Lin Mei kept her toes half an inch back from the yellow floor line, her eyes scanning the seven butterfly-shaped tubs in a rapid, continuous circuit.
“Look at their mouths,” Lin Mei whispered, her slide rule gripped tight against her forearm. “When they spoke that sentence, not a single facial muscle moved.”
“The orbicularis oris and the zygomaticus remained completely flaccid. A human larynx cannot articulate seven distinct syllables without micro-contractions in the cheek tissue and a measurable shift in mandibular pressure.”
“They’re being voiced by hardware,” Julian Vance said, leaning forward without letting his coat hem cross the boundary.
In the center of the rotunda, the five-foot circular brass drain gurgled with warm saline overflow. The steam rose in pale, spiraling ribbons toward the conical glass dome, smelling of sulfur, camphor, and old medical starch. The glass panes rattled in their lead mullions as sixty-knot Atlantic winds tore across the asylum roof, throwing sheets of cold salt rain against the skylight high above.
Around the perimeter of the room, heavy copper steam manifolds pulsed with low hydraulic tremors.
Above each of the seven tubs, the cylindrical aluminum Dictaphone microphones hung suspended by three-conductor armored cables, dangling like mechanical pendulums three inches above the canvas tub-shrouds.
