And in the reflection of a dead succulent's pot, two architects—one living, one not—smiled for the first time in a very long while.

Leo hesitated. Then he pointed the camera at his own desk—the coffee cup, the stack of Moleskines, the dead succulent. He clicked “Render.” The process took 0.3 seconds. The image that appeared was not a rendering. It was a photograph. No—it was more than a photograph. He could see dust motes frozen mid-drift. The individual hairs on his forearm. And in the reflection of his dead succulent's ceramic pot, a face that was not his own. A man in his fifties, with kind eyes and a terrible sadness, sitting exactly where Leo was sitting.

It wasn't a dialog box. It was a translucent overlay, like a ghost typing. And words appeared, one by one, in a sans-serif font that seemed to be made of light:

“You're the first to load the bridge in 2,147 days.”