The first prototype agreed with everything.
A contract page. A copper spoon. The bakery’s cooling rack. Juno put each beneath the sensor and watched the same broad glow crawl across its plate. By the fourth comparison she was laughing in a way that made Eli set down the water he had brought and wait.
“Very accommodating,” she said. “I’ve built a device that believes the entire room is implicated.”
The independent crafter lifted the cooling rack away. The glow barely changed.
“Background.”
“Obviously.”
“You asked me to say what I saw.”
“I know. Keep doing it. I’ll stop being pleasant about it later.”
