Lin Mei pulled her cracked tortoiseshell glasses down the bridge of her nose, her thumb sliding the hairline of her Pickett slide rule three millimeters to the right.
“It is a formal state machine,” Lin Mei whispered, her rapid-fire cadence sharp with mathematical excitement. “Look at the orderlies’ cognitive hierarchy, Julian.”
“They do not possess autonomous volition. They operate entirely on nested conditional loops, like an industrial punch-card sorting loom from the nineteenth century.”
Outside the glass partition of the Admitting Desk, the four laminated orderlies stood in a rigid semi-circle.
The lead orderly had drawn an eight-inch stainless-steel autopsy scalpel from his plastic-sealed coat pocket. He was tapping the blunt spine of the blade against the glass with a hollow, rhythmic click.
Tink. Tink. Tink.
Every strike landed precisely six-tenths of a second apart. Fifty-eight hertz timing, divided down to one point six six cycles.
“They are waiting for our physical egress,” Lin Mei observed, adjusting her wire-rimmed frames. “Under Hospital Security Protocol, our sanctuary field only covers the horizontal plane of the Vermont marble counter.”
