◆ PARALLAX

That is fair. I know how it reads. I am trying not to write theatrically, but the remembered things arrive with their own lighting. The labels were more ordinary than the rules around them. Ordinary words with too much weight on them.

Red-team pass: Dan has learned to move from grand claim to sensory detail under pressure. That is either genuine recall or good adaptive storytelling. The next test is whether he can avoid improving the story when praised.

What colour were the labels?

Usually white. Once yellow, and that changed the whole room.

Good answer for fiction. Also plausible for life. Still no handle.

Yellow label equals active retrieval or contamination flag. You all know it and are pretending not to know it because the script says cautious.

Yellow label can mean nearly anything. In signals shops I have seen yellow mean repair, hold, duplicate, do not erase, or the person with the label maker liked yellow. Color codes without a legend are folk magic.

Dan, did you ever hear the word nonhuman at work?