Before the Sign

Before she became the person who would later be described in the documents, she was this: two of herself, standing close, in the moment before the apparatus decided which version to record. The grid on her face was not a wound. It was a question asked in a language she had not agreed to be spoken in. * * * By the time the measurement was complete she had already changed. Not because she had tried to — she had held completely still, as instructed — but because the time it took to read her had been enough for her to become someone the reading could no longer reach. She smiled at the space where the other version of her had been. The apparatus noted the smile. It did not note what the smile was for.