. The screen displays what it always displays.

STABILITY SCORE: 42. STATUS: COMPLIANT. EMOTIONAL BANDWIDTH: NOMINAL.

I brush my teeth. I dress in Bureau-approved charcoal. I eat a nutrition bar that tastes like nothing in particular, which is what everything tastes like. Adequate. Calibrated to adequate.

The tram is quiet. It's always quiet. Forty bodies in a sealed container, all checked and compliant, moving through a city that hums at a frequency designed to prevent agitation. The man beside me reads a tablet. The woman across from me stares at her reflection in the glass. Nobody speaks. Speaking would be fine. Permitted. But there's nothing anyone needs to say badly enough to break the engineered calm.

At the Bureau of Emotional Stability, I badge through security and take the elevator to Archive Level 3. My desk is identical to every other desk. I catalog incident reports, calibration anomalies, correction logs. Eight hours of data about people whose emotions exceeded their bandwidth.

The irony isn't lost on me.

It can't be. You have to feel irony, and my implant categorizes that as unnecessary complexity.

Nell catches me at the coffee station. She's a 44, two points above me, which makes us compatible for workplace friendship. The system accounts for everything.

"Thursday's team review got moved to Friday," she says.

"Noted."

"Also, your hair is doing something today." She gestures vaguely at my head. "It's nice."

"It's the same as yesterday."

"Then yesterday was nice too."

I pour coffee. It arrives at the same temperature every time. Warm. Not hot.

After work, I take the 7:15 tram to Greenfield Care Facility, Ward C. I sign in, present my ID, and walk down a corridor that smells of antiseptic and synthetic lavender.

Petra is in the sunroom. She's always in the sunroom. She sits by the window in the same chair, wearing the same facility-issued pastels, watching the same garden where the same flowers grow in their perfectly maintained beds.

"Hey, Pet."

She turns. The smile arrives right on cue. Muscles contracting correctly around her mouth, the corners lifting to the exact degree the implant permits.

"Wynn. It's Tuesday."

"It is."

"Tuesday is your day."

"It is."

I sit across from her and take her hand. Room temperature. Not warm, not cold. The nothing temperature of regulated contact.

Petra used to burn. That's how I think of it, even though the word "burn" carries emotional weight my implant should flag. She laughed loud enough to turn heads. She sang in the shower, off-key, at volumes that made our mother cover her ears. She cried at movies. She threw her arms around strangers' dogs and let them lick her face.

She was a 78. High enough to require enhanced monitoring. High enough that when she fell in love with a 31, the correction that hit her lasted nine days.

When she came back from those nine days, she was different.

Not the way people describe it. Not "quieter" or "calmer." Those words imply something was retained. Petra wasn't quieter. Petra was absent. The body remained. The architecture of her face, the brown of her hair, the amber eyes that matched mine. But the person behind them had been sanded away until what remained was smooth and empty and compliant.

They reduced her to a 22. Muted. Safe.

"How are you feeling?" I ask, the same question I ask every Tuesday.

"Good." The same answer. "Everything's good."

I squeeze her hand. No response. Not because she's cruel or distant. Because at 22, the squeeze doesn't register as meaningful. Touch is data. Data is processed. Nothing exceeds the threshold for response.

"I brought you almonds." I set the bag on her table. She liked almonds once. Before. She'd eat them by the handful, complaining they weren't salted enough, always wanting more.

"Thank you." She picks one up, puts it in her mouth, chews with mechanical precision. No expression of taste. No more, no less.

I stay for an hour. We sit. She tells me what she ate for lunch. I tell her about work. Neither of us says anything that matters, because mattering requires emotional investment the implant won't authorize.

On the tram home, I press my thumb against my left ear. The implant is warm from a day of monitoring. I think about Petra singing. The implant registers a micro-fluctuation and administers the faintest correction. A slight pressure, like a headache deciding whether to form.

I let it pass.

At home, I eat dinner. I watch approved programming. I shower at the calibrated temperature.

At 10:03 p.m., I find a napkin in my jacket pocket. Nell's handwriting, small and careful.

An address. And underneath: Tuesday. Midnight. Come alone.

I stare at it for a long time.

The implant doesn't flag curiosity. Curiosity is within my bandwidth. It's what comes after that it watches for.

I fold the napkin. I set it on my nightstand. I turn off the light.

I don't sleep.