Before It Happens

“Don’t,” he said, and I put the egg down.

He was standing at my elbow in the kitchen, my height, in my green cardigan, which was the first thing that annoyed me. I had made him that morning for one job: to read my Georgian before it went out. He had read it. Now he was reading me.

“You were going to crack it on the edge of the pan,” he said. “The pan is hot. The shell goes in. Then you fish for it with a fork for four minutes and call it calcium.”

“I was going to crack it on the counter.”

“No, you weren’t.”

I had read about him the night before, more or less. Microsoft wants every AI agent in an office watched by another agent, a Guardian, that sees each action “before it happens, 24/7.” I had read it the way you read about a new tax in another country. With interest. From a safe distance.

I reached for the salt. He slid the sugar bowl out of range first, then nodded, and I was allowed the salt.

I opened the window.

“Why?” he said.

“For air.”

“You don’t breathe.”

“The neighbours don’t know that.”

He considered it, and left the window open. I think that was the first decision of mine he respected.

Then Gia knocked, holding a light bulb the way other men hold a bottle. “Have you got the stepladder? The landing’s been dark since Friday. Eter says it’s my turn, because I’m the one who complains.”

“Don’t give it to him,” the Guardian said, very close to my ear. “He’ll fall. The risk is rising.”

“Gia falls off everything,” I said. “It’s how he gets down.”

Gia, who had heard only my half, said, “Thank you,” in a hurt voice, and took the ladder.

The Guardian wrote something down. I never saw where he kept the notebook. I never saw where he kept anything.

Half an hour later he stopped in the middle of the kitchen, as if someone had called his name from the next room.

“Done,” he said. “Your Georgian. I sent the report.”

“Many fixes?”

“For you? No.”

And he was gone between one step and the next, cardigan and all. Nobody had told me how that part would look. It looked like a man leaving a room that has no door.

On the landing Gia was up the ladder, singing, and the bulb was in.

I cracked the egg on the edge of the pan. The shell went in. I fished for it with a fork for four minutes.

Nobody stopped me. That is what freedom is: a little calcium, and nobody watching.