Etta moves through the atrium like a seamstress walking seams. The public space is a patchwork of regulated gestures: a bench where people nod in timed sympathy, a kiosk that dispenses thirty-second compliments in soothing voices, and an array of Harmony Nodes tucked behind ornamental grilles. She keeps her toolkit in a battered satchel that smells faintly of solder and green tea—little comfort for a life spent tuning someone else’s softness. Her first stop is an eighth-floor flat whose occupant left an automatic thank-you tap set to repeat every half-hour. Etta eases the grille off with her Amity Wrench, a rubber-chicken-shaped spanner whose ridiculous silhouette makes building kids point and giggle. She winds the wrench just so; it fits the odd bolts on the old nodes better than a standard torque bar. She works with the steady rhythm of someone who has touched a hundred different manners and knows how they break.
Outside, the morning market hums—vendors selling sticky fried spirals flavored with citrus peel and a soft, fermented bean paste that most residents eat only on festival days. The city’s weather grid is cycling a gentle mist to temper the heat of artificial glass, a practice meant to dull the sharp angles of afternoon light and keep temper flares at bay. These things have nothing to do with her job, and that’s why she notices them: the vendor with the embroidered apron who whistles off-key as he flips his pastries; the apartment windows lined with tiny paper fans tied to strings like confetti for the sun. Those fans are an affectation from a holiday the council invented ten years ago—people keep them because the air looks better when the paper breaths with it.
Inside the flat, an elderly man has programmed his pleasantry meter to high so visitors get an inflated warmth when they enter. He thanks Etta five times as she opens the panel. She smiles and bends to the node, palms steady, fingers nimble. She tests the output—tone profiles, amplitude, polite latency. Every node she touches is an instrument and, like any instrument, it responds to pressure, angle, and the kind of coaxing that only comes from practice. A child’s echo toy in the corner repeats her name like a game. She adjusts a capacitor, tightens a screw, and the apartment exhales with a softer hum.