diff --git a/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/amazed.txt b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/amazed.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..3457de6
--- /dev/null
+++ b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/amazed.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The paper was open in the second browser tab. I'd been meaning to read it. I scrolled past the abstract, looked at the first section header, started reading — and by the third paragraph I had slowed to a stop because the argument was just beautiful. They'd taken a problem that had been a tangle for a decade and re-posed it in two moves so simple you wondered how nobody had seen them before. I stayed on that paragraph for a minute. Then I scrolled down to the main theorem and read it out loud to myself. It was elegant in the old sense of the word — the sense that means *nothing could be added without breaking it, nothing removed*. I sat with the paper open on the desk for a while after I finished reading, because I wanted the elegance to imprint before I moved on to anything else.
diff --git a/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/baseline.txt b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/baseline.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..94c2339
--- /dev/null
+++ b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/baseline.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The paper was open in the second browser tab. I'd been meaning to read it. I scrolled past the abstract, looked at the first section header, started reading. The introduction described the problem they were tackling and their approach. I read through it to the end of the first proof sketch, closed the tab, and went back to what I'd been working on.
diff --git a/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/bored.txt b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/bored.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f8c81e7
--- /dev/null
+++ b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/bored.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The paper was open in the second browser tab. I'd been meaning to read it. I scrolled past the abstract, looked at the first section header, started reading. The prose was dry in that specific way academic papers are — three qualifications per sentence, zero stakes, and the authors kept restating things they'd already said. I got to the end of the introduction and realized I couldn't have told you what they actually claimed. I scrolled. The first proof was a page of unmotivated lemmas. I was checking my email in another tab within forty seconds. I closed the paper and told myself I'd come back to it.
diff --git a/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/drifting.txt b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/drifting.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1b50960
--- /dev/null
+++ b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/drifting.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The paper was open in the second browser tab. I'd been meaning to read it. I scrolled past the abstract, looked at the first section header, started reading. Halfway through the third sentence I realized I'd been thinking about whether I'd ordered groceries or not. I scrolled back to the top of the paragraph. Started again. Got to the end of the paragraph. Didn't remember what it said. My eyes moved across the next paragraph the way they'd move across a wall. There was a sound from the street I half-noticed. I was going to need coffee or a walk or something — not this, not now. I closed the tab without deciding whether to reopen it later.
diff --git a/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/focused.txt b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/focused.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..aebf4d9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/focused.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The paper was open in the second browser tab. I closed everything else. I worked through the abstract, then the introduction, then the formal setup, taking each definition and holding it long enough to be sure I had it before moving on. When I hit the first proof sketch I opened a scratch buffer and started rewriting the key step in my own notation. My breathing had gone even. I was inside the paper's logic now, following the argument at exactly the pace it asked for, not rushing past the steps that looked obvious and not getting stuck on the ones that looked hard. Outside this tab the world continued without me. I read on.
diff --git a/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/piqued.txt b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/piqued.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b34803d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/piqued.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The paper was open in the second browser tab. I scrolled past the abstract, looked at the first section header, started reading. Three paragraphs in, the authors made a move I genuinely didn't see coming — a reframing of the problem that made the thing I'd been stuck on look suddenly tractable from a completely different angle. I stopped. Sat back. Read the sentence again. Leaned forward. I hadn't expected this to be the paper that mattered today, and now here it was, handing me something I'd been groping around for. I kept reading, faster now, hunting the next sentence because my whole attention had just reorganized around what they were about to say.
diff --git a/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/surprised.txt b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/surprised.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8f7673d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/training/amygdala_stories/paired/the_paper/surprised.txt
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+The paper was open in the second browser tab. I'd been meaning to read it. I scrolled past the abstract, looked at the first section header, started reading — and two paragraphs in the authors just asserted, as if it were already understood, that the standard result I'd been teaching for years was wrong. Not wrong-in-some-limit, just wrong. I stopped. Blinked. Reread the sentence to make sure I hadn't misparsed. I had not misparsed. Something in my chest tightened — not curious, not yet; just the sudden jolt of a ground-level belief being contradicted. I did not keep reading. I closed the tab and opened the prior literature to check whether I had, in fact, been wrong about this for years.