It was beautiful. Not sleek and fragile like a consumer toy, but solid. A weighted, dark gray chassis that felt like it had been milled from a single block of German engineering. The moment her fingers curled around its curved back, she felt the familiar heft of a microphone that meant business. It had a real cradle, not a flimsy clip. And the buttons—the buttons were a revelation. Large, tactile, arranged in a logical diamond under her thumb: record, stop, rewind, fast-forward. They clicked with the satisfying, dampened certainty of a bank vault’s tumblers.