Years later, when files thickened and speculation hardened into doctrine, someone would finally write a sentence that came closer than the rest:
—Subject does not exert control.
—Subject creates margin.
Margin.
The word would circulate quietly, fail to catch on, be replaced by something more dramatic.
He smiled when he read it, once, over a shoulder in a room he wasn't meant to be in.
Margin was enough.
On another rooftop—another city, another decade—he stood watching the horizon bruise with the promise of rain. Somewhere below, a thousand small decisions leaned toward conflict, toward collapse, toward noise.
He breathed in.
Found the pressure.
And did what he had always done.
Nothing.
The rain fell.
Tempers cooled.
The night passed without incident.
No one noticed.
Which meant it worked.
