THE THIRD STRIP

The cabinet asked for forty-six seconds of technical silence before opening the audit. The fan managed forty-three. In the remaining three, a vibration climbed the duct and made the ventilation box shudder under the porch. The Cantochoro from the hillside did not come out. It stayed on the eggs, pressed between dry grass and plastic threads, while the noise entered the channel the utility company called clean proof. Ilva held the folded terminal against her chest. The screen showed the stretch of conversation incorporated into the service. His question about her leg was marked in blue. Her answer, in yellow. The audit's artificial intelligence had separated the two voices, measured the pauses, removed the breath before the words and offered three destinations for the material. Contractual retention. Use for acoustic training. Harmonisation for operational irrelevance. The harmoniser waited by the counter. His sleeve was folded to the middle of the forearm, where the paler skin had never known the dust of the valley. He watched the fan as if expecting a number to go wrong of its own accord. The audit won't close with that noise, he said. Renan was sitting on the floor, near the locked toolbox. When he heard the fan lose another turn, he raised his face. Antônio kept his two burnt fingers inside an empty mug, to stop the skin from touching the workbench. Célia rested her protected foot on a chair, the visor switched off between her hands. The harmoniser opened a parts catalogue in the air. There was a coil of magnet wire available at the regional depot, from a reserve created to keep aircraft engines and surveillance equipment from stopping for lack of mineral. The coil appeared small, suspended over the wood of the counter, wound in turns of copper and rare alloy. It cost twenty-four units of stability. Antônio read the figure twice. How much time with the bar open does that buy me, he asked. The concession offers no commercial equivalence for suspended activity, the harmoniser replied. He knew the question would not get a sum. Even so, he left the projection before the man's eyes until it went out by itself. Renan pointed to the lower part of the cabinet. The shaft is pulling inwards. If you swap the alignment ring, the coil won't fix it. The harmoniser looked at him and then at the grey profile floating beside his name. Maintenance was suspended. The coil could be acquired by a responsible resident, provided an active technical access accepted the installation. There was no active technical access in the bar. Ilva placed the terminal on the counter. The blue mark of the personal question stayed lit. How much does it cost to take the audio out of the audit, she asked. The harmoniser brought his face close to the panel. The proposal appeared without delay. She could authorise the use of ninety seconds of her vocal archive as training compensation. The personal stretch would leave the service process and enter a dataset for tuning affective language in the utility company's automated customer service. The relationship would stop being contractual proof. It would become machine matter. Célia ran her thumb along the edge of the visor until the skin went white. The harmoniser turned his face to the journalist. The word erase does not appear in the offer. It appeared in his mouth. The blue band shrank until it fitted into a dot beside Ilva's name. Antônio pulled the empty mug closer. He kept in it a small first aid kit from the bar, released only for work cuts and classified burns. He took out a strip of mineral mesh, thin as gauze and heat resistant. Two remained. The utility company had cut the monthly delivery because the material was still reserved for high priority equipment. He tore one into three equal parts. Ilva looked at his fingers. Don't waste that on me, she said. It's not on you. He asked Renan to bring his hand closer. The technician hesitated. The purple band on his forearm had come down to the wrist, and the hardened skin kept his fingers half closed. Antônio poured four millilitres of decontaminant into the mug, dipped the end of the mesh and cleaned first the base of the thumb, then the crease of the wrist, then the area where the stain met the dry skin. He waited for the liquid to evaporate. He wound one strip without tightening. He passed the second over it, crossing the fibres to stop the arm pulling against the metal. The third stayed in the mug. The first mesh adhered. The second closed the tremor in the fingers. Renan opened and closed his hand twice. Then he reached the cabinet without touching the toolbox. He used his fingernail to move the inner grille aside and listened to the fan. Antônio had lost one of the two remaining strips to keep alive the arm of a man who could not work. The panel recorded medical consumption of shared stock and lowered the bar's restocking priority. The harmoniser waited for Ilva's bodily confirmation. She did not offer her face. Who gets the coil, asked Antônio. The responsible party who acquires it. And who installs it. The answer took a second longer than the others. The registry may consider an exception. Renan put his ear to the plate. The fan scraped at one brief point, once every turn. He indicated the ventilation box with his chin. The bird remained motionless inside. If the rotation dropped, the expanded capture would return. The nest would enter the map. Ilva opened the channel of the man in another city. There were seven old messages, each with the glow of confirmed listening. She chose the shortest, the one where he spoke of a rain that had not reached his street. She raised the terminal to her mouth and said she authorised the use of the ninety seconds. The screen removed the audio from the audit. Then it asked her to wait for the classification of the ceded material. Antônio took the third strip of mineral mesh and held out his hand to Renan. Renan brought his hand close to the shaft.