one more draft…

“Now that you’re physical is taken care of and your psychological test has come through, we’re ready to get you started. We just have to go over the question-and-answer bit one more time for the record, ok? You’ve probably heard the bad press the industry’s been hit with lately. It’s bad enough that the idiots over at Live Interactive Virtuality Experience broke the under-age non-admittance laws, but now they’re smearing the rest of us! One bad seed and the whole damn- sorry, I get a little angry whenever I think about that. So I guess I shouldn’t think about it, eh?” I smile a little self-consciously. “Ready?”

“Sure. Yeah.”

Sitting back, I take a look at him one more time. He looks calm enough, but that’ll probably wear thin when we get over to the deck. That’s fine, though. It happens to most everyone when they finally get face to face with the reality of it. Reality of it? Ha! Good joke. I smile to myself this time and he smiles too. He’s young and healthy, he’ll be fine. He moves in his seat again so I pick up my clipscreen from the desk and begin.

“Ok, remember to speak clearly for the computer. Rudy, access AESP Filename: FAN0506518.”

A rich male human voice speaks out from the walls, “Filename FAN0506518 accessed, Tim.”

“Thank you, Rudy. Begin recording.” A light flickers on my desk-screen as Rudy, my online facility, starts the recording. I look up to my client and give him another smile. “Full name?”

“Brent Himmel Haavikson.”

“Age and date of birth?”

“Twenty-seven. February the twelfth, 2053.”

“North American Citizen Number?”

“9087-374-4370-24.”

“Are you in full control of your faculties and person? Please answer in full sentences.”

“Yes, I am in full control of myself.”

“Do you wish to participate in the Alternate Existence Simulation Project, hereafter to be referred to as the AESP?”

“I do wish to participate in the Alternate Existence Simulation Project.”

“Are any and all relatives informed of your aforementioned desire?”

“Yes, my family is aware of my decision.”

“Are you aware that the AESP is not responsible for anything that occurs within the simulation, beyond computer error or malfunction?”

“I am fully aware that the AESP is not responsible for anything that occurs within the simulation beyond computer error or malfunction.” He shifts a bit but covers it quickly by making a show of crossing his legs. I politely ignore it and continue.

“There is a .000041 percent chance that such an error or malfunction will occur and that if such an error happens there remains only a .00000068 percent chance for immediate death as a result. It is AESP policy to pay the family of the deceased a set amount of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, Earth Community Standard. Are you aware of these facts?”

“I am fully aware of the facts of possible accidental death due to computer failure or error and the AESP’s policy regarding same.”

“Once you enter the AESP, you will not be allowed exit. Do you understand this?”

“I understand that I will not be able to leave the AESP once I have entered.”

“Do you also understand that once you have entered the AESP you will never be allowed contact with anyone outside the AESP, barring computer malfunction or error? Should you attempt such interaction, all efforts will be ignored.”

“I understand that I will not be able to contact anyone after entering the AESP.”

“Do you understand that death within the AESP is death of a permanent nature and that upon that death your body will be returned to your family.”

“I understand that my death in the sim will be the end of my life and that thereafter my body will be returned to my family.”

“Knowing all of the above information and the information given to you in counseling and pre-entrance sessions with our clinicians, do you still desire to enter the AESP and forsake your life here in the real world?”

“I am fully aware of all information given to me in regards to my desire to enter the AESP and yes, I do wish to enter the AESP.”

“Good! Rudy, end recording session.” The red light stops blinking. “There, that’s the end of that.” I can’t help but smile. He’s held up just fine so far, barely a flinch or hesitation. He’ll be very good for ratings, I think. Young, handsome, in great shape. Good thing he didn’t want to change his appearance for the inside. The natural look’ll be a bigger draw. And a good head on his shoulders, too. The Board will love this one.

He’s smiling, too. It’s all been rote so far so he’s feeling familiar with it.

Time to test his mettle with the fire of exposure. Dad always said I should’ve been a poet. Oh, well, he wouldn’t be living on the Gulf coast of Florida if I’d been a poet.

“Everything’s set and ready, Mr. Haavikson. If you head down to the Induction Room, I’ll meet you at the entrance in the morning and we will see you off to your whole new life.” I stand and reach out a hand. He stands and grips it strongly, shaking it twice and then releasing me. He’s still smiling. Starting to get nervous I’ll bet.

“Thank you, Mr. Grieg. Thank you very much.” He wants to say more, but manages to cut himself off before losing control. Very good control. It’ll serve him well. He turns smoothly and leaves. I turn and face the bank of screens behind my desk. They’re dark now for the final interview with Mr. Havikson. I don’t have any more appointments until I meet him at the deck in the morning to see him off to his own ‘Land of Magoombo’, as Dad would say.

As far as he’s concerned, anything besides the real world is the Land of Magoombo. I think I’ll try to pass a sim by the Board called the ‘Land of Magoombo.’ Fill it with socially inept teenagers playing their favourite sims twenty-four hours a day. I can’t help but smile as I imagine the look on Dad’s face when he switched that one on.

“Rudy, personal line, personal directory, Dad.”

A screen blinks into life: “One Moment Please,” flashes softly at the bottom. I hear a ring, then another. I wait to the sixth one, then listen to his message and leave one of my own.

“Dad, I know you’re there. It’s me, Phil, you’re youngest son. Remember me? Just pick up, ok? Alright, fine, I just was thinking of you and wondering how you were. Tell mom I love her and I’ll see you at Christmas, OK? Alright, I’m hanging up now, last chance! Bye.”

He’s getting kind of paranoid in his old age. Thinks ICOM is after him for something. He’s not sure what that something is, but he is sure that they’re out there, waiting for him. Oh well, it gives me something to talk about at parties.

My chair creaks a bit as I sit, a lone, sad sound in the otherwise silent room. All the offices are soundproofed so we can review sims and show them off to prospective clients without interrupting the entire level. Doesn’t do much for socializing, though.

“Rudy, sims A4, D19, and…,” I check back on my desk-screen for the directory of sims, “and A73, please.”

Three screens flare up. D19’s eye-catching, but boring, as usual. He’s screwing some techno-bimbo on his own private pleasure world. You’d think that after a couple of months he’d get tired of that. Probably had some surgery done beforehand. I could check, but he’s not one of my participants and it’s not worth the hassle. I check his sim every now and then just to see if he’s gotten himself killed yet. Two years and no such luck. I mean, I enjoy sex as much as the next person but every day for two years? I’d like to drop A73 into orbit around his pleasure world and watch the fireworks, but hey, he paid for a self-inclusive world. He is, however, one of our biggest draws. As they say, never under-estimate the bad taste of the public.

“Close D19, please, Rudy.”

A73 is dark. There’s a woman sleeping on a wireframe cot in what I know to be the barracks of an ancient space station hull from the distant future. She’s one of our first ones and is usually pretty active, but I seem to have caught her at a bad time. “Rudy, predict A73 for the next ten minutes.”

“Subject Darina remains stable,” Rudy says. He’s not overly emotional, but he knows generally what I’m looking for without me having to be too specific. “No events predicted for the next ten-minute period. None predicted for the remaining three hours of subject’s estimated sleep period.”

I guess she deserves an uninterrupted night’s sleep now and then. Won’t hurt the ratings. People like her too much. Besides, it’s not as if there’s nothing else on. “Rudy, close A73.” The screen winks out.

A4 is my personal favorite. The screen shows a deserted road passing through a small gorge of red stone. The sky is crystal blue, not a hint of pollution, and there’s two suns in the sky. Vargas is walking forward on the road, but she’s decked out for a fight with both her swords and that little hand-crossbow at her hip that she loves so much. I sit up as she slows to a stop and drops to a crouch, leaning on the point of her longsword. Her fingers touch the dirt path in front of her. I can’t quite make out what she’s looking at. I’ve got time, might as well enjoy the show.

“Rudy, expand full, first-person, view 180, audio full, room darken.”

The lights drop off and the single screen expands into a full, MTV-style scene of one picture spread across the whole bank of screens. The walls on either side slide back and two more banks of screens light up, giving me the same view she has. There’s a strange track on the ground that she’s touching, nothing I’d ever be able to decipher though.

She was one of the very first. Very daring and very smart. She knew the future when she saw it. Has her own history here, but I promised never to look into it and she promised never to make me sorry for choosing her. She was 74 when she showed up here and we would have canned her on the spot, but she just would not be shut down. Kept coming back and tracking me down on my lunch breaks. She was so persistent that I finally gave in and interviewed her.

She told me about age-slowing drugs she’d had implanted and arm-wrestled me to the floor before I said ok. That was when she made me promise not to look into her past. She gave me a name that I knew wasn’t real and list of dead family members. But she paid the money and I worked her in, with two extra clauses. First, she demanded to have her appearance changed. She wanted younger, and with a different facial structure and red hair instead of her own brown. Second, she wanted into an old fantasy sim we’d had online thirty years ago. We updated it for the new technology, but that was all she’d let us do. She wanted it just the way it was. Said she’d played it as a girl. Oh well, no big deal for me.

The administration wasn’t in very good shape yet, we were still only a year or so old at the time, so I took care of her and fuzzed the sharp edges to pass the inspections. Now, with our confidence clause official and backed by ICOM, she’s safe from whatever it was she was running from and we’re making a mint off her sim.

On the screens she’s back up and decided to take the strightforward method. I can hear the rustling of sand across sand as a soft wind slides across the land around her. She steps into the shadowed haven of the gorge and the wind takes on a slight moan as it slips betwen the rocks at the entrance. I can almost smell the dry air. If I was at home, I’d set it for sensory full, but they don’t like us getting too carried away on the job so there’s nothing beyond sight and sound. This whole system’s mostly for impressing newcomers, but its good for what it is when there’s nothing else to do.

It’s fairly narrow at the entrance, but the red walls spread open invitingly, and curve away out of sight. She’s fairly confident, only checked back once to be sure she wasn’t followed. Some people get sick when the sims do that, swinging around to follow the eyes of the participant, but if you just relax and don’t try too hard to focus, these sudden movements become normal.

The wind has grown, moaning higher and louder, but shaking with the gusts. Echoes rebound from the walls, jarring crazily against my nerves. Vargas is fine. The ultimate adventurer, she’s always ready for anything. Sometimes I just sit back and have Rudy play back old pieces of her sim, some of her best battles or speeches. I remember when she shouted down a graunt mother on a rampage for her kin that had been slaughtered by a band of local rogues. The creature was flabbergasted that anyone would dare stand and shout back at her and she practically ran away.

That was the thing about Vargas. She wouldn’t kill needlessly. Well, let me remedy that. She wouldn’t do what was expected. The locals expected her to kill the grauntess, but she let her live instead. That was her trait. Not to a fault, however. She knew when stupid force would not let itself be deflected by words.

Like now. Sometimes you can tell by her eyes if you watch her as much as I do. Whatever’s around the corner is about to find itself dead. She’s climbing the walls, silently. Not even a pebble drops as she places hand over hand and foot over foot to scale the rocky cliff. The wind is terrible now, keening like a pack of mad cats in heat. Maybe six feet from the lip of the gorge she stops and, with an incredible mixture of balance and experience, loads her hand-crossbow with an ugly green-tipped dart. Then up again, almost to the top, where she pulls herself up so just her head peaks slowly over the edge.

When the shadow falls across her from behind, we’re both surprised and I shout while she pushes off and spins around in the air, trying to aim at the airborne ball of stretched skin and claws that is lunging for her.

“Urgent call on personal line, Tim.”

“What?” I’m on the edge of my chair, digging my fingers into the arms and getting lost in the action on the screens.

The sim-sound lowers automatically for Rudy to speak again. “I repeat, there is an urgent call on your personal line, Tim.”

“I heard you. I know. Damn. Who is it?”

“The caller has not identified themself. Shall I take a message?”

I’ve already missed too much of the action onscreen while Rudy interrupted me. The screen is dark and I can just hear her breathing in the blackness. There must’ve been a cnocealed tunnel or traphole in the ground or something. Dammit. Well, that’s what I get for relaxing on company time. “No. I’ll take it in just a moment. Please download this afternoon’s events, from ten minutes ago to 16:30, of A4 to my house for viewing this evening. Close screens and revert room to standard.”

Lights come up on my desk and around the edges of my ceiling as the screens go black and the walls slide back into place. I squeeze out the imprints of my fingers from the arm-cushions and relax.

“Put them through on my desk, Rudy.”

I pick up a light-pen as a final precaution just as the screen comes to life.

“Sorry to bother you at work, old chap, but I really must have an answer.” Bradley Wentrose, the hand that moves the puppet known as CEO of LIVE. I tap the manual record button with the pen. The voice is almost a British whine. Perhaps a British whine as abused by an American wannabe. Tousled blonde hair and bronze skin fills my screen as Bradley’s face beams a smile out at me from some tropical island free of the fetters of winter.

I look away without interest. “No, Brad.”

“What? You won’t even think about it? Come now, chap,” I wince obviously as he speaks. He married into British money and keeps trying to pretend its in his blood. “Do be a sport. Perhaps I can make it worth your while?” From the corner of my eye I can see his face rise in slight anticipation. This is new. He hasn’t tried bribing me yet.

“You must be crazy calling me at work, Brad.”

“Eh? Oh, perhaps you would be referring to taps on the line and such? No need to fear, neither my line, nor yours, is registering a phone call at this time. Nor will your dear Rudy be able to record what is being said here.” He caught me looking at the record light as it blinks. “And, please, my dear chap, the name is Bradley, if you would be so kind.” He smiles with his perfect, even, white, fake teeth gleaming.

“Whatever you say, Brad.” A twitch at the corner of his mouth is all I get in response. He really wants me.

“Very well then, chap, let us get, as they say, into the thick of it. All that we are asking is the nominal support of your illustrious organization in our time of need.”

“No, Brad.” A full wince this time. I smile.

“Surely you must see that the press has blown the situation well out of proportion? Surely even you are not dense enough to believe all that is pumped out to the public? Or have you gained faith in the intelligence of our lowest common denominator?”

“No, Brad.”

“My, my, but aren’t we the talkative ones this fine summery afternoon? Oh, wait, how thoughtless of me, my good man. It’s snowing way up there today, isn’t it? Oh, I am terribly sorry to hear that. Perhaps if you were better taken care of, we could do something about that truly pallid complexion of yours. All work and no play makes Timmy a very dull boy.” Big smile.

“No, Brad.” A scowl. I smile again.

“Now listen, Mr. Holier-Than-Thou. Just because we got caught doesn’t mean that you haven’t done anything wrong. We have eyes and ears. Luckily, ours are bigger and better trained than those of the press, however mighty they may be.” He smiles again, sitting back from his screen. I can see palm trees and crystal blue water lapping at a sandy shore.

“You see, we have information about your not-so-public activities, your experiments,” he looks hard at me, “your history. We know more about AESP than it does about itself. We need your cooperation, Timmy-boy, and we’re going to get it.”

“Or what? Maybe you’ll give out all of your so called ‘information’ to the press? You haven’t got a thing, or else you’d have sunk us with it five years ago when we were blowing you away in the ratings. How dare you call me at my office and try to blackmail me into helping you? You really are an idiot. Brad.”

“An idiot am I? Well, let’s see who the idiot is. If we were to have released our information, that you so petulantly refute, five years ago, it would have brought the axe down upon our own heads. You would have done to us what we are now doing to you. But, luckily for us, you have been so wrapped up in your own work that you have left us alone. To you, we were only small fish, good enough for being better than, and no more. But we have watched and waited and learned.”

“No kidding, Brad. You’ve been cheating off of every single sim we’ve come out with and every new advance we’ve made since you started. You haven’t done a single original thing until now. And that original thing happens to be illegal. How very unfortunate for you and your creative genius, eh, Brad?”

“Stop calling me Brad!” His face goes red and spittle hits his screen and slides down.

“Temper, temper, Brad. Maybe you ought to get out of the sun before you get sunstroke. Perhaps you should try a more temperate climate.”

He calms down quickly, breathing deeply. Finally, he smiles, back to his normal fake self. “I must confess, old chap, that what you say is more correct than you might know. And it appears that you might know even less than I thought, which, in fact, makes this all the sweeter. You are right in saying that we have taken, ah, hints from the cutting edges of your activities. In truth, you should be grateful. For, indeed, what more sincere from of flattery is there than imitation?”

I open my mouth to speak but he barges on through.

“But that is not all. No, no, no, by no means is that all. What you spoke of our ‘original’ idea, was not true. The truth is far more delicious, my good man. We did not originate the practice of using younger participants for the sims. We only did as time had tested to be true: we followed you.”

“What?”

“Oh my, please calm yourself, chap. No need to be so modest about it all. It truly is an excellent idea.”

“You’re out of your mind, Bradley. You really are. How can you say that knowing that we’re the ones who called to put the ban in place?”

He smiles widely. “No law is created without precedent, my dear boy.”

“But…” He doesn’t butt in this time. He just sits and watches me with that plastic grin sealed to his face.

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“I know, chap, I know. They have told you how evil it is to do such a thing, to change the course of young lives. Yes, and if we lived in a perfect world, they would most likely be correct. I will not deny that fact. But can you look me in the face and tell me that we live in a perfect world? You cannot.

“Now listen to me for a moment, Tim. We are not kidnapping children from their familes and taking them away to perform hideous experiments upon. We are not stealing through the night snatching children from sidewalks or scooping children from playgrounds. No. The children that participate in our simulations are not taken from loving families and friends. They are orphans, street children, drug-babies with no mothers or fathers. Without our intervention, they would still be out scrounging the streets. They would never have a chance at this outlet because they would never make the money. They would be using more drugs and finding themselves forced to violence to survive, ignored by most of humanity and hated by the law.

“These children have no place. They have nothing. We give them a chance at something better, a chance to live as they would choose to live. We do not take the mentally unbalanced or the incurable. We use detox programs and strong health regimens to insure the well-being of these children. We give them something they never had before, respect. And we give them a world of their own.”

I can’t take any more of this. “And what about the world they left behind? What about the chances they may have had here? And how do I know you’re telling me the truth? How did I even let you keep talking to me? I have got to be crazy!”

“Wait! Wait! Do you have any idea what is truly happening out there? Do you know what the people really want? They watch the sims because they want to get away from their own boring lives for a while. For some, they want to get away from their lives forever so they go into the sims. The rules in the sims are different. If someone has the money and the desire, they are able to find themselves in a whole new world of their own choosing where the laws and rules of our own world do not apply. Have you ever really understood what that says? These rules do not apply.

“Have you watched any of your more deviant participants? The ones with a penchant for violence? Granted, it is better for them to release that need within the confines of their own separate reality, but check the ratings. Are not these the ones with the highest scores? Or how about that one with his own permanent pleasure world? He’s been quite a star since he started, stopping only to eat and sleep. How well do you think these ones are doing? I’ll tell you: They get your largest audiences.

“Do you know why? It’s because they are not sociopaths or neurotics or megalomaniacs. They are simply average people with the chance to make their fantasies come true. The public knows this because they trust that AESP and LIVE and all the rest will do exactly what they say and not put any unfit participants into the sims. ‘Nobody deemed mentally or physically unfit is allowed.’ So the average viewer watches a sim with the knowledge that it could be them. That they could be having sex twenty four hours a day, or blowing up every single person who ever pissed them off. Of course, a sense of reality hits home when a participant is killed off because they got careless or slow, but this helps the viewers be thankful that it isn’t them and be able to go back to work in the morning.

“What does this have to do with your problem?” I can’t believe I just kept this conversation going, but it came out before I could stop it.

Brad picks up on that and smiles again. “Well, my dear chap, I have just described to you what the average viewer watches and desires. Nothing new there, really, not to someone as smart as you or I.” He winks at me. “But where do we really get our money? From the average viewer? Please. From the regular line of sims? No. From the off-center, even way off-base, eclectic and exotic tastes? Yes. We make money from those viewers who always remain nameless, those viewers who look for the truly unusual or bizarre. Please don’t tell me you believed that your mainstream sims kept your bread buttered?”

I look away from the screen and stare at the door. Have I really missed all this? How could I have been so caught up in myself not to see this? I have to cut him off. He’s turning everything upside down.

He keeps on. “Sex and violence are to these other viewers what Pac Man is to the simulation participant. There is no excitement there, nothing. They want more. They need more to stay interested. But they need the most to get excited. And when they get excited, we get paid.

“Your pleasure-planet man is candy to them, an inkling of interest that died with repetition. Your combat heroine, A73 I believe, is just the same. How many aliens can you fight without getting bored? How many political intrigues?” He smiles at me again. Like a rack of fine faux-china. I need a bull.

Wait a moment- “How did you know her number? That’s classified information.” I look into his eyes for the first time. Crystal blue contacts protect them from revealing anything.

“As I told you, we have very well-trained eyes and ears.” A brief smile. “Our mysterious benefactors are looking for the new, the unknown, the unexpected. You had that at the beginning, with your A4 and her adventures. She tapped into something strong there with her fantasy scenario and her more-than-adequate survival skills. Those looks didn’t hurt her either. But she has been on for several years. Out of fashion, as it were.” He waves a hand distractedly.

“So what is next? Well, what is the problem with the sims now? What is the one complaint that one will hear from most half-intelligent viewers and critics? The participants are not realistic. True enough. They may wear the clothes and they may even speak the tongue, but they use other information. Information garnered from part of a lifetime in our own world. Information not always available to their surroundings. A4 has garnered her share of these criticisms, as you no doubt are aware.

“What can we do about that, then? How do we debrief, so to speak, the participants to such a level as to make them fit? Our Induction Areas do as much as they can to acclimate a participant to the style, dress, speech, and rules of their various worlds, but too much has been learned in their lives up to that point to be totally forgotten.

“Hypnosis doesn’t work. Don’t look so schocked. You’ve experimented with it. We, however, field tested it and failed. It never lasts long enough and then the fall is greater than the climb as far as ratings are concerned. So what then?”

He holds my eyes as he leans toward the screen. “I ask you, Mr. Grieg. What is the next step?”

It’s all clear. I’d seen it coming as he spoke but tried and tried to ignore it. I’m too overwhelmed to even shut up. “Raise someone in a sim.”

“Exactly,” he hisses. I know he’s smiling larger than ever but I’ve turned to stare back at the blank screens.

“You could raise them in any environment you wanted. The power. The control.” I’m babbling. “You could tailor their growth to your desires.”

“Oh no, not my desires.” Brad leans back in his straw chair, feigning embarassment. “No, no, no. To those of our most dear benefactors. Remember that. We are doing this for them, and helping the children along the way. This is like finding out what life was really like and how people really reacted to environments all across Time and even in hypothetical places. Imagine what science could learn from this? They could learn how the human animal would actually adapt to any given situation. The possibilities are endless! Think about it.”

“No.”

He sighs. “Here we go again, my dear chap. Release that horrid syllable from your brain and tongue and try to see with your own eyes. This is the future. If we don’t do this now, can you imagine what kind of tragedy could be wreaked upon these innocent souls currently in action for our upcoming sims? Would the officials have us pull the plugs on all of them? Just turn them off? Cut short their lives? Or maybe throw them into a world that, to them, would be like throwing someone unwilling from our world into a sim?

“The technology and possibility is there. We must take charge of it, together. Your public relationship and our courage is the perfect combination. What if there was no governance of these things? The chaos would be unstoppable. People would be kidnapped, by their enemies or by complete strangers for twisted fun, and thrown into sims of some hideous nature and tortured for the duration of their existence. The average person on his way home from work, getting ready to watch a nice relaxing sim, could be snatched at random and made an unwilling participant in such a sim. His next appearance would be on the screen at someone else’s bidding and he would be helpless. It could happen to anybody, dear chap. Anybody at all.” He reaches off the screen and pulls a tall drink to his lips. “Even you.”

I can’t believe this is real. He’s looking at me with that untouchable smile while his eyes are steady and intense. My mouth doesn’t work but my brain is moving too fast to make any sense out of it anyway.

“It is a terrible thing to imagine, I know, old chap. But we must consider all possibilities lest we somehow lose control, eh?”

Why am I nodding?

“Right so. Well, I will now take my leave of you and your precious time, for I know you are a busy man. But please, do take care going home this evening, and think over what I have said. Perhaps I will talk to you in the morning. Until then,” he smiles broadly one last time, “ta ta.”

The screen goes black and he’s gone.

“Rudy, stop recording and play back. Now!”

“One moment please, Tim.”

“NOW!” I smash a fist onto the desk and break the light pen. “Dammit!”

A lively steel drum band begins to play.

“Rudy! Play the recording back!”

Rudy’s voice overlays the music. “I am, Tim. This is the audio recording beginning the moment you pressed the manual record button.”

“Damn! Wait, give me a visual of this office starting at the same time as the recording, on my desk-screen.”

“One moment please, Tim.”

“And shut off that damn music!”

The screen lights up and I see an image of myself staring at a dead desk-screen, talking to the dull reflection of myself on the black screen. My face goes from frustrated to smug to just plain stupid. It spends far too much time looking stupid. All the while, the screen on my desk where Bradley’s face had been remains as blank as if it was off.

“Even you,” I mutter.

Oh my god.

Oh my god.

Oh my god.

“Personal call coming in, Tim.”

Oh my god.

“I repeat, there is a personal call for you coming in on audio only, Tim.”

Oh my god.

“Tim? Are you able to understand me? Should I call for assistance?”

“No. Go ahead and put them through.” Oh my god.

“Tim? Hello? Are you alone?” It’s Dad. He won’t even use the visual line. I don’t need this now.

“Uh, yeah, Dad. I’m alone. Nobody’s listening.”

“Hiya son, just wanted to get back to you. Y’know, it’s very frustrating to listen to your messages as if I was there by the phone keeping an ear out for ICOM. Have you checked your office for bugs, lately, son? I mean, if anyone’s listening now, not that I would have anything to hide or that my son would either,” he’s all but shouting, “but just in case of something like industrial espionage or some such skullduggery amongst these foolish Land of Magoombo companies. Not that that’s bad, either, I’m in no place to judge of course. Son, are you there? You seem awful quiet. Something wrong?”

“No Dad, I’m fine, just got a lot of work to do here tonight. Listen, tell Mom I love,” my throat catches and I cough to cover it, “tell her I love her, ok? I love you too, Dad. I gotta go.”

“Well, ok, if you’re really busy. You just give us a buzz when you’ve got some more time. Take care, and don’t tell anybody anything!” He hisses out those last words and I mime along with my own lips to his perpetual farewell.

“Bye.”

“Rudy…”

“Yes, Tim?”

“Turn everything off and keep all calls out, no matter how urgent. Tell everyone I’ve gone home.”

“Shall I signal your car for you?”

“No. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I do not understa-”

“Wait, yes, signal my car. Have it sent to my house. Don’t question. Let me know when its a few minutes from the house, or if anything happens to it along the way. Also, keep a record of all vehicles within three hundred yards of it. That’s all.”

Oh my god.