Chapter Four: Becoming Noise

At three, the timer stopped for eleven seconds. His portrait began changing—from his dismissal photograph to a graduation picture, then to an elderly face he had never worn. Peripheral Vision searched competing profiles for the same man. “It works,” Xu said. “It delays. It's fitting again.” Lin measured the weight shift before each change. Parenting lowered anchoring. Accident footage raised it. Food and music did almost nothing. Images containing reflections, obstructions, or encoding damage accelerated the countdown. Peripheral Vision did not select interests. It selected sensitivity to absence. Xu's official access had been suspended after Zhao Bo vanished.