With the terminal screen closed, the maintenance room looked disappointingly ordinary.
A worker asked whether he could take his stool back. Pela checked that it had not been used to support any lead, and he carried it away under one arm. The local custodian departed with the sealed identity key. The independent engineer moved her case out of the walking lane and began the post-trial reference check while Juno kept the completed log open.
Eli remained in the chair.
Tessa asked him to describe the impression again, starting before he had begun looking for meaning in it.
“It drew toward the machinery,” he said. “That’s the part I can place.”
“What drew?”
He shut his mouth. The word had made a thing out of something he had not identified.
“The impression,” he said. “I don’t know whether there was something moving. It felt connected to the terminal. Like a name about to be said, except there wasn’t a sound.”
