"That's what the GPMG testing is. A soul observation. If you didn't have to sign the waiver, that's a problem we have to look into? As for sensing emotions and attention, there are a few employees in the building who have that as a major sensory modality, yes."

"You should probably check the waiver policy implementation at Port Angeles."

"Will do."

She typety types it up.

"This isn't the final word, but I think we're going to invite you to continue on. Ninety-nine percent."

"And I probably will, notwithstanding that you invited me into a building full of empaths without warning me about that."

"When on Earth, do as the Earthlings do? You're welcome to have the same argument with my boss, honestly."

"I might wanna do that, yeah."

"One sec."

Typetypetype.

"Yeah, she's willing to talk to you for a few minutes. Her office is room 4215, off to the left, and I'm gonna call in the next candidate if you're going?"

"Sure, thank you." Up and over.

This office contains a middle aged and tired-looking lady with lots of magnet toys on her desk and a tray of random candy.

"Hello, Isabella Swan. I'm Marin. Vice president of candidate confirmation if you care about my precise title, which you might not. Snack?"

"Sure, thanks." Snickers. She doesn't usually exercise that much. "I think you should have a policy of notifying people if they're going to be in range of empaths."

"When I tell my boss, head of selection, that we should notify people who might be in range of empaths he'll say 'should we also notify them we're going to be looking at them with our cameras and tracking their phones' wi-fi usage and smelling their perfume?'. We don't actually use the empaths as proctors or interviewers. They're not very good at it. You see, it's not the best-kept secret at all, here I am telling you after all, but there are a couple hundred Phoenix employees who are not from this Earth, and they simply go about their work as anyone else would for the most part. Refugees."

"Empaths aren't already in your typical applicants' model of how they'll be observed! If you had, say, hidden cameras in the bathroom, then even knowing cameras exist wouldn't make that part of the model, so that would be comparably fucked up to being theoretically able to learn that empaths exist but not expecting them here."

"I suppose they aren't. So would being informed 'there are sometimes empaths in the Phoenix Company building, but they have no particular reason to pay attention to or interact with you and they prefer to remain anonymous' have been satisfactory?"

"Assuming that I could then look up more about that sure."

"They very strongly prefer to remain anonymous. There's a fear that if people knew empaths to exist, they might be discriminated against."

"I don't need to know who they are as individuals, I'd just want to know how the power works. Though I'm also a little skeeved if they just go around in other settings."

"How the power works in what sense?"

"Range, amount of fine detail?"

"My understanding is that it's no more detailed than what someone paying attention to body language and tone of voice would pick up. Omnidirectional and floors and walls don't interfere, but fading rapidly with range - like looking through thick fog, apparently. No more than a hundred feet at the very outside."

"Okay. And I'm apparently immune anyway, so I guess I'll chill out. Just wanted to make sure it was on your radar, like."

"Yes. I know we keep a lot of things close to our chest, so to speak, and it's suspicious. Let's just say - and this is the party line, mind - the magic we do know works on Earth would be a disaster if it became public. Corporate whitewashing is too common for that to be believed just because we say it, and we know that."

Nod nod.

"Can you expand on feeling skeeved if they go out in public? Anything you give me is more weight when I bring it up. The bathroom camera threat model metaphor is a good one."

"I mean, it would clearly also be very costly to make them stay in the Phoenix building forever, I don't mean to discount that, but it's violating, to perceive things that were not understood to be perceived. Some people are pretty good at controlling their body language, some people go around wearing face-covering garments, some people are probably just assuming that if they're thinking about... sex, or a sad movie, or whatever, while they space out on the bus, nobody's going to know, let alone a stranger with magic powers."

Marin rubs her temples, then sighs and grabs a Reeses Cup for herself.

"I'll suggest the warning, or giving them their own floor. Or more time away from the city, maybe."