CHAPTER 16 · THE OPEN ROOM
The public forum was held not in a courtroom but in a community auditorium near Newark's riverfront. Dr. Celeste Morgan had organized it with a coalition of passenger advocates, software designers, disability groups, and labor representatives. The subject was automated service decisions: how companies used scores to prioritize customers, and what those choices meant when staff treated recommendations as orders.
Mia originally planned to attend anonymously. But Celeste invited her to speak for five minutes about the difference between a seat assignment and the experience of being told it did not count. Mia agreed on the condition that she could review her remarks and decline audience questions about her family. The organizers accepted. Her father sat in the third row wearing his only blazer and looking deeply uncomfortable with the attention directed at him.
The first speaker, a wheelchair user named Arthur King, described how an airline repeatedly lost the assistance requests attached to his booking. Another, a former hotel clerk, explained how loyalty rankings influenced which complaints received immediate responses. The stories differed in stakes and circumstances, but Mia heard a common structure: a customer presented a specific need; an employee saw a screen; the screen made someone else look more urgent.
When she approached the microphone, her prepared paper shook slightly. She began with the sentence she had practiced: "A boarding pass is a promise, not a suggestion about whose comfort matters most." She described the encounter without imitating Calder's voice or adding dramatic details. She thanked the crew for confirming her seat, and she asked for systems that allowed employees to ask passengers rather than silently rearranging them.
"I didn't need to be treated as special," she finished. "I needed the rules to be understandable and the choice to be mine."
The applause felt different from the festival audience. Nobody was rewarding her artistry. They were responding to a sentence that might also describe their own experience. She returned to her seat and Mateo squeezed her hand.
Northstar had sent two representatives to observe, neither authorized to discuss confidential findings. Calder Capital had sent none. Celeste made sure to explain that the forum was not an official inquiry and that individual allegations remained subject to verification. Her caution frustrated some attendees. Others seemed grateful. Mia appreciated the distinction: the room was not there to deliver a verdict but to make a set of questions impossible to ignore.
During the break, a woman introduced herself as a former Northstar gate agent. She had left months earlier because of an unrelated scheduling dispute, yet she remembered training slides that referred to high-value recovery opportunities. She said employees were often encouraged to satisfy a premium passenger even when the solution required moving someone else. Mia listened, then asked whether the woman had kept copies of the materials.
"No," she admitted. "I just remember how it felt."
"That matters," Mia replied. "But if you want the investigators to use it, they will probably need more."
The woman looked surprised and then smiled. "You've learned how to ask questions."
After the forum, Celeste approached Mia and Mateo. "There's something you should know. The independent review has requested permission to contact passengers from the flight. You can participate or decline. Either choice is yours."
Mia glanced at Mateo. He gave no sign of what she should do. She took the card Celeste offered. "I think I want to help," she said. "But I'd like to read the questions first."
"That's entirely reasonable," Celeste answered.
The community forum organizers had prepared a code of conduct that Mia thought was more thoughtful than most contracts she had seen. Speakers agreed not to reveal private passenger records, accuse named employees without evidence, or record audience members without permission. Everyone could challenge an argument. Nobody could turn an individual's experience into an excuse for harassment. The rules were printed on plain paper and posted by the entrance. Mia watched attendees pause to read them, some nodding, others looking irritated by the suggestion that public anger should observe boundaries.
Before her turn, she spoke with Arthur King, the wheelchair user who had lost assistance requests on previous flights. He described the exhausting process of proving a need he had documented months earlier. "I don't want a miracle each time I travel," he said. "I want the ordinary service I arranged." Mia recognized the sentence immediately. She had spent days explaining why she wanted the window she had been assigned, not a substitute that someone else preferred to offer. Arthur's experience carried higher physical stakes than hers, and she did not pretend they were identical. But his emphasis on the ordinary promise helped her clarify what she wanted to say.
A student volunteer checked the microphone and adjusted the stand until it fit Mia's height. She thanked him. He told her he had watched Between Stations and liked the interview with the signal technician who explained how to hear a faulty switch before it failed. Mia smiled at the specificity. The volunteer had encountered her chosen work, not merely her accidental fame. She carried that encouragement onto the stage.
After the panel, several attendees approached with stories of their own. A hotel receptionist described being ordered to move an elderly guest because a celebrity needed adjacent rooms. A delivery driver recalled a platform app deactivating his account without explanation. Mia listened but resisted collecting the anecdotes as though she were automatically entitled to publish them. She suggested they contact the organizers, who could connect them with researchers who knew how to verify and protect personal information. The forum had given her a voice.
They walked home through an evening light that turned apartment windows orange. Mateo told Mia he had never imagined a disagreement over a plane seat would teach him so much about data systems. Mia said she had never imagined a data system could teach her so much about the word courtesy. Neither of them knew what the review would find. For now, walking together was enough.