"No one," the voice said. "Which is why we edit."

"Why me?" he asked.

"What happens if someone presses Record?" Elias asked.

Some nights he would slip a disc under a bench in the park and leave it there, to see how a motif would stir. Sometimes he would pick it up again and drop it in a letterbox where a mail carrier might find it. Once, when a motif had grown into something hurtful in a neighborhood he loved, he pressed Pause and sat with the ripple until it softened on its own.