The guide she worked with when she was here in 2033 moved to New Zealand, so she went over the list of professional guides with public backlashes in the city and picked out several who seemed like they might be compatible with her and scheduled quick checks with all of them before her first meeting with the clients. One of them (a friendly-but-professional woman) was a decent bit better than the others, and so Causal Web is on the way to her silo now.

She's re-reading the preliminary report she was given in the client meeting when the car chimes to warn her that she's arrived. Very well. She slides the file back into her day bag, exits the car, and knocks on the appropriate door.

A few seconds later, Emily answers it. "Hello, Causal Web! Please come in. How do you do?"

She steps back to let her into the building, a half-duplex. Near the entrance is a small table for them to sit at.

Causal Web puts on her friendly face for a greeting, then Emily into the room and and joins her at the table, pulling a few sheets of paper out of her briefcase as she does. "Do you mind if we get right to business?" 

"Not at all!" 

"Alright. I'd like to start with the NDA, then, since you mentioned being ok with it via email." She has a pen for Emily to use. 

It's a contract been Emily Jackson and Pemberton Media, and obliges her to not share any information she might pick up about their private affairs while working with the contractor "Causal Web" over the course of the work. (Sharp penalty clause, but otherwise pretty standard stuff, which is what Causal Web told her to expect.)

She reads through it, line by line but not particularly slowly, and finds nothing unexpected or objectionable. She signs and dates in the appropriate locations.

(She works on something on her commscreen while she waits for Emily to finish reading and signing.)

"Thank you!" She collects the contract, scans it with her commscreen, then puts it back in her briefcase. 

"Alright. I'd like to go over guiding protocol and boundaries now, if that works for you, and then we can get started." 

(She glances at the commscreen, but without great curiosity, and doesn't comment.)

"Yes, that works for me."

(Since she hadn't signed the NDA while signing the NDA, she would have seen Causal Web scrolling through an unfamiliar newsfeed interface in the holographic UI at a pace that implies a slightly alarming skim-reading rate.)

"Broadly, I'm looking for contact guiding (with as little clothing as is acceptable to you, though I'll remain in underwear) while I use my power and that plus any amount of mouth to mouth guiding you're comfortable with doing while I'm recovering from using my power." She pauses for questions and responses. 

She nods. "I can do contact in underwear," nudity doesn't make enough difference in surface area to be worth not matching the other party, without sex, "and I am comfortable with mouth to mouth guiding."

Okay, good. "My backlash can make it hard for me to be proactive, so if you're willing to take the initiative to start more intense guiding on a signal, that'd be helpful to me. And if you want to pick up some amount of backlash to guide me more efficiently, I would appreciate it and will pay you up to 30% more; I probably won't be able to meaningfully help you with actively managing your own backlash symptoms but if there are things that passively help you or that I should be trying to avoid, let me know." 

"I can take that initiative, given a signal to look for in advance. And yes, I'm willing to pick up backlash for better efficiency. I do this by telekinetically moving small objects nearby; by default, I use a mix of folding paper into shapes and moving marbles around the room, but if either the noise or the movement would be distracting, I can skip either, or move something more subtly."

She pauses to consider. "Given the non-disclosure agreement, it will be fine regardless, but it would be easier if you can avoid actively discussing your analysis with me, such that I should consider it and respond? Separately from working on it or discussing it in front of me."

"Movement and low-signal noise won't bother me. If you want to listen to music that is lyricless and at a comfortable volume, that's also fine with me - if you're watching something with dialogue it'd be better for me if you use headphones."

And she nods at the request. "I can do that, yes. I may make phone calls while being guided but i don't need to think out loud and I am paying you for professional guiding, not for consulting help."

"Thank you. And it sounds like looking at things on my phone on silent wouldn't be an issue, if I angle the screen so it's not in view? If so, I think that's everything on my end."

She nods. "That's fine - and if it's more convenient for you to have screen in view, it won't distract me and I probably won't look at it."  Pause. "Alright. I'm ready to get started if you are. Where do you want to do this?"

"I have a room set up, over this way." She stands to lead her to it, pausing at the door to show Causal Web a device on its knob. "This door won't be electronically locked today, but the exterior door will be while I'm backlashed, and it has the same mechanism; if you need to leave unexpectedly, you can press this button—" she demonstrates (it's a mechanical button, labeled "I am not Emily."), "—and it will let you out."

Inside is a room with plain grey walls, with a bed pressed into one corner and a sofa and desk against the opposite wall. There is a partial case of water bottles next to each. The window has another lock, and its glass is covered in opaque white plastic.

"Then in here, we can use the bed if you'd like to lie down, or the sofa if you'd rather be sat at a desk?"

Followfollow inspect the door mechanism nodnod. (Right, she'd want to contain herself while backlashed. That makes sense.) 

She looks at both offered guiding locations. "Bed seems better to me, at least for now. I don't need a desk to work." 

She removes her jacket and folds it neatly, setting it on the couch. Underneath it she's wearing a sleeveless (blue, fancy and very well-fitting) summer dress.

"The bed it is! Oh, what signal should I be looking for, to initiate more active guiding?"

She goes to sit on one side of the bed and take a stack of paper and some flat marbles out of the nightstand to its top, along with her phone from her pocket, then starts removing clothes and folding them into the nightstand's cubby.

"I'll say done using my power, or something similar." And she can remove her dress and bra, put them both on the couch, and joins Emily at the bed.

She makes sure her briefcase is in easy reach, and withdraws from it a plastic bag full of smaller objects in their own plastic bags - a small notepad mostly filled with doodles, a thumb drive, two halves of a pencil, and a cell phone with a cracked screen.

"Got it!" She retrieves her phone, sends the doors the signal that she's going to pick up backlash, and climbs into bed, ready to provide contact in whichever position Causal Web prefers.

Causal Web situations herself on the bed and indicates with a combination of words and body language that she wants to be held from behind so her hands are free and can reach her odd assortment of items, three of which she's put onto the nightstand.

And she is now held in this manner! Emily adjusts her own position until she is in one that can be maintained a while without issue, with a decently good maximization of skin contact and an okay angle to use a phone's screen one-handed, then holds still.

Causal Web moves around a bit as well, making sure none of the small bruises on her right arm are under too much pressure and shifting so that she's positioned such that Emily can be touching as much of it as possible. (The guiding feels good, of course, but she's got a lot of experience in not letting that distract her from what she actually considers important.)

"I expect to take somewhere between five and twenty minutes each time I use my power. If you urgently need my attention while that's happening, you should shake me until I snap out of it. Let me know when you're ready for me to begin." 

"Understood. I'm ready."

Then she'll open up one of the plastic bags, extract both halves of the broken pencil within, and using them as an anchor, reach into the past.

(This doesn't look like anything, of course, but Emily can feel Causal Web's backlash start ticking upwards, easily outpacing the guiding she's providing.)

Time to pick up some backlash to get closer, then. She imposes the familiar sequence of folds for a simple cube on the first sheet of paper, which begins to execute them. She starts a few marbles in a square loop to maintain through the air over the nightstand to cover more of the difference, while she looks through the pdfs of geometric patterns she's saved for a more appealingly complicated one. 

The guiding is quite nice indeed.

Over the next ten minutes, her body language becomes more tense as her backlash climbs, but she doesn't otherwise take observable actions or react to Emily's power or phone use.

This is good! They can just hold still and use powers and stay in contact, like they're supposed to. Emily makes a more intricate cube, with two layered sheets of paper, then spiky waves in a flat sheet, before switching back to the two-layered cubes while browsing other patterns. Completed pieces tuck themselves into the nightstand, out of the way.

About a minute later, Causal Web stops accruing backlash.

"...done using my power," she says quietly, after a bit. (She's backlashed enough that this takes her real effort, but she has a lot of practice in making herself follow protocols even when she's pretty sure it doesn't actually matter.)

Emily puts her phone and objects down, adjusts positions for better access to Causal Web's face, and initiates more active guiding. Moving tongues against each other produces more saliva than holding them still, so she is doing so, although she isn't particularly applying further technique than that. Her other arm is now also available and is additionally in contact.

- Oh. Right. 

Causal Web gradually becomes a more active participant in the guiding as her backlash drops. 

After a minute, the finger she was controlling her commscreen with begins twitching purposefully, though she doesn't let go of Emily's hand. 

Participation definitely somewhat improves the efficiency! Emily slightly loosens her grip in case Causal Web wants her hand back.

Nah, she doesn't actually need to move it beyond what she's already doing, and interleaved fingers increase guiding contact. 

It'll take them another ten minutes of this to clear her backlash. 

Mostly still handholding and contact along with more active other guiding activities it is!

Causal Web finishes her notetaking and pulls up a newsfeed to skim for the last few minutes of guiding. (She remains an involved participant in the process, of course, but it's clear her attention is elsewhere.)

Is Emily's backlash also cleared?

Yes: she'd guessed conservatively about how much backlash to pick up, and as they get near the end she needs to move some objects around a touch more.

Okay, good. She disengages as the last bit of backlash leaves her, sighing in relief. 

She rotates and pulls up her notes, making some typo corrections and grouping things better.

Some briefly visible text:

Baxter opposed audit

Wentworth quick to point fingers

look into July 12th meeting

Emily reads the text before looking away. And then yes it is a time for doing other things with their hands and mouths, such as drinking water and doing more interesting things on a phone. Perhaps there will be something new and available on Zooniverse!

Causal Web takes about five minutes to organize her notes and review some other documents. When she finishes, she dismisses her commscreen and glances at Emily.

Emily puts the water bottle down and prepares to resume contact.

She swaps the broken pencil with the cell phone and then nestles back into Emily's arms. "Ready?" 

"Ready!"

"This one might take longer."

And she closes her eyes and drops into her power. 

"Understood."

Emily was a bit too conservative last time, and so sets the marbles to a more complicated twisting loop, and starts folding her cubes.

Time passes. Her backlash levels climb. 

Ten minutes... twenty minutes...

She does her best to match backlash levels. She marks the locations of fish in images, and annotates species, which is the closest she can do to what she should be doing about the ocean, and at least gives her more information. The text on the page is blocked by the script, but she can still count.

The only thing she should do that is fully available to her is to touch the living entity next to her. She holds her phone at a worse angle that increases the amount of skin contact slightly.

Thirty minutes...

Thirty-five minutes...

...and then her backlash stops climbing.

No access to the top transcription projects, and the plant labeling project doesn't work with the text blocked, but about half of the camera trap project interface still works. In the night photos, animals mostly face left, while in the day photos, they mostly face straight toward it, or there are no animals and the movement of plants in the wind was captured.

She rearranges the cubes in the cubby, and replaces moving paper with moving more marbles once they are correctly configured. She can't do anything else that she needs to, about it.

She puts the phone down to wrap her other arm around the body next to her, and press her face against it, the only thing she needs to do that she can progress further on.

When it stops being more efficient to keep acquiring more backlash, she puts her marbles away, and stops.

...she remembers what she's supposed to do at this point but it's so obviously pointless....

It's very clear that power usage has stopped and it's time for more efficient guiding to take place. But she is not to take that action based on what is clear. If clarity moves her to initiate before the words that were chosen in advance, or to guide more efficiently than that, it might mean that she will not get to ever take a correct action again.

She continues to take the most correct action that is safe. She clenches her jaw but not her fingers, and remains in contact, and holds still.

...after about five solid minutes of guiding (and an extended mental war with herself between pointlessness and protocol), Causal Web manages to open her mouth and whisper "...done."

That has to be close enough. She makes sure to think about it for twenty seconds, in words, and she still thinks "done" counts as "done using my powers, or something similar". She cannot be impulsive, if it's ambiguous, but she's almost certain...

Why did she think that would matter. Is she stupid.

After waiting and thinking, it does still seem true, that she gets to do what she should do.

She moves with indecorous haste to gain access to the mouth of the entity she is guiding, with her own. Her tongue pushes in to move against the other tongue like it is the only achievable and rewarding task in the world, and her limbs wrap around the rest of the body. 

-oh. well does it really matt- it sure feels nice.

It feels so nice. It's exactly what is supposed to happen, and it's allowed to happen, and it helps, and the helping feels good, so much better than external skin contact.

...right. She's supposed to get more involved with the process. 

She can definitely do that. 

Well, that's quite a good sign that also somewhat improves the effectiveness of this activity. Emily does not slow the movements of her mouth against Causal Web's, but the rest of her body relaxes slightly.

It takes a fair bit of high bandwidth guiding activity before Causal Web can push past her backlash enough to start taking notes, finger twitching.

 ...Emily appears to have taken on quite a lot of backlash, this time around. Doesn't matter, of course  .....well, no it might? She'll make a quick note. Just in case. 

High-bandwidth guiding, and contact, and Causal Web is doing her magic stenography, and everything is fine! Emily tries to ignore the patterns and focus on memorizing the important things to do later.

The guiding continues. Flesh to flesh, mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue.

Her mind slows the rate at which it lies to her about the pointlessness of every possible action she could take, minute by minute. As thinking gets easier, she gets more done on her commscreen. 

It takes the better part of an hour for them to fully guide away all of the backlash that she'd racked up.

Wow, doing things sounds so nice! But at least there is guiding, which is the right thing to be doing!

When they finish up this process, Causal Web will break mouth contact and go for some water. 

"...Are you hungry?", she asks, after drinking half a bottle. "I'm going to order lunch."

Time for water indeed, and some mild stretches. The water is important.

"I could eat!"

"Does Indian food work for you?" (She's correcting her notes at the moment, and cracks a small smirk at something she's remembering.)

(She doesn't even have to try very hard not to wonder what that's about, now.) "Yes, that works."

There's now a menu for an Indian place floating in front of Emily! It's a copy of the one in front of Causal Web, who rapidly adds a saag paneer, an order of garlic naan, veggie samosas, and a mango lassi to the cart.

(Jenny recc'd this place when she mentioned she was going to London, and despite her many, many differences in preference with Jenny, they do both like good Indian food, so she's interested in trying it.)

She checks that she can operate the screen by touch, then looks through the menu. Obviously she has to get the fish pakora, and then the matar paneer looks good if she gets it mild, with paratha for a starch.

Food: successfully added on the floating screen.

Then she can put the order in! It'll be there in 25 minutes. 

She pulls her notes back up, and... Oh, right.

 "You don't need to take that much backlash, if you don't want to," she says, vaguely awkwardly.

Awkward indeed, but perhaps they can pretend it isn't. "Ah, it's not a problem. I wouldn't take more than was a good idea. But thank you."

Huh. Well, fair enough. 

Anything else.... 

...right. "If you can feel me stop using my power for more than ten seconds, you can initiate mouth to mouth guiding even if I haven't said anything. It's fine to wait for the signal, if you prefer that, but when I'm that backlashed... it can take me a while." 

"I can do that!" That's so concrete and observable and unambiguous!

Small smile. "Thanks, I appreciate it. ... I need to make a short phone call while we wait for food. Is it okay for me to do that here, or would you like me to head elsewhere?" 

"You're welcome. Here is fine!"

Time to get her own phone and inform it and the house that she isn't backlashed.

She pokes her commscreen.

"This is Causal Web, calling for Mister Baxter. Yes." Pause. "It'll be short. Yes, I can wait." She pulls up her newsfeed and scrolls as she does. 

"Mister Baxter, this is Causal Web." Pause. "Thanks for finding the time to talk to me, I know you're busy. I'm calling about the staff meeting on July 12th. You mentioned consulting a specialist before the merger. Can I get some details..." Pause. "Mister Baxter, Pemberton media lost four hundred million pounds this quarter. The board hired me to -"

Emily writes oblique notes for what she needs to do later in her to do list, but listens with half an ear.

... Ah. That's a reason someone might hire Casual Web, yes.

She rolls her eyes. "Mister Baxter, I recommend you look up my power before you decide to try stonewalling me like this, because it is simply not going to work. I know you hired someone prior to throwing your support behind the restructuring, as was mentioned in the July 12th staff meeting. The only thing you will accomplish here is wasting my time and Pemberton's money, and I will make a note of it when I submit an itemized invoice to the board and I do not think they will be very - no, Mister Baxter. I understand you are upset, but it is not blackmail for me to tell you about the legal action I am contractually obligated to perform if you don't compl -" 

"No, actually, that's incorrect! Your personal life is of course protected by law and I will not be looking at it. But your contract with Pemberton waives that right for work-related activity during inquiries by certified psychics hired by the company, and - Mister Baxter, I strongly recommend you consult with your lawyer about the specifics here before making threats like that! And then, once you have, please email me the name of that specialist." 

Pause. "Of course. Good day, Mister Baxter." She ends the call. 

Wow! Emily is absolutely not going to take any actions or draw any larger inferences from that, but the world definitely has people in it who do incorrect things that she would try not to do.

By the void does it ever.

(She hopes the guy will comply, but she's not optimistic. It's really starting to look like his inability to make reasonable decisions when stressed is why she's in London at all.)

She excuses herself to use the bathroom WC. 

Right over there! Emily is going to walk around inside while they wait for food to arrive.

Excellent, thanks.

When she gets back, their food is about to arrive, which is visible to both of them because she's projecting the tracking info into the air above them.

"Want me to get that?" (Neither of them are wearing enough clothing for the task, but she can put her dress back on for a bit.)

"That would be brilliant, if you're willing?" (Emily's clothing wouldn't take that much longer, but there are more components, and she's currently experiencing the joys of walking around after spending a while in bed not doing very much.)

Sure, she can slip her dress back on and then slip out the door, returning a few moments later with a large bag full of Indian food.

Meanwhile, Emily sets out plates and utensils and water bottles. And then they can have Indian takeaway!

Yep! It's pretty good. (Thanks, Jenny.)

Causal Web eats with businesslike efficiency and is mostly scanning her news feed while she does (though she's not opposed to conversation, if Emily wants).

Reading on phones while eating is perfectly fine!

(The texture of fish is very bad, as always, but it's important, and she doesn't have to react to that. The rest of the food is predictably good, after.)

Causal Web, blissfully unaware of Fish Texture Problems, will finish up her meal and consolidate her leftovers. "May I store this in your fridge?" 

"Of course!" The fridge is over here. "... Also, I'm not sure if you care, but if you do, I have mouthwash or spare toothbrushes?"

Causal Web holds up a travel-sized thing of mouthwash and smiles. "I have one I like, but thanks."

Food can go in the fridge. Mouthwash can go into her mouth for a minute and then into the bathroom sink. Dress can be removed and folded and back onto her pile of clothes.

Tidying away dishes and remaining food, using mouthwash and then water, putting phone and house into backlash mode, and then she's ready to guide.

Yep, time to get back to work. (...sigh.)

She'll let Emily get into the bed first, then arrange herself appropriately in her guide's arms. 

And then they can be in large amounts of contact, with one and two arms free, respectively.

Casual Web retrieves her next anchor from its plastic bag. "Alright. Starting up again."

She takes a deep breath, and gets back to it.

Time to move marbles and fold paper and look through other patterns to fold.

After about twenty three minutes, she stops using her power, and begins fighting with her backlash for control of her mouth. 

Nine, ten, then to be safe in case she's counting too quickly, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—

And then she does not still need control of her mouth.

It's hard to feel like that matters, but at least it's abstractly pleasant, as meaningless stimuli go. 

The guiding is very important, and also pleasant. She tries to imagine the way caustics of sunlight through shallow water perturbed by inconsistent wind would play across a somewhat reflective metallic surface with an interesting curve.

Causal Web, as usual, becomes more involved in the process after a bit of guiding has happened. Then, a bit later, she starts taking notes.

...kind of a lot of notes, this time around?

Success! ... Wow that's a lot of typing, maybe it means she should— no. No taking actions about it, there's a document. What if the imaginary metal structure had two layers and the bottom one was flat and more specular, and there was a gap, and the top was curved and had complicated patterns of circular holes. 

They can continue the mouth-based guiding until they are both fully unbacklashed, then! (It takes long enough for the taste of mouthwash to have mostly faded.)

Then she can release Causal Web to her editing, and Emily can write some notes on geometry and then drink water and stretch.

Causal Web will stretch too, check her email, and then roll her eyes. "Well," she murmurs, "I did warn him." 

"My next two power uses are going to be on the longer end, unfortunately," she tells Emily.

"Understood!"

... She's just going to quickly add look for backlash-safe music to her to-do list, then, "Ready when you are!" 

She'll let Emily get in bed first, and then follow her. 

She arranges herself facing Emily, this time. "I don't need my hands free for this one," she says, by way of explanation. 

On the one hand, no phone, but on the other hand, increased efficiency of both power use and guiding, and under both hands, Causal Web. She adjusts positions to achieve a pretty decent maximization of skin contact with the new constraints.

Yep! Causal Web makes sure her face is resting against Emily's and that her arms are making contact with Emily's back.

And then she can pull up the very rude email Mister Baxter just sent her and get her power to trace it back towards what he's trying so desperately to cover up. 

(Her backlash climbs, a bit slower than before due to the increased skin contact.)

As does Emily's. Most of it is just moving the marbles, at this point, but she's trying to fold the twisty little many-armed star thing out of paper from memory.

Time passes.

Twenty minutes...

Thirty minutes...

Forty minutes...

She systematically has each paper structure crush itself into a little ball and tuck itself away. She keeps up the sinusoidal movements of the marbles, to match the growing backlash better. She stays pressed along the body she's tasked with guiding, which rises and falls with breaths: waves. It's warm where they touch; both bodies sweat, which increases the efficiency.

At just over fifty minutes, her backlash stops climbing.

And starts decreasing.

... Should she stop its fall? No, that's why she's here. She puts away her marbles. The clarity is starting to dull, but that much is obvious as anything. She needs to start the count. From one for safety.

... Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve is a good composite. A safe number.

She doesn't even have to move her head far, for better fluid transfer than the contact with sweat. Even though saliva has less salt, the feedback is very clear.

Causal Web doesn't really react to the guiding, beyond opening her mouth when the tongue comes knocking insistently.

She then obtains the access she needs without obstacles, and follows the clear instructions. There are many salivary glands she needs to stimulate.

Glands can be stimulated, yes. And the guiding commences.

And the guiding continues. This will be a long one.

After a while, she accidentally scrapes her own tongue against a tooth, and this causes an unexpected tiny burst of extra fluid exchange for the target of her guiding. She has to hold still for a few moments, reminding herself that biting is not a pre-chosen guiding method and might even prevent her from finishing this task. And then she resumes her movements, a bit more carefully.

A few minutes after that, Causal Web tentatively begins participating in the process.

That could be a coincidence and there's nothing she can do about it even if it's not. The participation is nice. They're making progress.

Yeah.

Further along the progress spectrum is the notes.

They're quite short, this time, which means Causal Web pulls up a news feed to scan earlier, though this is only visible to Emily in the way it's reflected in her bright blue eyes. 

Longer power use, more efficient power use, shorter notes, which means she should— not do anything differently or pay attention to this pattern.

She will instead close her eyes and try to imagine a web—no, a hollow star polyhedron, each  face covered in lace made of wire wrapped in twine—rising from a pool of saltwater, crystals of salt growing from the fibers.

And in time the guiding is finished. 

She yawns and then stretches.

Stretch! Water bottle! (Water is quite lovely.) Phone!

Causal Web gets up to drink some water and checks something on her commscreen. She sighs, forwarding the relevant email to her law firm. It's still early on the east coast, but Thomas starts his workday at 7 am, so she's assuming - yep, there's his reply. 

LOL!

Yeah don't worry I've got it handled 👍

What a tool though. 

Which is still not Emily's business! She updates her list, to avoid looking.

When she finishes with this and returns from a quick WC break, she says "I need to do another at about that length, and then I'll be done here for the day. Do you want to make any preparations before we start that?" 

That's actually quite a good idea, now that it is brought to her attention. "I'll also excuse myself a moment, then I'll be ready."

She leaves briefly, then returns to bed, ready for a final round of guiding.

She follows Emily into the bed, arranges herself facing her guide again. "Do you want your phone?"

"I'll leave it if you don't need your hands?"

"I don't need my hands this time." She wraps her arms around Emily and brings up her notes. "Ready?" 

Emily arranges herself and then nods. "Ready!"

She takes a deep breath, steadying herself. (She likes using her power, of course. It's what comes after that she hates, and she's spent a lot of time backlashed today already.)

It's worth it. Even for jobs like this - she might not care that much about what happens to Pemberton in abstract, but the company employs twenty thousand people and each one of them depends on the company not fucking up and the money they're paying her will do a lot of good, once she's passed it on.

Alright. Get on with it. She sets aside this train of thought and reaches into the past.

Emily starts her marbles on their cyclical journey and begins a new batch of cubes folding themselves. She might be able to use her power to directly support some possible human goal, perhaps more lucratively but perhaps not, though definitely not against dungeons, if she could be certain that the tasks she might be hired for wouldn't conflict with what might become clear she ought to be doing instead.

But at least the world has given her a predictable task she can reliably achieve, which supports some human goals. And she can follow some other instructions later, when she can weigh the decisions more strategically. She makes her arbitrary cubes and guides and imagines geometric structures.

It's another long one, apparently.

At thirty minutes, Causal Web shifts slightly, but her backlash doesn't stop going up.

She has her instructions to wait. Hopefully her target doesn't attempt to leave, or she'll need to figure out what to do. She could grip tighter to try to discourage it preemptively but she shouldn't deviate from her normal routine of holding still for skin-contact guiding.

The guiding is important, and the liquid in both bodies, and the flow of air—the waves can't cancel out, so she changes the pattern of her breath so her inhale begins halfway through the exhale. It would be good, and elegant, but she must not have her papers fold themselves to encase her and her guiding target together.

She tries to focus on imagining the lumpy iridescence of abalone shell stretched into giant sheets of fabric, translucently thin, pulled tight over a tangled rigid structure.

She only has to focus on that for another twelve minutes before her target's backlash stops rising.

Counting breaths as seconds, both because she should set by the breaths and for a safer margin than counting seconds without reference, she waits for fifteen, then ceases to not guide with her mouth.

It's so much better. Faster, and more, and pleasanter, and correct. Life is mostly made up of having reasons upon reasons not to do the right thing, but sometimes, when she handles those reasons with enough finesse, she gets do the right thing, and sometimes she gets to do it almost as effectively as is possible. This is the last time of the day, probably. There may be no comparable satisfaction.

Oh. Sure, this can happen. (It's pointless, obviously, but it'd be just as pointless to communicate that or to attempt to make it stop.)

Everything that needs to happen is happening. Minor improvements would be possible but the current guiding activity does not demand them.

Causal Web does, after a while, make some minor improvements to the process with her tongue.

Marginal improvement in efficiency that is also a landmark of progress! There is of course only one thing to do about it, which is to continue.

She waits longer to take notes this time, which could mean nothing.

Maybe Emily needs to— no. Guiding is already happening, asefficiently as is available. Regardless, she doesn't know what finger movements are needed for what Causal Web would need to type, so she cannot make that guiding milestone happen with anything but guiding.

Eventually the note taking does happen. (More than last time, if anyone was wondering.)

Okay, everything will be fine and the guiding was successful. (No one would dream of noticing for long. However, that's surely a good sign.)

As before, when Causal Web gets more and more guided, she starts using her commscreen more actively, looking and reading instead of just taking notes.

This time, unlike the others, she breaks off the guiding before the process is fully complete. "I need to make a quick phone call right now, while it's still business hours," she says, by way of explanation.

Emily nods and moves to allow her the use of her hands and mouth. It's much easier than it would have been while more backlashed, and there still is skin contact.

Great! She makes the call right away.

"Hello, I'm looking to speak with Peramal." Pause. "Hi, Peramal! I heard about you from someone and I had a question about pricing - can I ask over the phone how much you'd charge for specific questions?" Smile. "Great! So the first one - I was really wondering when the confluence is going to hit? - oh! Darn. But that makes a lot of sense, okay. Got it." (It'd be illegal for her to record this conversation, so she's transcribing rapidly on her commscreen.)

"Hmmm, okay, the other thing I was wondering is - how is the Arsenal game next Sunday going to go? - ah, yes, of course, sorry - no, that's all I had, but I might call you back tomorrow, if I think of something else? Okay! Thank you for your time, have a wonderful evening!"

And she hangs up, indicating to Emily that she'd be okay with resuming higher-bandwidth guiding.

(Well that's perhaps a bit concerning and confusing, but she is to do nothing about it.)

Time for higher-bandwidth guiding! And thinking about the appearance of anodized metal!

And soon they're done with that! And they can both get out of bed and drink water and stretch.

Since they're done for the day, Causal Web starts putting her clothes back on.

Right, yes, all of that, and setting the building to let people through its doors.

She slides into her dress. "I expect to need to do a few more long power uses tomorrow. Does 10 AM work for you?"

"Sounds like a plan! And—" she double-checks her calendar, and her regular guiding is still scheduled for its normal time, and she has no other prior commitments she's forgotten— "10AM works for me!"

"Great. I'll see you then." And she calls herself an autocar and heads out. She has some emails to write, a preliminary report to make for the board, and a few other things to set in place for tomorrow. 

"See you then!"

Emily goes to her desktop and does some preliminary research into ocean- and parks-related charities for any doing work on salinity or geomagnetism, and puts the most promising ones at the bottom of her ranked text file to follow up on researching at the end of the month.

Then she starts mocking up shapes and textures and lights in her 3D modeling software. Nothing looks right, but at least it's something, by the time she has to stop for the regularly scheduled evening guiding.

Causal Web tries very hard to keep good sleep hygiene, and she mostly succeeds. But she's been doing international high profile postcog work for a while, now, and not all of it is as anodyne as Peter Baxter's poor business practices. She knows a few things about the world that keep her up late worrying, some lonely nights.

The next day, she texts Emily to let her know she'll arrive approximately on time.

She knocks on the door at 10:02, looking somewhat underslept.

(Because of the effects of Pemberton Media and football on the confluence— that's probably simply not true.)

"Good morning!"

"Good morning, Emily." She'll head inside and into the guiding room.

(The water bottles have been slightly further depleted, and the empty ones are gone, but the room is otherwise much the same as when Causal Web left it.)

Emily strips down to her underwear, climbs into the bed, and locks the building.

She can undress too, and go over her day plan (as it relates to Emily, anyways) while she does.

"I expect I'll do two or three longish power uses today, possibly getting lunch here after the second one if that's ok with you, and then settle up and head out."

"Sounds good to me!"

She's using digital anchors again, so she'll get into bed facing Emily and wrap her arms around her guide.

And then she can get started.

Today Emily is moving her marbles in an up and down stepping pattern, and making spheres out of paper. It's slightly more complicated to tell the folded paper to tug away from itself in the right way to become round. Spicing things up a bit.

Twenty minutes.

Causal Web is spicing things up too, in that she's doing a sort of branching-backwards special with two okay anchors and a lot of very solid conjecture, and targeting something very specific.

Thirty minutes.

It's on the edge of what she can do, with this much guiding, and accordingly she's a bit clingier than usual.

Forty minutes.

It might mean that she should hold tighter, but they didn't discuss it ahead of time. It's probably the right thing to do, but it might be unexpected, so she shouldn't. And she shouldn't guide more intensely until she receives the signal or the time elapses.

She needs to think about something else. Last weekend she visited a little shop with the wrong shape of interior door handle for the baked goods it was selling. She should determine what would constitute the perfect handle, and later maybe she can make it happen.

Fifty minutes.

Sixty minutes.

She may not and must not guide with her mouth to the other mouth yet, must not open the outer membrane that separates their fluids (like a door, in flaps, for the river, or even fine layers like pages of a book or an onion or dried glue, for the more-living membrane with its groundwater) and improve the efficiency, by fluid-to-fluid or by improved access to topologically inaccessible surface area. She might be stopped.

And she cannot supplant the placeholder in the door with its hardwood replacement (yellow-stained, smooth and long-handled, a pattern of circular holes drilled through on the bias) or fix the salinity of the embankment or go back to the close that she passed last month to walk all the way down one side and up the other or anything else she needs to do, without ceasing to guide her charge. She's still making concrete progress on that one task, the total amount dealt with increasing, even as the amount remaining also increases.

When she finds herself considering abandoning her current duties for more distant duties, there is a rule, and there is an action she needs to take. 

She puts down her marbles, and her paper spheres, and she stops.

The world of course rebukes her for her weakness of will, slowing the effectiveness of her guiding as the differential grows, a gentle but stern slope. New tasks (the number of forks in her cutlery drawer relative to spoons, the arrangement of her hands around the other hands,  the shape of the path through the embankment gardens) begin to be communicated slightly more seldomly, and less urgently, as she demonstrates her inadequacy.

She holds still and maintains skin contact.

At sixty three minutes the backlash growth slows to a trickle and then stops.

It stopped?

... eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen—

Mouths. She keeps the rest of her body as still as she can, but she finally may do what is demanded of her.

The other mouth waits longer before it deigns to participate in the process, this time. 

The notes don't seem to be happening at all.

Notes aren't happening yet, at least, but participation was also delayed. And she is not going to do anything to the hands to try to fix this.

The participation is good, and as both backlashes decrease, she gets low enough to tentatively pick a bit more up, just a few marbles, to match better. She's guiding actively, and it's pretty clearly what she needs to do, and not impossible to accomplish at the current rate.

It is definitely possible to accomplish the task of guiding Causal Web back down to zero.

She starts scrolling her news feed, after a while. As they get close to zero, she makes a few short notes (some sketched out dead ends to avoid, for the next attempt).

Progress! And the notes didn't need Emily to do something specific to make them happen, which is important to remember.

Yeah. (Emily is not the one who needs to do specific things differently, here.)

...she's not being paid to be glum about it, though. Stretch, water, and then she can try again.

Stretch, and water! It's rather nice to go from being intensely aware of everything important that she's failing to do to only knowing about it in the abstract, having accomplished exactly One thing.

Time to go again?

Yeah. (Wish her luck she doesn't need luck. She just needs to be a bit better.)

Again. 

Emily's going back to cubes, just in case, but this is otherwise much the same as last time.

Forty-seven minutes later, Causal Web's backlash stops climbing.

A marked improvement: there is apparently something to be said for the cubes approach.

She counts ten and initiates more efficient guiding.

Her subject participates, after a longer-than-average delay.

The initial burst of notetaking comes pretty quickly after that, though.

See? Everything is fine. (About the guiding. Not about minerals, obviously.) They both have tongues and fingers and are doing everything they need to with them.

They both have tongues and fingers and they are doing everything they need to with them!

The end result of this process is two unbacklashed espers.

Success! Emily untangles to drink water and stretch, and add "phone stylus?" and "chapstick" to her to-do list. She watches to see whether Causal Web wants to pause before their next round.

She has a bunch of typing to do (she doesn't write client reports while backlashed, it's too frustrating to edit them afterwards), but she can do that while drinking water and stretching.

"Alright. I'm almost done - there's a few things I want to nail down, but I can do it all in one go, and I don't think it'll take as long as the last few have." 

Emily takes the opportunity to look through the Zooniverse projects available to her, although there's not time to start anything.

"Sounds good!" She gets back into position.

Causal Web joins her for what will hopefully be the last time, for this job. (She smiles just a bit at the thought. She's looking forward to heading home.)

She pulls up her notes detailing the suspicious pair of gaps at the right times in Baxter's audit-delivered work calendar, closes her eyes, and reaches into the past.

Emily makes cubes and moves marbles. Thinks about birds in an undirected manner.

This one only takes her about twenty minutes. "Done with power use."

Two, three— wait, she doesn't have to do that.

She can just put her mouth into Causal Web's and start finishing all of the remaining guiding needed until the end of the day.

She can, yes! Causal Web gets involved right away, this time.

Her notes-writing is very short, but by the time they're fully guided she's finished editing the written report for the board. She did most of it last night and this morning - she was pretty sure what she was going to find, today, and so now she just needs to fill in a few details. 

(Baxter is going to lose his job before the end of the day, obviously. She doesn't feel bad about this at all.)

Emily is going to start labeling birds on her phone, but it's going to be long enough till her next backlash that she should be fine to not actively ignore whatever Causal Web is doing, if she happens to catch any of it.

Her magic hologram screen shows some kind of notification with a telephone symbol on it and her eyes light up, just a bit. "Ah, excuse me. I want to take this call."

She answers the phone with artificial cheer. "Hello! You've reached Causal Web. How can I help you, Mister Baxter?"

Smirk. "I am glad that you have decided to save your law firm's time and money. ...is that all you wanted to talk about?"

"No." (She scrolls through a news feed while presumably at least partially listening to the voice on the other end of the line.) "No, I'm going to tell them the truth, Mister Baxter."

She drops the cheery facade. "The truth is that your so-called specialist is an esper who goes by the codename Peramal, a psychic who straightforwardly and accurately advertises his service as a tool of self-discovery and goes out of his way to make sure his clients know that he is not a precog."

(Oh! Well, that's good about the confluence, then.)

"The truth is that you willfully deceived Peramal about what you were actually asking him to do, which was to help you convince yourself and your company that the billion pound decision that you wanted to make was a good idea. And you did it because this would have been incredible for your career if it had worked out, and so you ignored the actual data available to you and led the stakeholders to believe that you'd contracted an independent analyst firm to validate your work." Her voice raises slightly, as though she's very intentionally talking over someone. "And unlike the last two times you did this, your gut feeling was wrong! The restructuring was an unmitigated disaster, and you've been spending the last six weeks trying to discreetly cover your tracks."

She laughs, harshly. "No. No, you canno -" Pause. "Mister Baxter, you may not have known who I was yesterday, but I happen to be the best postcog that money can buy and as such I make enough money that it would be financially irresponsible of me to accept a bribe from you, even if -"

"- Unprofessional? Mister Baxter, you fired six hundred and seventy-nine people with no warning, disrupting their lives and Pemberton's entire advertising operation at great expense to the company and no real gain to anyone, even you, all because you chose to hire a psychic to use as a magic 8-ball instead of actually trying to figure out whether your darling plan was actually a good idea. That was unprofessional."

(Yikes!)

Emily is over here labeling birds, but looks up when the call ends.

(He actually be might be stupid enough to end up in prison for this, which is really something.)

"Sorry about that," Causal Web says brightly. "People can be so unreasonable when they're upset." She's already mostly finished putting her clothes back on. "If you can send me the billing invoice now, I can get you paid right away for your services."

"Not a problem!" ('Congratulations on getting it sorted,' would probably be engaging too much with the specifics.)

She scrolls on her phone to the email from when the agency was scheduling this, then searches for related emails, to find the one from the workflow management system that has a link to enter final details and corrections for the guiding that occurred. She double-checks that it's populated correctly, then submits it to the site. She starts putting her own clothing back on. At the top of the next minute, Causal Web gets an email with the invoice from the system; there's nothing unexpected.

Yep! (She thinks for a bit and then pays 40% extra, since Emily did a lot more backlash matching than Causal Web usually sees and also was extremely professional throughout the entire thing.)

"It was good working with you," She says warmly. "I'll reach out the next time I'm in town for work, if that works for you?"

"You as well! And yes, that works for me!"

"Excellent." And then her car is here - she waves goodbye at the door, and heads off to go present her findings to the board.

Emily waves back. What a lovely esper to work with.