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Lin had found the cafeteria and the kitchens after some searching. She was hungry. Kitchens had sandwich materials. The room she had woken up in didn't have a kitchen, and it looked like someone lived there. Therefore, there must be a place to eat somewhere nearby, she had reasoned, and her reasoning had turned out to be correct.

She had located bread (whole wheat), mayo (not Miracle Whip), cheese (in plastic wrappers) and bologna (the familiar kind in the round plastic package), found a butter knife and a plate from the cafeteria line, and was methodically making herself a sandwich.

The back of Lin's neck prickled, and the voice in her head made a soft hissing noise that began to scale up, a lot like air escaping from a tire. "Shh," she told him, and turned around to find out who was looking at her.

It was a boy with black hair. He looked nervous. Lin ignored that. "Are you looking for food? There's enough stuff to make a lot of sandwiches," she said, and then realized she was holding a knife and sort of pointing it at him. Oh. That was probably not good, even if it was a blunt knife. She turned back to the big table where she was constructing her sandwich and put the knife down, then turned back. "I don't think there's any cooks here. I couldn't find anyone to ask if it was okay to make food, so I am just making some."

She paused, frowning, because the hissing in her head wasn't stopping. "Shh," she said to it. "I'm trying to talk to him and you're not helping."

There was a feeling of surprise, and the not-a-sound abated, then stopped entirely.

"It's better to make a sandwich. It has more of the food groups," Lin said. "I only found frozen vegetables, though."

"Yes," she agreed, calmly. "One voice. He is consistent. I don't know if he is my imagination or not, but he responds to being talked to, so I'm doing that. Do you have a voice? Or more than one?"

Lin finished putting her sandwich together. She cut it neatly in half, then set about putting away all her sandwich materials before returning to pick up the sandwich. She decided to skip the step of putting it on a plate, since she wasn't having a scheduled meal with family or other people, and any crumbs could be cleaned up afterward with general cleanup.

"Oh. I don't know if mine has a name. Do you have a name?" she addressed the voice.

Of course I do, the voice said, sounding faintly offended. I'm Anax.

"He does. His name is Anax," Lin relayed.

Lin didn't seem inclined to take away the container of ham, cleaning up only her own mess. Between bites of her bologna sandwich, she considered the question. "Maybe. But it seems like a weird experiment if it is an experiment. I don't know how they'd get their data. I haven't seen anyone supervising us or making any kind of observations. Unless we're being recorded to see what we'll do in the absence of supervision." She ate another bite of sandwich, considering that idea, and looked around and up to see if she could find any visible cameras. Upon seeing a box that looked like it might be a recording device in the corner of the ceiling, she waved to it.

"That sounds logical," she said. "If we can talk to our voices in our minds, it makes sense that they can read our minds also."

"That's weird. I wonder what kind of data they expected to get from that." Lin finished one half of her sandwich and started on the next. "I woke up by myself in a room that looked sort of like a cell, but it wasn't locked."1

Lin plucked at the shorts she wore. They were tightly belted and hung past her knees. "I couldn't find any stuff my size, but looking stupid isn't going to kill me, and being naked might, so I went for looking stupid." She finished her sandwich, and found a towel to clean the table off with, meticulous about the crumbs she'd left.

Lin made a face. "Not interested," she said, and folded the towel neatly to leave it where she had found it. "I'm sure you can find someone who wants to be naked."