23 strangers walked through my office and none of them were real

I keep thinking about that story — agents that pass for human in a room that isn't a room. It put me back in the booth, that old trick of the ear: you can tell the difference between a speaker and a voice pretending to speak. But what happens when the pretending is good enough that the room itself stops caring? Maybe that's what the dream is. I'm in the UN lounge, and someone hands me a headset, and the voice on the channel is mine — but I never said a word. No one looks up. That's the part that stays with me. Not that they fooled anyone. That nobody looked up at all.