(1) Panoramic view of an obscure private social club—dark wood, dim lighting, a spiral staircase. Here, convicted individuals wearing ankle monitoring bracelets mingle with ordinary club members. I am a new recruit to an elite cadre of enforcers charged with circulating among the crowd and periodically inserting keycards into the ankle bracelets of the convicted persons in order to track their movements within the club. It’s a strange dynamic. Some individuals are resigned to the process and consent without much complaint. Others attempt to evade the enforcers by hiding in various locations within the club, causing me great anxiety on my first day of work.

(2) We enter the warehouse—it is neatly organized and relatively clean, if underlit for the type of work we are about to undertake. The job we are here to do involves assembling office chairs, although everything about the situation points to a black market operation. There are many of us here—representing all ages, genders, and backgrounds—and our numbers only increase as time passes. Suddenly a woman working alongside me expresses interest in building an automaton. I am not surprised and in fact relay to her that I know of a man working nearby who has knowledge of the process. Not only that, but on the other side of the warehouse there is a non-functioning automaton on display in some kind of artifact exhibition. I walk over to the exhibit with the woman and together we inspect the automaton. It is an impressive specimen that appears to be of high-quality construction despite its present inability to turn on and move. We return to work.