They had picked up the black box on the coffee table and turned it over. Small. Warm on one side. Not connected.

“What’s it for?” one of them asked, and it was a fair question, and no one in the room could answer it — not because the answer was hard, but because no one in the room had ever needed it. They set it back down among the takeout. The green light stayed on. It did not need them to know.