Gabriel’s face twitched. The words had come out wrong again. They always did. His brain was a Ferrari engine bolted to a chassis made of wet cardboard. The raw horsepower of his visual-spatial cognition, the savant syndrome that let him deconstruct a 3,000-year-old building into prime numbers in two seconds flat, was useless for the simple task of conversational steering.

Dr. Vance nodded, unfazed. “Brilliant, as always. But the question was about socio-political implication, not architectural correction.”

He looked down. She was right. SOS. Dah-dah-dah. His thumb was a traitor.