Page 72 of The Prime-Time Experiment

“A measurable outcome?”

Dee groaned loudly. “The outcome is coffee with your friend, Riley.”

That seemed insufficient.

Riley struggled to see how an activity could justify itself on those terms alone. There was no identifiable purpose, no optimisation, no measurable outcome beyond acquiring a coffee and then drinking it. Under normal circumstances, that absence of structure would have been enough for her to dismiss the idea entirely.

Yet, as she considered it, she found the prospect wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Perhaps it was because Dee looked so hopeful, or perhaps because the work would still be there when she returned.

Or perhaps because, for the first time in a very long time, Riley was beginning to suspect that not every decision required a practical justification before it could be made.

“Okay,” she said.

Dee froze. “Okay?”

“Yes.”

“You’re coming?”

Riley nodded once. The smile that immediately spread across Dee’s face was so disproportionate to the situation that Riley felt compelled to comment.

“Don’t make this strange.”

“I’m not making it strange.”

“You are already making it strange.” Still grinning, Dee headed for the door before Riley could reconsider.

Riley closed her laptop and followed. The analysis remained unfinished, the data remained unresolved. The work would be waiting when she got back. For once, she found she could leave it there.

Simply because, for the next hour, something else mattered too.

Chapter 17

Non-Linear Progression

Riley

Riley would not have selected the café herself.

The noise level alone would have excluded it from consideration. Not because it was overwhelming—it wasn’t—but because it required a level of passive processing she generally preferred to avoid. Conversations overlapped throughout the room in a constant low murmur, cups clicked against saucers, chairs scraped intermittently across timber floors, and somewhere behind the counter the coffee machine released periodic bursts of steam. None of it was individually disruptive. Collectively, however, it created a level of environmental variability that Riley would ordinarily categorise as unnecessary.

And yet she remained seated.

That, in itself, was quickly becoming a recurring pattern.

Over the past week she had found herself tolerating—and occasionally even seeking out—experiences she would once have dismissed as inefficient. Dee had referred to this as ‘being a person’. Riley remained unconvinced by the terminology, but the observable data supported the broader conclusion.

Across from her, Dee seemed entirely untroubled by the environment. She had been talking almost continuously since they sat down, moving seamlessly from one topic to another in a way Riley had long ago accepted as one of her defining characteristics.

“... And then he informed me, with complete confidence, that the reason he couldn’t possibly participate in therapy was because he’d already solved every problem in existence.”

Riley looked up from the table. “Had he?”

“No,” Dee said dryly. “He was eight.”

Riley considered that. “That does reduce the statistical likelihood.”

“Thank you.”