She watched the screen, transfixed. The shocked public statements of Mechanist leaders: broken men, frightened women, their routines and systems stripped away. The Mech armor of plans and contingencies had been picked off like a scab, showing the raw flesh of their humanity. They gabbled, they scrambled for control, each contradicting the last. Some with tight smiles that looked wired on by surgery, others misty-eyed with secondhand religious awe, gesturing vaguely, their faces bright as children’s.