“We hear you,” Marissa said, without looking at the camera. “Great. Now, about those Q3 projections…”

He clicked the link. Forty-two faces stared back from their little rectangles, frozen in various states of polite impatience. His boss, Marissa, was mid-sentence.

He opened system preferences. Input device: Built-in Microphone. Check. Google Meet permissions: Enabled. Check. He tapped the mic—the little green level meter in system settings jumped. So the hardware was fine.