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He said he could stop it, the hypervigilance, and I did not believe him. His name is Renum, someone I have known a while now, someone who carries a particular kind of watchfulness, a readiness for harm that never quite switches off even when nothing is coming. I did not doubt his will. I doubted it because I had catalogued, carefully and without malice, every time a thing like that gets said and does not hold. I had filed it under impossible, the way you file a bill you know you cannot pay: not with despair, just with the practical certainty that some doors do not open no matter how long you stand in front of them.