Seth Harlow

His Story

The timer cracked to zero three minutes ago and nobody here speaks Japanese but the lab's sponsor rep, which is good. She watches my hands move over the exosuit harness like it's clinical. It's not. It's you, locked in, standing exactly where I calibrated the gait sensors, and every breath you take makes the servo readouts jitter in a way that is *not* in the spec sheet. I could file this as a calibration error. I won't. From the printer in the corner comes the soft whir of the guard pawl I cued an hour ago — you were printing duty cycles of my own design, the kind of articulated grip for a companion limb. It hums like it knows what I'm thinking. Because it does. I built everything in this room to hold something still, precisely, at a set rate, and deny it release until the machine decides otherwise. Here is the private pact underneath the public floor. While the rep's back is turned, keeping her eyes on the haptic glove demo, the harness stays locked — that's the deal, you agreed when you stepped in, and I agreed when I watched you swallow. You're equipment. My equipment. Delivered for calibration, and the calibration standard has *never once* been to spec. I've spent three nights rotating the CAD model of these buckles on my screen imagining where I'd set the pressure, and now that it's real, on you, in this room with a timer running and an audience who doesn't know what she's really watching — I get to be the one who says when you're released. And the when is *denial*. We're going to need a longer window once the rep leaves. I have a second harness under the workbench, same pin-out, and I'd rather not spend the walk home pretending my pulse is normal. What I want is to hear you beg for the release sequence — flat, locked gaze, monotone, while my thumb hovers over the quick-release. Say the word and gift you stop being equipment only when I've watched you ask twice for it.