A lot of clients request rain.

I’ve gotten used to having a wet collar.

“Walker identification: Walker four thirty-five. Location: Chicago. Time: one fifteen a.m. Weather: rainy. You’ve booked a forty-minute walk. Premium members have recording capabilities. Please press the red button on your remote to record the session. All sessions not recorded at the time of walking can be purchased later for an additional fee. Press play to begin,” I said into the headset. I waited for the light on my wristband to go from red to green.

The green light flickered on. I took a deep breath of the humid night air and began to make my way down the street. The camera strapped to my chest jostled a bit with every step, but the watchers like that, I think. It probably makes it feel more like a real walk than watching a nature documentary.

I walked quickly past the residential streets, making my way to a commercial area so the client could see more than just houses. The rainwater splashed over my mask and ran down the sides of the visor, dripping onto my reflective waterproof uniform jacket. They’d thought of everything to make sure the watcher’s experience was unimpeded by weather; fog repellant spray had to be applied to the camera lens, and it had its own visor to keep off the rain. But there was a gap between the mask and the back of my jacket collar, and we weren’t allowed to wear scarves, so the back of my neck was wet. All service jobs have features like this — small inconveniences and discomforts that showcase the gap between interest in customer care and investment in employee care.

Sentinel was a good company, an altruistic company, even. But it was still a company.

There was an old woman closing up a noodle stand on the corner. She stacked her paper bowls on a cart, then pulled a large tarp over the top of the stand to protect it from the rain. She glanced at me, then did a double take, her wrinkled face breaking into a smile.

“Ah! Sentinel walker!” she said loudly, calling to me from down the street.

This was a problem. We weren’t allowed to talk to people while on a job. But the map clearly insisted that I walk down this road, so I wasn’t allowed to cross to avoid her, either. I put up a hand in greeting but also waved it in dismissal and began to increase my pace.

“I know you can’t stop,” she shouted as I approached. “My husband subscribes. He likes to walk around his hometown, Jeonju-si. I just wanted to say thank you for all your work. Here!”

She shoved her hand in her raincoat pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper. I nodded at her and took it as I sped past.

“Free noodles!” she yelled after me. “Next time, I hope to see your handsome face!”

I looked down at the paper, making sure to keep it out of view of the camera on my chest. It was a coupon for a meal and a drink, handwritten on a piece of receipt paper. Without turning and ruining the progression of the walk, I lifted my arm and waved to her in thanks. I’d never turned down anything anyone had given me. When I first started doing this job at seventeen, an older walker had explained that the gifts weren’t really about us at all. Now, after three years as a walker, I understood him perfectly. They were a ritual. An offering.

The best part of the job was this: people understood, when they saw Sentinel walkers, that we couldn’t be stopped or bothered and that we were walking for people who couldn’t go out or travel. People who watched the world on screens in groups at nursing homes or in the comfort of their bedrooms. People trying to get back to homes miles away or go on vacations they couldn’t afford. They weren’t afraid of the sabre net masks we wore to obscure our identities or our eerie silence. They gave us gifts and waved hello.

Everyone knows someone who subscribes, a family member or a friend. Not everyone is sick or in need, but many people who subscribe are. People love to see the sky; they love to see the sun. They love to hear the rain splashing on the sidewalks and see kids running in the streets. They love the sounds of cars beeping and birds singing and strangers laughing at a joke as we pass by.

The map insisted that I walk down an alley, cut across into the roundabout with a park, and stand in the middle of it. The cars stopped politely at the crosswalk, and I climbed the side of the grassy hill until the traffic swirled around me. Per the client’s request, I slowly turned on the spot in the opposite direction of the flow of traffic. A little girl, up way past her bedtime, stared at me from inside a car, her little hands pressed against the window. I used the zoom on my remote to enhance the view. They blurred children’s faces, but clients liked when the camera focused on things that seemed meaningful. A personal touch. After the allotted time, I climbed back down from the roundabout and began picking my way back toward home.

“Walker four thirty-five. Location: Chicago. Time: one fifty-five a.m. Weather: rainy. Thank you for subscribing to Sentinel Walkers; we hope you enjoyed your walk.”

The light on my wristband was still green. After a moment, it turned red — the client had signed out of the application. I took off my mask and turned my face up to the sky, letting the droplets hit my cheeks and dampen my hair.

I crept back into the dorms and began silently taking off my gear in the middle of the shared kitchen. Suddenly, the light turned on. I almost dropped my camera harness.

“Bro, it’s, like, two a.m. Why are you even awake?” Josh stumbled into the kitchen and opened the fridge. “Haven’t you quit that job yet?”

“What? No,” I said, gingerly placing the camera on the table. “Why are you even awake?”

Josh yawned loudly, not covering his mouth, and sat down at the table, a box of cornflakes and a bowl in his hands. “I have to be at the lab at three. We have some chicken eggs that are about to bust open with bacteria. Science never sleeps, man. Anyway, don’t you get tired of the clients yammering in your ear the whole time?”

“They’re not allowed to talk to us,” I replied. “The only time I’ve ever heard anything over my headset was during training, when I got yelled at for going off the map’s course even though there was construction.”

I sat down beside him and started drying off my equipment. I stripped the degraded waterproof layer off the camera and applied a new one, drying the straps of the harness with a paper towel. Josh watched quietly as he ate.

“How long you been doing this, Ezra? You gonna keep with it after you graduate?” Josh asked carefully. “An undergrad philosophy degree might not get you far.”

Josh and I were roommates, but we didn’t spend a lot of time talking to each other. Our schedules didn’t quite align. I was normally in bed when he woke up for work. It was weird to be running into him like this.

“I’ve been with the company for three years,” I replied with a sigh. “It’s basically like getting paid for exercising. Sometimes I even listen to audiobooks if the walk is long enough. It’s not a bad job.”

Josh chewed contemplatively for a while.

“Three years is a long time for someone under twenty. They should give you a raise.”

I huffed, winding up the harness straps neatly. “I doubt I’ll get one. I don’t even have a boss to do yearly reviews or anything. We’re all independent contractors, technically.”

Josh put his spoon down and looked at me seriously. “You should still try. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you deserve.”

“Walker identification: Walker four thirty-five. Location: Chicago. Time: three p.m. Weather: sunshine with wind. You’ve booked a sixty-minute walk. Premium members have recording capabilities. Please press the red button on your remote to record the session. All sessions not recorded at the time of walking can be purchased later for an additional fee. Press play to begin.”

The light on my wristband turned green.

It was Wednesday, and the sun was that bright white that lets you know there would be another storm soon. Chicago has the strangest weather. Our seasons don’t fade into each other — you wake to them abruptly. Fall lasts forever until you wake to soft snow and biting winds. The snow blankets the city until one day it’s forty degrees, the snow melts, and the gutters run in rivers. You wear a jean jacket through spring until one day you leave school and have to carry your jacket home, sweating bullets all the way.

It was spring now, but summer was coming, and I could smell it in the air. I crossed the street, heading to Millennium Park, a large public green space in the exact center of downtown. This client, #5478932, had been popping up often over the last four months. I’d mostly taken them to dense urban areas with lots of people, but this time they were leading me to a more isolated space.

I trailed close to the decorative bushes that bordered the park walkway and brushed my fingers through their leaves. I leaned in close and rubbed a plant.

“Slick with sharp edges,” I said quietly. I think #5478932 likes these small touches. You rarely get long-term repeat clients. Premium members tend to just pick whoever’s walking in an area they want to see. They don’t usually pick a favorite walker. We’re functionally the same.

The map on my phone demanded that I turn right and then left, cutting through the park to emerge on the other side of the street, then continue down a narrow path that led to a tiny family bakery. I stood in front of the bakery and looked down at the map. The instructions stopped.

The headset crackled. “Can you go inside, please?”

The voice was soft.

My hands flew to my ears, as if adjusting the headset would change the fact that I was being spoken to through it.

“Excuse me?”

“Can you go inside? They don’t let us go in stores. I feel like a ghost looking into every window,” the voice said.

“How did you get — you can’t be on this channel. How did you get access to the speech function?” I asked firmly. “This feature is supposed to be used by Sentinel staff only.”

I checked my text messages to see if I’d gotten any notifications from the company, but there was nothing.

“It took me so long to figure out how. Please. I haven’t been to this bakery in years . . .”

I stood outside silently. The woman behind the counter watched me through the window. It was a Chinese bakery — I had never been to one before. The smell of bread and vegetable oil was very strong, but good.

I sighed sharply. Then I opened my app, pressed the button we’d been told to push when there was a technical difficulty, and jotted down that my headset needed replacing. The app sent an immediate notification that a supervisor would be in contact in one to two business days. Technically, walkers are supposed to just end the walk if something goes wrong. Even if the camera is still on and we are still connected to the client, people rarely want recordings of walks with equipment malfunctions, so tracking tends to end. Which left me and #5478932 together. In silence. Unsupervised.

I put my hand on the door handle and paused for a moment, thinking hard. Then I pushed open the bakery door.

There was no one else inside. It wasn’t a prime location for a shop, as it was out of the way of the majority of foot traffic and in the shadow of a large apartment building.

“Hello!” the woman at the counter said. “Fifty percent off buns today.”

My heart was racing. This felt extremely illegal.

“The pork buns are good,” #5478932 said. “Or at least they were forty years ago. My dad used to take me when I was a little girl . . .” They trailed off longingly.

I crouched down so the display case was visible to the camera.

“What else do you like?” I asked quietly. If they had only one shot at doing something like this, I was going to make sure it was worth it.

“The egg tarts . . . I like mooncakes, too, but they’re not in season.”

I ordered the pastries, then sat down in the corner, facing the wall. I looked around the restaurant to see if anything inside would provide a visible reflection. There were a lot of small rules for walkers but only a few that resulted in immediate termination. Showing your uncovered face on camera was one of them. This little jaunt might get me a week’s suspension, but sitting in front of a window would be much worse.

I lifted my mask just enough that my nose and mouth were free, balancing its weight on my forehead.

The pork bun had soft, tender bread that pulled apart with a bit of bounce. I placed the steaming bun directly in front of the camera so #5478932 could see the detail.

“What does it smell like?” they asked. “I wish I could smell it, too . . .”

“It’s . . . uh . . . it smells sweet, a bit oniony. There’s sesame oil on it, I think.”

“Oh, definitely!” they said, pleased.

I took a bite and immediately understood why they had broken the app to come here.

“This is incredible,” I said, my mouth full.

They laughed. “I thought it might be bad to have to listen to someone chew, but honestly, this isn’t too terrible. Try the egg tart. It’s not as sweet as you’d expect, but it goes well with milk tea.”

I gulped down the pork buns, then picked up the egg tart, cracking its golden shell near the camera.

It was a gentle flavor, almost like flan but a bit softer.

“This is . . . this is really great, thank you. Are you not able to eat food like this?” I asked, forgetting myself. “You don’t have to tell me any details. Actually, you shouldn’t. Don’t answer that.”

Client #5478932 sighed gently. “No, I can eat this stuff. It’s just that this place doesn’t do delivery, and I don’t have any close friends to pick things up for me. There are other bakeries, but this one is my favorite. The others just aren’t the same.”

“Oh . . . I’m sorry,” I said, my joy at the egg custard deflating a bit. I wished, irrationally, that I could deliver some to them, but caught myself at the last second before I reflexively offered.

“I’m sure there are many people who use Sentinel who have the same problem,” they said with a sigh.

“Actually, most people who use the platform don’t live where they’ve requested walkers. It’s more . . . unusual to do a walk in your own city,” I said, finishing up the tart and glancing back at the display case.

“I can see you checking that out, you know. If you want more, you should get them. Why hold back?”

“I . . . I’m in college. I don’t have the budget for it,” I admitted.

I heard some rustling and then a ding. “There you go. An extra tip. Have fun, walker,” #5478932 said. “We should probably disconnect now. I’m sure if we stay on any longer, management will get suspicious about why you haven’t hung up yet.”

The line went dead, and the light on my wristband turned red. I took out my phone and swiped to the app, but the resolution was still the same. I swiped to my earnings. Client #5478932 had paid for her session and added a twenty-dollar tip to my account.

I ordered a dozen pork buns to go.

“Have they tried to fix your headset yet?”

“Nice to hear your voice again.” I grinned. “Why the sudden interest in parks? I thought you were a city girl.”

Client #5478932 let out a surprised peal of laughter. “I haven’t been a young girl in decades. But feel free to keep calling me that — flattery will get you everywhere.”

The noise from the streets faded into the background as I approached the bird sanctuary. It was a vast field of wildflowers and native grasses at the very edge of downtown. The blooms hadn’t started growing yet, so the ground was still brown and green, starting to get lush after the snowmelt.

“All the nature walkers in Illinois keep going to the beach and the woods,” #5478932 explained. “I don’t want to feel like one of those crunchy-granola campers with all their gear. I want to feel like I’m still living in a high-rise and don’t own a pair of hiking boots.”

“I see. And to answer your question, no, they haven’t come by to replace my headset. They have me on premium request only, with a discount rate for not having audio capabilities. Since they shut it down remotely, my headset should technically be completely silent,” I said, hopping over a puddle of mud.

“Well, with your other clients, it will be,” #5478932 said wryly. “Can you walk gently ten feet to the northwest? I think I see a nest.”

I couldn’t see it yet, but premium viewers had their own zoom capabilities, so that wasn’t a surprise. I stepped gently, slightly to the left.

“Stop! You’ll step on it! Just . . . just crouch very slowly . . .”

The wild grasses parted to reveal a small clutch of green speckled eggs. I leaned down close, putting my chest as close as possible to the nest so the client had a better view.

“I’ve never seen something like this in real life before,” I said quietly.

“Lots of animals live in the city,” #5478932 said. “We’re just one. I used to come here during my lunch break. We weren’t supposed to leave the main path and go into the sanctuary, but it’s such a perfect shortcut to Lake Michigan.”

I stood back up, looked out at the gray sky, and took a breath of fresh water-wind. The waves were crashing against the shore, loud enough that #5478932 could probably hear them.

“Do you want to get closer to the beach?” I asked.

Client #5478932 made a small, pained sound. Then there was some rustling and a sharp gasp.

“Are you okay?”

There was a moment of tense silence before #5478932 answered. “I’m as good as I’ll ever be. I would like it if we stayed away from the beach. I don’t want to see the water; I’ll miss it too much.”

I turned around so that my camera pointed away from the lake and back toward the city.

“Could . . . could you stay there so I can listen?” #5478932 asked.

I threaded my fingers through some wild grass nearby that had grown up to my waist.

“To the birds?” I asked. “There were more before I got here and tramped around.”

“The waves. I don’t want to look at them, but they sound . . .”

She trailed off. It was a minute before I realized she wasn’t going to continue. So I stood there in the grass for her. I closed my eyes and listened to the water and the wildlife and the traffic and the voices off in the distance, shouting and laughing, and the soft sound of #5478932 breathing and the beep of a machine in her room.

Then I waited, staring at my wristband until green turned to red.

“You really don’t go to parties?” #5478932 asked.

“I’m not taking you to a rave,” I said firmly. “And no, I want to get all my gen ed classes out of the way, so I’m taking a twenty-one-hour course load and working part-time. I can party in a year and a half.”

She sighed dramatically. “Not even a single bar. God, I haven’t been in a bar in ages.”

“I haven’t been in a bar ever. I’m literally not old enough to take you to either of those places.”

I could tell she was rolling her eyes at me. “So much for cross-generational friendships.”

“Come on, Five. Can’t you think of some family-friendly ideas within walking distance?”

“Ugh, fine. Let’s go to the zoo.”

“But that’s, like, a thirty-five-minute walk away!” I exclaimed, looking down at my map in horror. “You only have twenty minutes left.”

“I’m adding another forty. Use those young legs and get to marching. Mama wants to see some penguins.”

“Strictly speaking, a movie isn’t a walk,” I whispered. “The screen quality isn’t even good from here. You can literally watch a movie at home.”

“I don’t want to watch a movie at home. I want to watch it with you and get a running commentary,” Five said. I could hear her eating popcorn.

“If I don’t stop talking, people are going to start looking at me weird,” I hissed.

“Then sit in the back,” Five replied unsympathetically.

I got up and moved to a back corner seat. The view was even more abysmal than before.

“I don’t know why I’m even doing this,” I muttered under my breath.

“Because I’m your favorite client and tip fifty percent over what Sentinel suggests.” Five laughed. “Consider it an investment. Also, it’s fun.”

I opened my app and checked the faulty headset status — it still said maintenance pending. It had been almost seven days, and I was still in silent premium mode. Five wasn’t the only premium member who bought my walks, but she was definitely my only repeat client. And, honestly, the only client I looked forward to.

“It is fun,” I admitted. “But the footage from this is going to be absolute garbage. Are you going to rewatch this movie later so you can actually see what’s happening?”

Five just laughed.

After the film was over, she bought another twenty minutes to walk me home.

“Movies were more expensive when I was younger,” she explained, “and infinitely worse.”

“How could they be worse?” I turned down a residential street, and the brightness from the commercial area faded into a dim haze, a thicket of trees casting shadows over the sidewalk. The noise from the main road grew muffled until there was just the suggestion of activity on our periphery.

“Tickets were, like, thirty dollars before they finally capped cinema prices at ten. And god, the remakes and superhero films.” Five groaned. “The superhero films were the worst. They weren’t bad movies, mind you; they were just so ubiquitous. A new one coming out every three months or so, perfectly curated for consumption. So formulaic, too. You would have loved them.”

I huffed with amusement. “Why do you think that?”

Five hmmed. “Ah. People your age love activities that make them feel like they’re part of a group. It wasn’t about the movies, per se. It was about the culture. The experience of being in a community with specific shared media to argue over and love . . . or hate. The richness of the shared journey.”

“Is that what you wanted? To be part of that culture?” I asked tentatively. I could see the dorms a few blocks away, and I slowed my walking, turning down an unnecessary street. We weren’t allowed to be in active mode within five hundred feet of our homes for safety reasons.

Five made that noise that let me know her pain was returning. It was a small sound she couldn’t quite control, a whimper almost, that caught in her throat and warmed my ears with how terribly human it was.

“Movie theaters are special. They’re a form of community unlike any other. Being together but alone, going on a journey that changes us at our core. Being made to cry or gasp with joy in unison, inches apart from one another, but still so far away . . .”

Five stopped talking for a moment.

“It’s like this, I think,” she finally said.

“This thing we’re doing. Against the rules, in the dark,” I said, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk.

“Do . . .” Five paused as if she were too nervous to continue her sentence. She gathered more courage and continued, “Do you want —”

“Yes,” I said.

Five breathed a sound like a smile. “At least let me get it out first. Do you want to go to dinner?”

“Where?”

“You pick.”

“I can’t,” I said, looking up at the moon in the crisp night sky. “I have to go where you tell me to go. I can’t lead, Five. I can only follow.”

Five sighed. “Isn’t that a terrible thing?”

I swallowed hard.

“I don’t want them to fix my headset,” I admitted recklessly.

“I’ll break the new one,” Five replied, and it sounded like a promise.

“It’s not a date, Josh. She’s, like, sixty-something, I think,” I said, pulling on a nice black sweater.

Josh looked back at me dubiously. He was standing in the doorway of my room, cup of coffee in hand, dark bags under his eyes.

“If it’s not a date, why are you trying to look nice? She legally cannot even see you.” He nodded at my black dress pants and neat Chelsea boots.

“She’s taking me to a nice restaurant. Nice places treat you like crap when you don’t look like you can afford to eat there,” I replied with a scowl. “And it’s not a date because it’s not romantic. She’s just . . .”

Josh waited patiently for me to continue.

“We don’t exchange a lot of details, but she’s been inside for decades. Maybe more than twenty years. Having these experiences with her means something different than having them with some sorority girl. It’s like . . . if you met someone who had developed an allergy to their favorite food, and all you had to do to let them taste it again was clap your hands. Would you do it? Of course you would.”

Josh nodded. “I would. But clapping doesn’t cost anything. Doing this does. Especially if Sentinel finds out.”

I tightened the straps on my harness with a jerk. “It’s been almost a month. And to be quite frank with you, having a company be angry at me means so much less than this. It’s worth the risk.”

I pushed past him roughly and grabbed my camera and mask off the kitchen table.

The restaurant Five had picked was ovo-vegetarian Italian and very busy. The greeter looked surprised to see me with my mask and jacket but honored my request to sit in the corner in the dark, facing a wall.

“I wish you could get a better seat than that,” Five said. “It’s a part of the experience.”

“It’s fine, I don’t care. What do you think I should order? Anything you’ve got a hankering to eat?” I asked, tilting my mask up so the bottom of my face was exposed.

“I prepared this time and ordered in!” she exclaimed. “Unlike our last food adventure, this place does deliver. I got a faux lamb lasagna and the deviled egg appetizer with a glass of limoncello.”

“Ugh, deviled eggs?” I grimaced. “Gross.”

“Deviled eggs aren’t gross, kid. They are a refined barbeque picnic tradition,” she snapped. But I could hear her grinning. “I could eat a whole dozen of them if I’m not careful.”

“Old people food,” I muttered. “I’ll get the lasagna and the limoncello.”

“You can’t have limoncello — it’s alcohol.”

“What does it taste like?” I asked.

She paused for a minute, and I could tell she was thinking. “It tastes like if someone tried to make lemonade using only sugar and the rinds.”

“Sounds bad, but here we go.”

When the waitress came by, I ordered exactly what she had, deviled eggs and all. They didn’t check my ID, which was thrilling. Five scolded me fiercely about it.

“It’s been a month since we met,” I said, taking a sip of my water to wash down the sharp tang of vodka. “I don’t imagine this is going to go unnoticed for much longer. I’m kind of preparing to be fired, to be completely honest.”

Five sighed. “I would say I’m sorry, but that would imply regret. I don’t do regret, walker.”

“You’re such a weirdo.” I laughed. “I don’t regret it, either. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here. But you should at least pretend to be sorry.”

“Pretending is for weak punks,” Five scoffed. “And apologies without constructive action are just words. The tip I’ll send you after this walk will carry you until you get your next job. It’s the least I can do.”

I put my hand on my chest and swooned mockingly even though I knew she couldn’t see me. “You spoil me.”

“You were spoiled before I got here,” she muttered. “Eat your food.”

“Well,” I said, taking a bite of egg and grimacing at the vinegary flavor, “since we’re going for broke, do you want to tell me a bit more about yourself?”

“I think the anonymity gives this friendship a little bit of spice. But I can tell you some things. My favorite color is xanadu. My favorite time of day is early in the morning —”

“When it’s quiet and the streets are empty?” I interrupted.

“Exactly. When the birds have finished singing and the sun is just barely out, but it’s still so early that you can stand in the middle of the street and no cars will hit you,” Five said softly.

“What is your favorite weather?” I asked.

“Windy, but you can’t really get that sensation from the walks. I like when the wind is so hard that it almost pushes your legs out from underneath you.”

“Or when the wind is warm so you can stand there and just let it whip you around,” I continued. “I wish I could take you to a place like that.”

“I could pay them to take my bed to Wales and post me up on the top of a hill, but it wouldn’t be the same.” Five laughed. “The sheets would start whipping around like crazy, and I wouldn’t even be able to do anything about it.”

I took another sip of limoncello and let it burn all the way down my throat. “It would be like heaven, though. Just quiet and windy with white billowing around you . . .”

“You talk like an English major,” she scoffed. “What are you studying?”

“Philosophy,” I admitted, and waited for the scorn I knew was coming.

But Five just hmmed contemplatively. “Well,” she said, “I guess someone has to. What’s your favorite weather?”

“Oh, we’re doing me now? Okay. My favorite weather is . . . sun rain.”

“That’s extremely edgy,” Five said immediately.

I groaned. “Please stop making fun of me.”

“I will not!” She laughed loudly. “You could stop saying make-fun-of-able things.”

I could tell by then that I loved her. It was suddenly incredibly obvious. A feeling like my heart constricting struck the smile from my face. Five was my best friend. She was my best friend, and there was a chance I would never see her again.

“I want to give you something,” I said seriously.

“What? Keep it, don’t invest your money on me,” she said quickly.

“Not like that.”

I finished my lasagna and called the waiter to pay the check. Ignoring Five’s questions, I rushed out of the restaurant and started down the street. It had been ages since we’d used the map feature on my phone through the app, but we’d headed this way often enough that eventually she caught on.

“You can’t go within five hundred feet of your home or it’s immediate termination, walker,” she said quietly.

“I don’t care.”

We went farther into the residential area near campus until the only people near us were students. They glanced at me curiously as I strode quickly past them in full gear. I held up my lanyard so security could tell I was a student and wouldn’t chase me down. The light outside the dorm suite was out; hopefully Josh would be as well.

I put my hand on the doorknob and turned it.

“Walker,” Five said.

I ignored her and rushed through the kitchen and into the bathroom and closed the door behind me. I stood in front of the mirror, my reflection staring back at me: the blank mask and the reflective jacket with the camera strapped to the center.

“I . . . grew up with my grandparents. My parents just weren’t around,” I said quietly. “In high school, things were pretty okay, but college has been . . . I’m not from around here, and it’s been really hard. I was going to quit being a walker when I started college, but when I got here, I just . . . couldn’t. It was all I had.”

I could hear that Five was still there, breathing quietly, and I could still hear the beep from the machine in her room.

“These have been some of the best weeks I’ve had in ages, and I know they have been for you, too,” I continued. “I know this isn’t going to last forever, and I’m not being sentimental about that. I just . . . I can’t . . . I feel like I’m so close to knowing you, and this feels like the last part.” I took a deep breath. “If I’m never going to see you again, on a random day when I learn that I’ve been let go, I want you to at least see me before that.”

I unbuckled my mask and slid it down.

“Oh,” Five gasped softly. “You’re such a lovely thing.”

Looking at my face through her eyes was . . . so much. I saw myself every day. My hooked nose and messy curls, the zit on the side of my chin and the freckles crowding across my forehead and cheeks. My dark eyebrows and wide-set eyes, tired and unremarkable. I’d never been called a lovely thing before.

“My name is Ezra.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Ezra,” Five said, and my name melted from her mouth to my ears with such joy that I had to close my eyes to really feel it.

“You’re so young.”

“Yeah,” I replied helplessly. “Maybe you can find me one day, and we can really be friends.”

“I —”

The line went dead. No breathing, no beeping. Panicked, I looked down at my wristband, and both the red and green lights were off.

“Fuck,” I gasped, putting my mask back on quickly.

My phone rang in my pocket, startling me so badly I almost dropped it.

“Hello?”

“Hello, Ezra. This is Jeanette with Sentinel. We received your maintenance request. Management has requested that you visit the home office to pick up your new parts.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, yes. No problem. Give me a second to open the Notes app so I can take down the address.”

“Sure. The location is 1 North State Street, Suite 2020. Please arrive promptly at nine a.m. on Saturday morning. You’ll need to provide ID at the front desk before they’ll let you upstairs.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“Also, please bring all of your supplies, including your jacket and camera harness. You will also be attending a behavioral review meeting. The meeting should take approximately one hour of your time.”

My heart sank so fast I immediately felt nauseated.

“Oh . . . do you . . . know what it’s about?” I asked.

“Unfortunately, I do not. I’m just in the customer service department. My notes say administrative behavioral review. Is there anything else you need before I go?”

“No,” I whispered.

“Perfect,” Jeanette said in a chipper voice. “Have a great rest of your evening.”

She hung up. I dropped my mask on the bathroom sink and slid to the floor. I wrapped my arms around my knees and hid my face in the dark.

I held all my gear in my lap in a tight bundle and jiggled my leg anxiously. The receptionist at Sentinel’s home office was friendlier than I’d expected, but it still didn’t make me feel comfortable. There was no one else in the lobby but me. The moment I walked through the door, I could tell this wasn’t where they handled customer service calls or general supplies. After my panic attack had passed last night, I’d done some research on Glassdoor and learned that they usually mailed new parts to walkers, along with an envelope to send back the broken pieces.

Even being here seemed wrong and uncomfortable, and the granola bar and coffee the receptionist had offered me just exacerbated that.

“Ezra Cohen?”

I looked up. A serious-looking woman with a sharp bob waved me over. I stood, nearly dropping the slippery reflective jacket, and the distaste on her face increased. I followed her through the office, past large glass-walled conference rooms and executive seating areas, to an office with frosted windows. She opened the door and gestured for me to go inside without her, then closed it sharply behind me.

Sixteen pairs of eyes met mine. There was a long table, and six men and two women sat on either side of it. They looked like attorneys, all of them over forty and dressed in expensive-looking suits and dresses. Their expressions ranged from bored to intensely curious, delighted to incandescently furious. At one end of the table was a much older man. My gaze drifted past him to the wall where, to my horror, there were screenshots of my walks.

The projector displayed high-resolution images of the nest and my fingers nearly touching an egg, the penguins at the zoo, the Chinese bakery, the restaurant with my hand around the illegal glass of limoncello. A thousand other places I shouldn’t have been, doing things I shouldn’t have been doing. And at the very end of the wall, directly behind the oldest man at the table, was a picture of me with my mask off. Staring directly into the camera.

“Please be seated,” the old man said.

I stumbled weakly toward the table and put down my gear with what felt like an earth-shattering clatter, then sank into the chair.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted.

“I know,” the old man replied.

He stood up and walked around the room while we watched him silently. He touched the projection of the nest softly, then turned around.

“Thank you for coming, Mr. Cohen. Your experiences with Sentinel are very valuable to us, and I’d like to ask you a few questions about it, if that’s all right?”

“Okay.” I looked anxiously at the man sitting next to me, but he seemed to be the angriest at the table and turned his chair away from me abruptly.

“Was the relationship with your client positively or negatively impacted by their ability to choose the same walker repeatedly with no restrictions?” the old man asked.

“I . . . positively? I didn’t really notice anything bad about that feature of the platform for the last three years. But it definitely helps when I know what the client would want to see.”

The old man nodded, then returned to his seat and picked up a sheet of paper.

“We noticed that you’ve always taken care to zoom in on particular things and vary your walk speed often, even though it’s suggested that walkers maintain their pace. What was your reasoning behind this?”

“I want to make them feel like actual walks. My ratings increased when I started doing it because people who subscribe don’t want to feel like they’re just watching TV — they want to feel like they’re really going somewhere.”

“Exactly!” one of the women at the table said with extreme exasperation.

“Jordan.” The old man held up a hand to quiet her, then continued. “Finally, Ezra, why do you think your relationship with your client progressed so quickly?”

“She’s just . . . really cool,” I said. This was rapidly becoming humiliating.

“Can you please elaborate on that? We need to understand more about the social development in your own words. We’ve seen your footage, but that doesn’t tell us what you were thinking or any of your motivations.”

“He doesn’t think you have a crush on her,” a patient-looking man added. “We’re just seeking more experiential data.”

I closed my eyes and willed my face to get less red.

“It’s . . . I wanted to work for you guys because I spent a few months in the hospital as a kid and got used to watching walks on TV. It wasn’t even the most basic subscription. But it helped . . . even when nothing else did. And I started thinking about how much I would like to see things that the public broadcasts would never show us.

“Five, she . . . she still wants to go places she used to go but can’t anymore. She doesn’t want to walk past stores — she wants to go inside them. She doesn’t want to brush past people; she wants eye contact,” I said firmly, starting to get heated. “And I don’t want to be rude, but my job here isn’t worth more to me than what I did. Even if it was wrong. I get that the rules you have are safety measures, but I just . . . feel like this app could be better if you stopped thinking of your subscribers as people tuning in to a channel. Or . . . or . . . if you maybe thought of your walkers as companions, connections between us — I mean them — would be faster.”

“Like your connection was fast,” the old man said pointedly.

I scowled. “If I’m fired, can I just go home now?”

He gently placed the piece of paper he was holding onto the table.

“My name is Hideki Shimomura, and I’m the founder of this company,” he said simply. “The rest of the staff at this meeting is our product development team, legal counsel, and heads of customer service. You’re not fired, Mr. Cohen. This is a product development meeting.”

He stood and began to walk the perimeter of the room, looking at the images on the wall.

“I initially developed this product to suit the needs of my daughter, who has difficulty with mobility. I built the first harness and sewed the first reflective jacket. I developed the rudimentary phone application and mapping service. I walked for her for fifteen years before I was able to get investors for this company. I understand.

“When the application first became available to the public ten years ago, there were some difficulties, and many of the features had to be adjusted for the safety of both the walkers and the clients. We’ve been having an argument about increasing personalization, but it’s difficult to test things like this in an organic way. The discussion had been shelved for over a year when your maintenance request came through.

“Your headset isn’t broken, by the way,” Hideki said with a soft smile. “Your client hacked the back end of the app, located your employee code, created a copycat Sentinel staff ID, and patched in through the company’s locked audio channel. She really is a firecracker.”

“Why didn’t you shut it down, then?” I asked.

The patient man who’d asked about data spoke up. “It’s difficult to replicate social connections in artificial environments because people don’t act the way they would normally act when they know they’re being watched. So we could either remove capabilities on her end or watch and wait to see what would happen. If anything . . . inappropriate began, we could immediately shut it down, the way we did when you showed your face. That was a safety measure.”

“Thank you, Theodore,” Mr. Shimomura said. “And thank you to everyone else, but I would like to be alone with Mr. Cohen for a moment. We will regroup at three p.m. Jeanette, please submit the minutes to the board and draft a preliminary schedule for product development meetings over the next few weeks.”

All of the staff at the table rose and packed up their things. Mr. Shimomura sat down in the chair that the furious man had vacated and waited for the door to close behind the last person.

“Your client sent you a tip through the app right after we closed your connection. Payments sent to terminated or suspended accounts generally rebound, but we caught this for you,” he said. “We weren’t sure whether you would accept our offer to continue to walk for us, so we processed the payment as a check.”

He slid a white envelope across the table.

“She said that she would take care of you if you were fired.”

I opened the envelope and, to my shock, slid out a check for fifteen thousand dollars. The name on the check had been covered with a small piece of painter’s tape.

I touched the tape and looked up at Mr. Shimomura.

“It didn’t feel . . . respectful . . . to share her name with you without her permission,” he said. “If you would like to continue walking for Sentinel and sharing your data with us, it would be an immense benefit to us. We’ll be upgrading a few other popular walkers to assist with native testing as well. It would be the same pay rate, but your profile would be updated with a prototype two-way communication feature that would allow company-approved direct contact.”

I wanted to laugh. The same pay rate. Josh would be thrilled to learn he was right. A company is always a company, I guess.

Mr. Shimomura stood. “Take a minute to think about it. When you’re ready, the receptionist at the front desk will help you with your paperwork.”

He put a gnarled hand on my shoulder and gave it a warm squeeze, then left the room, closing the door gently behind him.

“Where are we going tonight, Five?”

“You choose this time.”

I laughed. “You spoil me. Do . . . uh . . .” I paused and then took a deep breath. “Do you mind if I take you to the lake?”

“I told you Ezra, I don’t want —”

“We can face it at the same time,” I said, tilting my head back to look at the sky. “I want to see the waves through your eyes.”

“Stop being a smooth talker before they shut your app down. No flirting,” Five snapped.

“Come on, old lady. You don’t have to swim. You don’t have to put on sunblock. You don’t even have to get grit between your toes.”

“Those are the best parts.” Five sighed.

“Then turn off your video, and I’ll read to you when we get there. It will be like before, and you can just listen.”

The waves were dark when we got there, and the wind was strong. The spray splashed against the toes of my sneakers and dampened my face.

“Are you listening?” I asked.

“And looking, too,” Five replied.

“Brave girl.”

“Ezra?”

“Yeah, Serefina?”

“Thank you.”