The red light woke; the host borrowed it without letting it eat us.
"Six words before we let them work," he said, almost cheerful. "Seal, date, docket - or no story. And a reminder: speculative labels are commentary; see our window."
Rita lifted the window card; the replay obeyed. We stepped, not stagey, not fast. hands visible. Three feet of air that read like infrastructure.
Boone reached the glass a half step ahead and gave the door its manners. Left wing first, then right, small arc, no glare. The supervisor took the other pull, fingers sure. The hedge did plant things. The press pen tried to become a sea; Boone kept it a pond.
Control's message popped on the floor tablet like candy. "couch now?" The floor didn't type. They lifted the tablet and let Addendum on Vivian's earlier screenshot answer for them: no unannounced intimacy. Under it someone had typed accessibility, twice, like a spell.
We crossed the threshold and the building changed air. Cooler, honest. North ramp, painted lines, a setting that prefers verbs.
"Two stringers downhill," Boone said without looking. "One drone left."
"credential," the supervisor called, voice the weight that keeps doors on hinges. The two stringers lifted laminated somethings that liked the word MEDIA and hated rules. Boone didn't touch. He set his body between our path and their need to be nouns.
Victor listened to the sky the way men listen to violins when they want to save a concert from weather. "Light wind," he said. "If the drone dips under the awning, it breaks its own rules. If it stays out, it's just a small bee."
Rita raised her phone and pressed a square that makes order out of noise. "incident log," she said. "Two stringers at north ramp; drone posture 'testing boundaries'; PIO looped. Public Record Statement staged: incident number, index isn't a record, no seal, no story."
Vivian's bubble hit at the exact rate my heart decided to pick up again. Governance: motion to hold pending process has four; seventh reading window thread; Chair typing 'we expect cooperation' but backing off 'suspend'. Exit with no hallway comment will land 'hold.' The agent's line followed immediately. Silence plus exit sells 'mid-process'. Give me thirty seconds of being boring.
"Boring is our kink," I said under breath. Evan's mouth made the ghost of a smile that belongs to men who have learned to enjoy restraint.
Aisha: notice echo sent: coercing 'clarify' for access risks morals clause 12.4; pre-commit window active; Standards cc'ed. Counsel 'acknowledges'. A second later: I added accessibility. They fear fonts now.
Down the ramp, a fern and a bench had appeared where furniture doesn't grow. A man with a hand mic pretended to stretch while a producer pretended to bend tape. The bench had been wheeled in like a Trojan, all friendliness and a microphone.
Floor on comms from behind the glass: "Heads up. Brand set a 'Green Room bench' at the curb. They think synonyms make couch a different noun."
"Wrong door," Rita said. "We do not sit. We do not stop. hands visible. We walk to the car. window guard stays high. If a phone goes red, we say commentary and nothing else."
The host came to the top of the ramp, not to chaperone, to donate cover. "I can give six words again if they try to jump you," he said. "I'll make it sound like a habit."
"Please," Rita said.
A small crowd had coagulated along the curb, the kind that calls itself a public if you give it a lower-third. A woman in a glitter blazer and a face that had learned to smile at a camera stepped into the ramp's mouth like a bow without an arrow. Her phone already had the bright circle open. The caption strip read clarify now in a font that had chosen drama over legibility.
She drifted toward Evan's shoulder in a movement made to look like accident. Boone placed a palm midair that communicated no unannounced intimacy better than shouting. Her trajectory changed by six degrees and the performance turned into a pivot.
"Just two seconds, babe," she said to the air, and got nobody.
"Credential," Boone said without anger.
She laughed at the idea of rules. Her phone laughed with her. Nothing in the scene found it funny.
Serena, who had elected to be a person in a world that likes puppets, stepped to the side line outside our inside wide and spent one word like a well-saved coin. "names, not vibes," she said across the ramp, and her handler gently turned her shoulder toward the edge again because righteousness can get people hit by scooters.
The drone tested the edge under the awning. Victor looked at it over one finger and the bee remembered where fences live.
"Twenty," the floor said in our ears. "Control planning to roll you into the bench on return. Vivian is building a collage of Addendum large enough to frighten cattle."
Vivian's bubble: I told them accessibility before bench. Chair typed 'hold' once, erased, typed it again. If you don't stop at the furniture, I can lock it.
Agent: If a phone gets 'live' in your faces, give me one word: commentary. Then quiet. I'll throw window policy across their replies like confetti.
We hit the flat, the part of the ramp where physics lets everyone pretend they're in a movie. The bench assembly loosened its smile.
The hand-mic man lifted the mic; the producer gave him the tiny nod. Their phone app pulsed with an audience count that had the indecency to be pleased with itself.
"Ready to share how you really feel," the man said as if lines were improv and life a craft services table. He stepped one pace into our path as though asphalt loves him personally.
Boone didn't touch him. He drew a box in the space where the man's next step might have been, and the box told a short story about liability in a friendly voice.
Rita's phone hovered; the misleading lower-third square sat just beneath her thumb, the way a calm person keeps a hand near a brake before a steep hill.
Evan's hand drifted to within an inch of mine, offer, not grab. Later, the wire hummed, not as promise now, as discipline.
The host's voice floated down the ramp again like civics with good hair. "Before we go," he said aloud for tapes and buses, "six words, one more time: seal, date, docket - or no story."
He sounded like a man curing a minor plague with manners.
The bench team hesitated because even hustlers have ears. Then the phone-happy woman found her courage on a screen and slid in at an angle that called itself happenstance. Her shoulder angled, her smile aimed at Evan like a kite, the caption at the bottom of her phone declared itself live with a red dot that meant your nouns belong to me now.
"Just a quick 'clarify' for the fans," she sang toward the internet. "Do you two—"
"commentary," I said, at polite volume, because sometimes the quickest way to save a fire is to close a door.
"See window," Evan said, same volume, same door.
We didn't stop. We didn't speed. We were boring on purpose.
The woman laughed louder to punish the idea of boundaries. The hand-mic man stepped half a shoe forward like gravity owed him respect.
Boone's shape expanded into a suggestion of wall, nothing more; the supervisor's hand rose with the lamination of no filming in hallway reinterpreted for curb; Victor's eyes ticked toward the drone and the drone chose discretion for once.
Vivian's message arrived like a friend catching a heavy box with you instead of watching you carry it. Chair toggled to hold. Do not give them a bench. Agent securing 'no action' minute if you clear the curb without a word.
Aisha: If they try to compel on the bench, I will say the words 'retaliatory practice' out loud into a phone in a way that will make Counsel learn new vitamins.
The car sat at the lane mouth like a reasonable end to a sentence. Two steps more and we would be metal and upholstery and a road that goes somewhere less invented.
The phone-happy woman slid again, this time more aggressive, the red dot on her screen throwing reflections on her cheek like a clown at a deposition.
"Clarify now," she said, and made a small little arc toward me that thought it was graceful.
Boone's hand met air where her shoulder would have been and changed the geometry of noon. She met the idea of no unannounced intimacy head-on and smiled through it because performance is an addiction.
The hand-mic man chose his moment. He stepped into the exact line where our path and his lens became the same math and held the microphone out with a soft predatory kindness.
"Will you clarify—"
His phone screen, strapped just under the mic like an apology to the future, flicked from neutral to red. live. Comments like confetti. The caption box on his friend's phone matched it, hungry, sugared, bright.
The ramp fell quiet enough to hear the little fan inside the drone pretend it wasn't ashamed.
Rita's thumb tightened above the misleading lower-third; the window card in her other hand caught the light like law.
Evan breathed in, not to talk, to stay still.
The man took that half inch forward that makes collisions look like conversations.