Margaret had spent her career looking at crystals through machines.
Electron microscopes. X-ray diffractometers. Raman spectrometers. Each instrument a different way of interrogating structure, a different angle on the geometry locked inside lattice. She had become fluent in translating machine output into understanding—the peaks and troughs of diffraction patterns, the spectral signatures that revealed atomic arrangement. Her eyes saw the printouts; her mind saw the crystals.
Now that distinction was about to collapse.
"It's not like seeing," Susan had said that morning, describing her experience. "The mathematics becomes the perception. You don't look at structure. You inhabit it."
"That's not very precise," Margaret had replied.
Susan had laughed. "You'll have your own language for it, once you're inside."
Now Margaret sat in the navigator's chair, the AR glasses in her hands. She'd examined them the day before—Amara's elegant engineering, the EEG mesh barely visible in the frame. Consumer technology modified for something far beyond consumer applications.
"Every instrument I've used has been a mediator," she said. "A translator. What you're describing sounds like the opposite—direct, uncontrolled, subjective."
"It's still observation," Susan said. "Just closer."
"Ready?" Jennifer asked.
"No." Margaret settled the glasses onto her face. "Proceed anyway."
Passive mode felt like nothing. The room through transparent lens…
