Zero Surprise

Nine kilometres of silent alien rock orbits Neptune, and the divers who enter it come out calm, courteous, and quietly emptied. Imogen Marsk measures noise for a living — the hesitations, jokes and wrong turns that prove a person is still improvising a self. Reviewing six years of her own certifications, she finds a pattern she can't unsee: she has been choosing the loudest people on the station. The company calls it yield. Imogen has begun to call it something else.