THE LIGHT IN THE IRIS

The lamp of the public panel beat against the dust at intervals of three seconds. Mariana brought her face close until the light found her iris. The screen opened the territorial authentication left by Sales, with the map of the valley flattened under three lines already filled in. Absence of community permanence. Antônio's house was inside the blue band. Nael's too. The area where Mariana had learned to hold the second voice of the choir appeared as operational support ground. The panel accepted her face to confirm those words and refused her presence in any other field. Ilva arrived from the lower village with the strip on her leg dark with dust. Her mouth was dry and the collector was closed inside the canvas bag. She did not ask Sales for permission. She stood in front of the map and examined the course of the Lajes, split into two colours, one for the crushing plant, another for the datacenter that did not yet exist and was already drinking in the projection. The utility company calls this separate abstraction, said Sales. The authorisation depends on a local declaration. Mariana raised her hand to her own body device. The renewal of the choir remained lit there, charged in instalments that would run across many shifts. She touched the band where the saved voices of the woman who had raised her lay sleeping. Then she opened the answer field. The panel offered four options. Confirm. Refuse. Request review. Declare impediment. Edna looked at the upper street, where the pipework vibrated over the old façades. She had no visor, no roster, no command. She had only the word that the mining operation wanted to use as a lid. If you refuse without grounds, said Sales, the declaration will be completed by predictive compatibility. Mariana read the options again. The slope Cantochoro sang from the smaller buriti, hidden among holed fronds. The bird had returned to that stretch after the crushing plant, but there were no longer enough insects to sustain the song until the midday heat. Ants carried a dead moth along the gutter, avoiding the threads of water escaping from the partly cleaned valve. Nael came from the direction of the bar. He stopped in the short shade of Antônio's porch and looked at the blue band on the ground. He knew the path the line crossed. He had been paid to show it to the machines when one could still cross the Lajes without hearing pumps. Here is Dona Vanda's well, he said. The panel did not register the name. Here was Valdo's vegetable garden, said Antônio from the door of the bar. That did not go in either. Sales pressed his lips together. Mariana chose to declare impediment. The screen asked for a reason. She brought her mouth close to the public pickup and began to sing, low, the note that opened the choir's recordings. The voice came out rough, unaccompanied. Then she said the names of the houses, one by one, and how long each family had lived there, using the dates that Nael kept by the succession of the old floods, when there were still floods to put the years in order. The transcription tried to correct Buritaçu to mining support. She repeated it. The transcription tried to turn Lajes into technical channel. She repeated it. When she reached the backyard of the woman who had raised her, her voice faltered. She did not stop. The panel marked emotional noise and offered assisted closure. Mariana refused with her face still exposed to the light. Ilva opened the bag. The cold mirror waited under the flap, answering no call at all. She brought the device close to the pickup as the names of the houses went into the air. The parallel ledger received the whole voice, with its faults, the bird in the background and the reduced household pump, each sound caught on the other like dry root on stone. Sales saw the movement and understood too late that the refusal was not silence. On the screen, the word impediment stayed lit beside Mariana's voice. Sales raised his hand to the panel and withdrew it before touching. To sustain the map, he would have to decide whether the houses were invisible or whether Mariana's voice had body enough to block the expansion. The panel removed from her the option to confirm. In its place, it opened an order for Sales. Responsible authority must answer the discrepancy within one shift. He read it without moving. The datacenter's energy guarantee was left suspended on the map, but the pump of the lower village stayed low. The mining operation still had the water it had diverted, and the utility company still had the switch for household energy. Mariana closed the field with her face. On the body device, the recording of the choir blinked once, as if asking for passage out of the cloud. In the parallel ledger, the declaration began with a held note and ended with the names the screen would not recognise.