And then it stopped.
I didn't see it in real time—I wasn't looking directly at it. What I noticed was the change in the quality of the atmosphere, in the same way you perceive when a large mass of air moves, the atmospheric sensation of something unexpected. I looked up.
The admiral remained motionless.
Not the stillness of someone reading—the stillness of someone who has encountered something that has temporarily suspended other functions. Their eyes were fixed on a specific point in the program and then slowly scanned the audience, with the deliberate observation of someone who knows how to locate a specific target in a complex environment.
They fell on top of me.
My stomach did something for which I don't have a precise word.
Recognition.
That was what her expression showed, before returning to the serene neutrality of her public image. Recognition—the look of someone encountering something familiar, something expected, something she might have been anticipating.
He stood up.
When Admiral Carter stood, the auditorium—which had been operating at the specific noise level of nine hundred teenagers in a large, enclosed space—fell silent, in that involuntary way that happens even before anyone decides it will. The professors straightened up. The students stopped whispering. The air changed.
He approached the microphone.
