Stateside. A training mock-up of the space toilet. The instructor said, with the calm of a woman who has explained this several thousand times, "Okay. Eleven steps. Don't worry, no one passes the first time." Eleven Steps. A Procedure. An Audience. In my country a man handles this alone, with the door closed, and the matter does not exist again until next time. Here it had a binder. I accepted the binder with two hands. I bowed to the binder. "Sir. It's just paper." The Sacred Just Paper. I bowed again. A father in the visitor row chuckled. He had a son of about twelve. He was holding a laminated card. "My brother is an engineer at Johnson. He sent me this. He wrote in the margin, 'read it out loud, slow, like Dad reading the microwave manual.'" Like Dad reading the microwave manual. A relic. Passed brother to brother across a laminate. I tightened my grip on the binder. I would be that father today. "Step one," the instructor said. "Verify the fan." "Step one," the father read aloud, slow, exactly the way his brother had told him to. "Verify the fan." The son said, "Dad, please." "Bud, I am verifying the fan. This is important." I verified the fan. The fan was not on, because the unit was a mock-up. I verified it anyway. With two hands. The way one verifies a sword in a sheath before a ceremony. "Step two. Position the seal." "Step two," the father read. "Position the seal. Underlined twice by your uncle, bud." "Dad." I positioned the seal. With the gravity of a man placing a wax stamp on a treaty between two clans. The instructor's eyebrows went up half a millimeter. She did not say anything. "Step three. Confirm visual alignment." "Step three," the father read, the laminate wobbling in his hand from his own laughter. "My brother wrote 'this is the part Mom would skip on the microwave.'" The son put his face in his hands. The mother one row behind snorted softly into a paper coffee cup with NASA printed on it. I confirmed visual alignment. I did this with such focus that for one quiet moment I forgot the entire room was watching me confirm visual alignment with a steel device bolted to a wall. The room did not forget. The room enjoyed it. "Stop reading it out loud, Dad," the son hissed. "Bud, I'm honoring your uncle." "Uncle Mike works in HR." "Bud." I also was honoring Uncle Mike. I bowed to the binder for Uncle Mike, who had not laminated the card after all, but whose honor still applied because the laminate had been intended. "You're really thorough, hon," the instructor said. The way she'd say it to a kid practicing piano. "He's thorough," the father agreed, wiping his eye. "My brother is going to lose his mind when I tell him about this guy." "Dad. We have eight more steps." Eight More Steps. The boy had said the holiest sentence in the room. I rose, slightly, in my seat. I did not get past step six. The instructor began laughing on step five. The father had to put the card down. The son had quietly gone to the gift shop. The instructor wiped her eyes. "Honestly, partner, you're the only one who's ever actually done step five." I bowed to step five. Tomorrow at dawn, in my quarters, alone, with the door closed, I will read steps one through eleven aloud, slow, like Dad reading the microwave manual. For Uncle Mike of HR. For the laminate that was almost made.