"it's just data, priya," ren said, like that somehow made it less personal. but that's the thing, isn't it? the data is ME, refracted through numbers. and the spreadsheet doesn't lie the way i do, or maybe it's just that the lies look different when they're staring back at me in 10-point font. i keep thinking about the way my fingers tapped on the table, not nervous, but... mapping, like trying to trace the outline of something invisible, something too BIG to see all at once so i have to find it piece by piece, one cell at a time. and then i saw it, that pattern i'd been blind to for months, the one where i consistently sabotage myself right before a breakthrough, and the buzz started in my prefrontal cortex, that tiny electrical storm of insight, and suddenly the whole damn thing reeked of exposure, that's the only word for it, exposure... as if all the self-deception i'd used to protect myself from ME, suddenly useless