Chapter Twelve: Table Talk

The dining hall calibrated its meals to biometric readings nobody at the table wanted to discuss. Behind tempered glass, chefs in white jackets moved between counters. Steam clouded one pane, briefly obscuring a hand lifting a lid. There were no queues, no metal carts rattling between tables. You sat down, and shortly afterward food arrived.

Julian reached the dining hall a minute before the appointed hour. The glass doors slid apart, releasing warm air scented with roasted garlic.

The room resolved around him: two exits, four clear sightlines, the long table already divided into places from which he could see and places from which he could be seen.

Aisha was already there, sitting crosswise on a bench with one ankle hooked around the footrest. A slim holo-pad rested beside her.

“You’re early,” she said.

“I didn’t feel like waiting.”

Her mouth curved.

“You’re not the only one.”

He sat across from her. The wood beneath his hands held a little warmth from the room.

The others arrived in a trickle that became a rush. Bags went under benches. Someone shifted to make space, then shifted back when the person they were moving for chose another seat.

Kael took the far end, where both doors remained visible. Julian noticed because he would have chosen it himself.

Zara settled into an armchair by the windows, within hearing of the table but beyond the range of questions directed casually at whoever happened to be nearest. Nobody asked her to move.

Theo approached mid-conversation with Ben.

“It wasn’t a fair test,” Ben said, setting his pad down hard enough that his fork rattled. “They’ve been integrated longer. They’ve had more practice. The gap isn’t ability. It’s time.” He stabbed a piece of chicken with the fork. “Give me a head start, and I may still lose, but I’ll lose with better form.”

“The gap is information,” Theo replied. “They know what they are now. We’re still finding out.”

“I found out plenty. I found out Kara Bloom can use a person as gymnastics equipment. How do you spar with that?”

“Maybe failure optimization is your capability,” Aisha said. “You’re getting a lot of practice.”

Ben pointed at her.

“See, I can’t tell whether that’s an insult or a thesis statement.”

“Could be both.”

Ethan dropped onto the bench beside Theo.

“Funny how the tests always seem to favor what you’re good at.”

He spoke toward Theo, though his eyes remained on his own hands.

Theo picked up his water, drank, and set it down.

Ethan glanced at him.

For a moment, neither moved. Then Ethan drew his glass closer and looked toward the kitchens.

Tamar slipped in beside Leena.

She set down a glass of spiced cider with particular care, watching until the surface stopped moving. She had said little since the medical team cleared Kara.

Leena made room without asking her to explain the silence.

Mateo arrived last. He lowered himself into a chair, ran a hand through his hair, and studied the table.

“Does everything seem louder to anyone else? Like somebody turned the world up?”

“It’s you,” Aisha said.

Julian laughed.

The sound came a fraction late.

Mateo pointed at him.

“There.”

“What?”

“You checked first.”

Julian looked at Aisha, then back.

“Before you laughed. You used to just react.”

He opened his mouth to deny it.

The moment was still available to him: the joke registering, the brief pause, his attention touching Mateo’s expression before the laugh escaped.

He hadn’t noticed doing it.

Theo leaned forward.

“He does. His response speed is faster, but he’s checking his own reactions.”

“He might be making sure you’re actually joking,” Aisha said.

“Am I?” Julian asked.

She looked at him.

“I don’t know. Are you?”

That answer left him with less to object to.

Ethan turned from the kitchens.

“I watched you with Soren. You move like you know where the next strike’s coming from.”

“Sometimes I can feel where it’s going.”

Julian pressed his palms against the table.

“But if I try to make the prediction happen, I miss what he’s doing.”

“Must be nice to have a prediction that goes somewhere,” Mateo said. “Mine brought friends. None of them agreed.”

The food arrived before Julian could answer.

A server placed a warm plate in front of him. Chicken, rice, vegetables with browned edges. Something bright and citrusy rose from the sauce.

He had been craving a meal close to this without putting the craving into words.

He picked up his fork.

Across from him, Mateo read the small nutritional summary that accompanied his plate.

“Low-glycemic.”

He said it as though identifying the person responsible.

“I hate low-glycemic.”

“Your stress markers were elevated this morning,” Aisha said.

“I know what they were. I’d prefer to choose dinner myself.”

“The monitoring came with the program,” Theo said.

“I read the forms, Theo.”

Mateo took a bite, chewed, then looked down at the plate again.

“Apparently they didn’t make the food taste bad enough to justify complaining.”

Ben leaned over to inspect it.

“That seems deliberate.”

Julian tasted his own dinner.

The chicken was warm through the center. The rice had caught just enough of the sauce. He took another bite before remembering that he hadn’t chosen any of it.

For a while, the table quieted around the ordinary business of eating.

“I couldn’t hold my precision under pressure,” Leena said.

She was turning her water glass slowly between her palms.

The others looked up.

“I know what I can do when the conditions stay still. Today, by the time I’d adjusted, something else had changed.”

Tamar watched a thin curl of steam rise from her cider.

Leena turned toward her.

“What happened with Kara wasn’t something you planned.”

Tamar’s fingers stopped against the glass.

“I know.”

“Does it feel like you know?”

A pause.

“No. Not yet.”

Tamar looked around the table, then down.

“I didn’t know I had that. Now I do, and I still don’t know what makes it happen.”

Her voice was steady until the last few words.

“What if I lose control again?”

Nobody answered immediately.

Julian was grateful for that. He could imagine several easy responses. Practice would help. The staff would work it out. It wouldn’t happen again.

He didn’t know enough to say any of them.

“Kara’s been cleared,” Aisha said. “And she told the medical team you didn’t mean to hurt her.”

“She was generous.”

“She knows it wasn’t deliberate.”

Tamar looked at her.

“That doesn’t make me less afraid of doing it.”

Aisha lowered her gaze for a moment.

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t.”

From the armchair, Zara spoke.

“It wasn’t noise.”

Tamar turned toward the windows.

“The scream had structure,” Zara continued. “A carrier. A shape.”

She set down her fork.

“Things with structure can be tuned.”

Tamar stared at her.

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Zara considered the question.

“It’s supposed to be true.”

The tension around Tamar’s eyes changed slightly.

She looked into her cider, then gave a small nod.

Julian watched her reach for her fork.

Leena waited until she had taken a bite.

“Before it happened,” she asked, “did it feel like repeating the same thought? Or going deeper into it?”

Tamar frowned.

“I don’t know.”

Leena left her room to think.

“Deeper,” Tamar said at last. “I kept telling myself to slow down. Every time, it meant something worse.”

“Worse how?”

“First it was fix your stance. Then stop chasing. Then everyone can see you chasing.”

Her fork rested against the plate.

“By the end, I could hear myself saying it before I moved.”

Leena nodded.

“I do something like that. I think I’ve finished understanding a problem, and then there’s another layer underneath. If I can’t resolve it, everything above it starts feeling wrong.”

“I thought yours was numbers.”

“Sometimes it is.”

For a few seconds, the conversation stayed between them.

Then Theo said, “I loved today.”

Everyone turned.

He looked surprised by the attention.

“The sparring,” he clarified. “Even losing. Watching Soren change his approach as Julian adapted. Systems inside systems.”

Julian remembered the mat against his back.

Theo’s eyes had brightened.

“I want to understand how he built that.”

“You’re treating him like a puzzle,” Aisha said.

“The way he fights is a puzzle.”

She glanced toward Tamar.

Theo followed the glance. Some of the eagerness left his face.

“I didn’t mean all of today.”

“We know,” Ben said.

Mateo shook his head.

“You’d optimize a funeral if they let you.”

Theo considered.

“The receiving line could be parallelized.”

Ben stared at him.

“And most eulogies repeat…”

“Theo.”

“What?”

“He wasn’t asking.”

“Oh.”

Theo looked down at his plate.

A beat passed.

“Still,” Ben said, “please stay away from my funeral.”

That earned a small laugh, even from Ethan.

Mateo let it settle.

“The part I didn’t love was seeing every move my opponent might make and choosing none of them.”

He drew his fork through a little sauce.

“Every branch seemed worth another look. By the time I picked one, I was on the floor.”

Theo opened his mouth.

Then closed it.

Mateo noticed.

“Thank you.”

Theo nodded once.

Ethan shifted on the bench.

“I hate how careful I have to be.”

Julian looked toward him.

“In sparring?”

“Everywhere else. Sparring’s the one place I can use some of it. Against Rafe, at least, I didn’t spend the whole time worrying what would happen if I forgot.”

He glanced at his water.

“I used to know how hard I was holding something without thinking about it.”

Julian remembered Ethan setting down his coffee that morning, placing it as though the cup had become a more complicated object.

“Now you have to check.”

“Yes.”

Ethan sounded relieved that the sentence needed no explanation.

Mateo pointed his fork toward him.

“I’d still consider trading. Your failure mode is breaking something. Mine is standing in front of two cohorts doing visibly nothing while sixteen futures multiply.”

“You wouldn’t trade.”

“No,” Mateo admitted. “But I’d think about it. Extensively.”

Ben smiled.

Ethan didn’t.

“Breaking things is funny when it’s a glass.”

The table quieted.

“Next time it could be somebody’s wrist.”

Mateo lowered his fork.

“Fair.”

Ethan turned his glass a little, then left it alone.

For a moment, the only sound was cutlery from the tables farther away.

Ben leaned forward.

“For what it’s worth, I’ve lost every sparring match. Cohort One barely had time to learn my name before putting me down.”

“You got a good view of their footwork,” Aisha said.

“Reconnaissance on the down low.”

This time Ethan laughed.

The sound loosened something at the table. Tamar took another bite. Theo asked Leena to pass the water. Ben reached for the bread basket and held it out to Mateo before taking his own.

Julian realized he had stopped watching the doors.

“What were you like before?” Ben asked.

“Before what?” Mateo said.

“Catalyst. Neurovia. Before all our meals came with an assessment.”

“Bored,” Theo said immediately.

Leena tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Overstimulated. Mostly by things that didn’t seem to deserve that much attention.”

Tamar touched her glass twice with a fingertip.

“Invisible.”

Julian looked at her.

He thought of how insistently she occupied a mat, how much it mattered that an attempt be recognized as better than the last. The word made him want to ask a question.

Tamar picked up her cider.

He let her drink.

“Angry,” Ethan said.

His jaw tightened, then eased.

“At things that usually weren’t the actual problem.”

Nobody asked him to name them.

The question reached Mateo.

He studied the center of the table.

“Measured.”

Ben waited.

“Everything far enough away that I could examine it before it got to me.”

He glanced at his own place setting.

“Turns out that’s its own problem.”

Julian felt the attention approaching before Ben turned toward him.

The apartment came back in pieces. The fan. His father’s boots. The pause outside a doorway while he listened.

“Alert.”

Aisha looked at him.

“That fits.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

The corner of her mouth moved.

“You usually know who’s coming in before anyone else looks up.”

Julian glanced toward the door.

Ben smiled into his water.

From the armchair, Zara said, “Loud.”

They turned.

“Not me. Everything else.”

Leena gave a small nod.

Zara returned to her meal, apparently finished with the answer.

At the far end, Kael laid down his fork.

“Crowded.”

Ben tilted his head.

“Crowded how?”

Kael considered for a moment. He didn’t seem offended, but the question appeared to require more care than Ben had given it.

“A lot of input,” he said. “Catalyst helps with the routing.”

Julian held the word.

Routing.

Kael said it plainly, without the searching pause people used when they were trying to explain one thing through another.

Julian remembered the change in his movement during the beacon exercise: the patient approach, the sudden precision of the capture. Then the quiet thanks directed toward the empty bay.

Kael resumed eating.

Julian realized he was still looking at him and turned back to the table.

“What about you?” Leena asked Ben.

Ben blinked.

He had apparently forgotten the question would return to him.

“Careful.”

“You?” Mateo said.

“Not cautious. Careful about what I said.”

He looked down at his plate, where a little sauce remained along one edge.

“My family’s the kind where something you say in public lands on everyone. You learn to check the joke before it leaves your mouth.”

“Twice?” Julian asked.

“At least.”

Ben’s smile thinned without disappearing.

“It got fast enough that people stopped seeing the edit. I’m not sure Catalyst made it better.”

“Faster?” Aisha asked.

“Yes.”

A short silence followed.

Ben looked across at her.

“You haven’t answered.”

Aisha lifted her gaze.

“Everyone gave a word,” he said. “You moderated.”

The others turned with the slight, collective care of people who had each offered something and were willing to wait for the same in return.

Aisha set down her fork.

Julian expected a qualification. A question about what they meant by before.

Instead, she said, “Necessary.”

The word settled slowly.

Necessary to whom. For what. How young she had been when being useful began to feel like a condition of belonging.

Julian knew enough not to ask all of it at once.

Ben looked at her.

“That sounds exhausting.”

“Sometimes.”

She reached for her water.

No one tried to make her answer lighter than it was.

After a while, Leena turned toward Julian.

“You’ve been watching us.”

He looked up.

“Since we sat down. Sometimes you stop following the conversation because you’re watching the person having it.”

Her tone was curious.

He glanced around the table.

“I don’t always know I’m doing it.”

Leena held his gaze for a moment.

“I thought so.”

Julian waited for more.

She didn’t give him an instruction. She returned to her plate, leaving him with the small discomfort of being accurately observed.

He had done the same to her often enough.

To all of them.

The thought changed the room a little.

He looked toward Kael, then stopped himself from turning crowded into something to solve. Tamar’s answer remained hers. Aisha had said one word, and he didn’t need to finish the explanation for her.

Some of what he knew about these people had come through Catalyst. Some had come because they had stayed at a table long enough to tell him.

He wanted to remember the difference, even when he couldn’t always find it.

Dinner ended unevenly.

Theo and Mateo resumed an argument about whether knowing too many options counted as knowing too much. Ethan carried two empty glasses to the collection counter with deliberate care. Leena waited while Tamar finished her cider.

Zara rose from the armchair and joined them on the way out.

Julian stood, his knees briefly stiff from the bench.

Aisha came alongside him, close enough that her sleeve brushed his arm.

“This is where it gets messy,” she said.

He looked at her.

For once, she didn’t seem to be offering an observation she had already resolved.

Then Ben called back from the doorway, asking whether anyone else wanted something the kitchen hadn’t approved, and Aisha turned toward him.

Julian followed.

The door opened before he reached it. Beyond, the others were still talking.