Late in summer, the bridge’s routine with Graham Gore is disrupted when the bridge’s email to Quentin bounces and Adela, the Vice Secretary for Expatriation, calls to say the request has been routed to finance because Quentin is “unavailable.” The speed and intimacy of the monitoring frighten the bridge, who deletes a personal Google account and browser on a work laptop and feels the tightening grip of being watched rather than watching.

Control conditionally lifts expat movement restrictions: if expats pass an acclimatization exam, they may travel within mainland Britain, allowing the Ministry to test whether broader geographic movement destabilizes them. The bridge worries Graham’s contempt for the twenty-first century might make him impossible for the “system” to incorporate. To help, the bridge coaches Graham for an unspecified test; Graham, restless and cocky, studies the Highway Code and spends more time at the Ministry, making friends and pushing at limits.

To buoy the struggling expats, Graham organizes lecture soirees: Tuesday lectures by Ministry staff and Thursday presentations by expats. Control’s scripted talks are didactic and demoralizing, while the expats’ presentations are lively, including a surprise “disco” performance led by Arthur Reginald-Smyth with Graham on flute and Simellia helping set up. The evening highlights expat friendships and the bridge’s uneasy awareness of Ministry figures like Salese and the Brigadier watching from the edges.

The bridge travels with Graham for his exam, hoping to find Quentin, but Quentin’s office is cleared out. Another handler, Sadavir, confirms Quentin was reassigned. The Brigadier and Salese arrive seeking Adela and raise the crisis of Anne Spencer (1793), whose “hereness” and “thereness” are failing and who is “slipping out of time,” accelerated by grief. Graham passes the exam, and the bridge celebrates at home; the bridge privately reflects that Anne is effectively invisible to modern technology and suspects the Brigadier and Salese feel like hostile operatives.

At a dinner with Margaret and Arthur, friendships deepen and tensions surface: Graham cooks, everyone drinks and smokes, and the group dances. Arthur suddenly collapses into a panic or trauma response; Graham calmly takes him outside and cares for him. Later, the bridge and Margaret get high, fall asleep together, and Graham quietly covers them with a blanket; the next morning the men have washed up. In autumn, Graham and Arthur travel to Scotland; airport scanners fail to “read” Graham, triggering field-agent alarms. The bridge argues on Teams against overreaction; Adela orders noninterference and monitoring on return, noting prior temporary unreadability in Arthur. After a new working group launches “readability” stress testing, Simellia visits the bridge, challenges the project’s ethics and its racialized power dynamics, and leaves after the bridge rejects being framed as a victim, sealing a rift between them.