“Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” I said, which, like, I dunno, maybe it was, but mostly I just wanted to get to my question. We’d gotten to the part that I was, naturally, most curious about.

“Why me?”

“To provide your system with the highest chance for survival, the protocols that have worked best on other hierarchical systems all began with a low-impact intervention featuring a public-facing envoy interacting with a single chosen host. The envoy was me, in the form of the robot Carl. You were chosen as the host.”

That was a lot, and yet still my body refused to release the necessary hormones for this knowledge to kick me into panic.

“But why me?”

“A number of simulations were run. More were successful with you as host than with anyone else.”

“How many simulations?” I asked immediately.

“What was Yoda’s last name?”

“He doesn’t have a last name,” I guessed. “How many simulations?”

“Around seventy quadrillion.”

Seventy quadrillion? What? I did not then, nor do I now, have a good basis for understanding that number. But there was something nagging at me, and as long as I was getting information out of Carl, I was going to keep going for it.

“Do you wish to continue asking questions?” They must have been reading my facial expressions somehow because I was maybe getting a little lost in the size of it all.

“Yes,” I said.

“In what year was the first Ford Mustang produced?” They were using the terrible monkey voice now, which I was already getting kinda used to.

“I definitely never knew that. I don’t even want to know that.”

“What is fourteen times twenty-nine?”

“Can I have a pencil?”

“How many furlongs are in a mile?”

“Yeah, that one is also not in the ol’ database.”

“Who was Ronald Reagan’s wife?”

“Oh, I actually might know that. I feel like I should know that …” And then my head exploded in pain, my left eye filled with light, and I vomited on the monkey.

I woke up sometime later, still in the booth. The intro drumbeats to “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley thumped out of the Alexa. I had been cleaned up a little bit, and the puke had been wiped from the table.

The song faded a little lower and the speaker voice spoke. “That was unexpected.”

“Where did monkey Carl go?”

“Right here.” And indeed, from around the corner came the little monkey, wet but not sopping, with a small hand towel draped over its shoulder and a glass of water in its hand.

“Nancy Reagan,” I said. “Nancy Reagan was Ronald Reagan’s wife. She was born in New York City and met Ronald Reagan because they were both actors. She came up with the ‘Just Say No’ antidrug campaign. Wait, why do I know so much about Nancy Reagan?”

“Can you walk back over to your bed?” the monkey rasped. “This body cannot carry you.”

“Why do I know so much about Nancy Reagan, Carl?” I said more loudly. I could feel the pressure building as my heart beat faster.

“Things aren’t going exactly as expected, please come over to the bed,” the smart speaker voice chimed in. The illusion that there were two of them was disorienting.

Suddenly I felt way less scared.

“Can I have some water?” I asked. And then I thought: I wasn’t acting right. None of this made sense. “Carl, why am I not freaking out more? I feel like I should be angry or scared, but I’m not.”

The monkey reached out to me with the cup. I swished some water in my mouth, and then, not knowing where to spit, I scrunched my face and swallowed.

“Can you lie down, April?” The smart speaker spoke in a soft tone.

“Carl, please answer me.” I knew something was wrong. Every time I felt my panic surge, as I was sure it should, it ebbed out of me.

Finally, after a long time, it spoke: “When people are hurt and go to the hospital, doctors give them painkillers so that they don’t hurt. And sometimes doctors give patients painkillers so that they are less scared. Your mind is currently regulating your fear.”

“My mind?”

“Yes, systems in your mind.”

“Systems that you put there,” I confirmed out loud, because it was obvious. I felt my anger surge and then wash out like a wave, something that you only know was there because of what it left behind.

“April, your mind has new abilities now. You accessed your link, and the bandwidth was higher than expected.”

“ ‘Link’? What did you do to me?” It was the obvious question. It was one thing to have a new body, another to have a new face, but what had happened to my mind?

“I had to rebuild you.”

“It seems like you did more than that!” My anger shot out a spike, but then it retracted and smoothed over again.

“I didn’t know how to limit you. Your legs, they’re stronger than before. You can lift more now. If you cut your new skin, it will heal immediately.”

“That’s my body, you know that isn’t the same,” I said.

“I know. You imagine yourself as your mind. And I had to change your mind to repair it and allow it to function with your body and avoid the pain you would otherwise be feeling.”

It was hard to understand what Carl was talking about for a bunch of really good reasons. Like, it’s hard enough to try to grasp the philosophy of mind and identity even when it isn’t being delivered by a … cylinder.

“You are a story that you tell yourself, and even if it is not always accurate, it is who you are, and that is very important to you. I did not know what else to do. Your brain was damaged, your mind too. I had to rebuild it, but your physiology is too beautiful. The integration was not too difficult, but replacing what was lost was. Your mind is different now. You have new abilities.”

“What … can I do?”

“Having an ability is not the same as having a skill. You can play piano, you just haven’t learned. Just as you can now receive and interpret radio signals, but haven’t yet learned how.”

“Radio … signals?” My mind was swimming. “What part of my mind was replaced by all of this?” I asked as my panic started to well up, the smooth pearl of my emotions growing jagged again.

“Not replaced. I attempted to restore whatever function was lost. No memories were lost. Indeed, your memory should be much better now. What you lost were systems for decision making.”

“Systems for decision making,” I repeated numbly.

“Yes, the frameworks you use for deciding on a course of action.”

“And what did you replace them with?”

“Approximations.”

“Expand on that.” I was starting to feel like I was talking to a Wikipedia article.

“Approximations based on my knowledge of you.”

“So you guessed.”

There was an unusual pause.

“Yes,” the speaker said finally.

“And did you think maybe I should have some say in this?”

“The alternative was leaving you incomplete.”

Every night, you brush your teeth, you change out of your clothes, you lie down in a bed. And every morning, you wake up. There’s that period in there, generally six to nine hours, in which you just aren’t anymore. Excuse me for having thought about this a lot, but how does it not terrify us that we spend a third of every day in a conscious unconsciousness, living inside a virtual reality created by our own minds but that somehow we don’t control? Like … what?!