Cheat

P.S. Power

Orange Cat Publishing

Copyright 2015

Chapter one

As Mason pumped the pedals of his auto-bike, he tried to be a good citizen, and keep an eye out for pedestrians. He'd never hit one, since the fact of the matter was that his ability to power himself down the street in the little fake car he'd made wasn't all that great. He could hit nearly thirty miles an hour in it, most days. If there was a downhill slope and a good breeze behind him. The speed limit through the downtown area was only twenty-five, so he managed to keep up with the electric vehicles pretty well.

No one honked at him to speed up, or called him names through their windows at the moment. Some people did occasionally, because his bike was a bit funny looking, and people could be assholes when others were a little different.

He'd printed it at home, and done the design work for it on his own. That meant there was nothing else like it on the road. Instead of a chain, he had a flat belt with micro-hooks in it, for instance. It was complicated to make, but worked about as well. He also didn't have to pay anyone else a copyright use fee. Rather than use traditional gears, the auto-bike had a cone shaped drive shaft, which he could slide from the narrow end for more power, to the thicker end when he wanted more speed.

In short, it was no better than a regular bicycle. The only positive thing about it was that it had a roof that he could slide into place when he wanted. That was nice, because rain was a thing. Plus, the seat was easier on his backside, being broad and flat. Regular bike seats seemed nearly designed to kill the prostate, and give you ball cancer. His was like a form fitted chair, cozy and roomy in the right places. He was too boney back there to not have something like that.

The whole thing was a nice pearl blue color, and mildly shiny in the bright sun of the late summer afternoon. The streets of Portland were dry that day, and very clean, the regular rainfall having washed away the dust storm residue that had dropped on them a week before. That was out of the Gobi, and had left things covered in a fine yellow patina for a while. Now it was better again. Nature doing the hard cleaning work for them.

That meant, with a lovely blue sky above, that Mason was tooling to his date with the top down.

He smiled at the idea. Not that he had a super advanced convertible, but that he was going on a date. That was a bit of a joke, he knew. Sam, the friend he was meeting, was a gender neutral, and so far had managed to keep his, or her, sexual orientation from being discussed rather handily. Actually, now that he'd thought about it, Mason realized that he'd never even brought the idea up, either. It wasn't that he was shy about it, or didn't like Sam, but it was a lot of work to have any relationship.

Bringing sex into it, into anything, was normally a poor idea.

That's why he had a full virtual rig at home. At any time, day or night, if he felt the urge, he could have sex with anyone, or anything, he could imagine. It took about thirty minutes, and he didn't have to put in even a tiny fraction of the maintenance that a woman would have required of him. A man either. As far as he could tell, males were no better that way. Not that he was into guys, personally. He'd given it a try a few times, in VR, but it hadn't really done much for him. The anal had kind of hurt, and while he could see why some might like it, it just wasn't for him.

Sam was cool enough as a friend anyway, and not needing te for sex, that part being taken care of, it didn't really matter what gender te were. It was work to think te instead of he or she, but that was the rule. Polite people went with te if they didn't know what a person wanted to be called.

He kept his mind on his driving, working his legs hard to keep up with the traffic. Luckily he didn't weigh too much anymore. For a while, in his late teens and early twenties he'd been kind of chunky. It hadn't been enough to need medical disability, but he'd gotten his share of teasing over it. Mainly from his brother, Ford.

Now he got daily exercise, and took Slimtrix. It helped him feel very full from normal amounts of food. It was a crutch, because he had a weak mind, but it was better to use it than to be chubby and unhealthy, as well as unable to resist food. On the great side, it let him eat anything he wanted.

Mason would just feel like he was going to pop about halfway through a plate of food. It worked, so he did it.

The street the restaurant was on wasn't in the best part of town. Sam had said te liked it though, and had introduced it to him a few weeks before. That it was a dicey neighborhood showed in a few ways. The building needed to be repaired in places for instance, and while the surveillance cameras were on every street corner, there were patches between them where people had graffitied the walls. That meant the coverage wasn't perfect, or Watch, the government surveillance system, would have caught them doing it.

Taking a moment to glance over he saw that the art was of two clear types. The first was what everyone probably expected. Bright letters, outlined to look three dimensional, which spelled out some kind of message. Normally in code. That was a guess, but anyone putting up even their initials would be asking for the police to come arrest them for vandalism. So if that ever happened, they were probably the names of people that others wanted hassled by the cops. That was what he'd have done anyway, if he were that kind of person.

The other kind was art in the truest sense of the word. Some of it was good on a rare level, but strange, even to him, and Mason prided himself on having an open mind that way. For instance, along the brown colored brick expanse to his right, Mason saw something that nearly made him veer when the image hit him. It was a face, subtly worked into the pattern of the wall. It was the color of the fake stone, more or less, and seemed to actually be projecting out from the surface, even though it couldn't be. Like it was carved in place, rather than painted on. It would have been interesting to go and look at it more closely, but doing that would make him late, so he pedaled onward.

He didn't get out enough to be late going anywhere.

It was hard enough not to be run over by the entitled assholes in their electrics, without being distracted by the walls around him. It was nearly like they thought they owned the road. As if to prove the point, the driver behind him sped up, even though Mason was already doing a bit over the speed limit, and sat there, not two feet from the back of his bike. It pretty much guaranteed a crash the instant he slowed down at all. Growling a bit he risked pulling his right hand from the steering wheel, and flipped the bird over his shoulder.

"Back off, fucker! I'm pedaling here!"

It had the effect he'd expected, which was nothing, except an angry honk in return. He could see it in the mirror. Jerks would be asshats, as his grandmother used to say.

It took a bit of finesse for him to slip sideways at full speed, once near his destination. There was, thankfully, a free parking spot, and his brakes held perfectly when he slammed them on as hard as he could with his left thumb. The inertial flywheel arrangement let him stop a lot faster than most would have figured, thankfully, or the hyper aggressive dick would have pushed him into a crash. That was probably the point.

A lot of people really hated to see anyone doing something different on the road. It was as if they felt offended by him bothering to be creative.

Mason looked over to get the plate number, just in time to see the older woman drive by, flipping him the bird in return.

He wanted to grouse a bit, but knew that sooner or later she'd mess up, and have her license pulled, if she kept up like she was. There were cameras everywhere, after all. The police might not even fine her for what she'd just done, but it would be on her record now. Watch saw everything. That wasn't just a clever statement either. The AI really did. It would be noted. So would his flipping her off and acting aggressively, but that was a pretty minor hit. Besides, he didn't have a license to take away, his vehicle being human powered. It was technically a bike, even if it could carry a passenger, and had signal lights for street use.

Trying to make him crash was probably something like a thousand-point hit to the grumpy granny's record. If he'd been in a real car, he'd have lost about five. The system wasn't perfect, but it tended to be pretty fair and realistic in the end.

He had to park on the street, but the meters in the area all accepted thumb swipes, so the two dollars he'd need for the four hours of parking he might want was taken from his account instantly. It was still a walk to the eatery, which meant he wasn't going to be able to see his auto-bike once inside. To that end he had a chain, with a lock on it. It was a very old fashioned thing, that opened when you spun a dial and input the right combination of numbers. He liked it, both for its low power usage, and the fact that no one knew how the things worked anymore.

Anyone coming to steal his bike would end up standing there, baffled at his wicked cleverness. Wasting their time and trying to use an overswipe box on a lock that didn't even have a scan screen. The thought was kind of hilarious. He wished them luck with it, knowing the black and silver thing he had would stop pretty much any modern thief dead. Smiling about that, Mason wandered toward the right place.

That was about half a block down, but on the same side of the street. The place had a large glass window, with the name of the place right there in nicely painted green letters.

"R-Street Eats" It was a horrible name, and a pretty mediocre place, but was also cheap, which was probably why Sam was a fan.

When te was paying they went to low rent bars and pubs, and places like R-Street. When Mason Sims was doing the heavy economic lifting they went to nicer establishments. Then, he had a top job, freelancing with a good company. Sometimes he even picked up work with other places, just because he was that skilled at what he did. For a twenty-five-year-old, he was doing pretty darned good that way. Not everyone could say the same.

It wasn't really their fault. The jobs had pretty much gone away two generations before, and never come back. That was what everyone had always told him. If you weren't one of the top minds in your field, you just didn't work.

Not at anything meaningful.

So Sam being able to pay at all, ever, meant something. Probably that te had real money coming in from somewhere. His pal was certainly smart enough for it. That was one of the things Mason enjoyed about their friendship. They could actually hold a conversation without it becoming all about fashion, or who Lexi Horn was sleeping with that week.

He grinned. After all, the famous girl was about the only one of that sort that he could name, off the top of his head. Mason had even slept with her, in VR. Sam had mentioned her a few times, so he'd looked the woman up, and only then realized that the actress had been in a few things that he'd seen and interacted with. The sex was, he'd been assured by the program, slightly better than the actress actually would be in real life. It was the universal virtual rule. If something was similar to reality, it got an upgrade whenever possible. Otherwise no one would bother with it.

So banging a hot actress wasn't going to be exactly like the real world. She'd always be set up to be what you liked, or at least a bit closer to it than the reality would probably allow. Not that he'd be testing that one out anytime soon. Lexi Horn might live in the same city, but he'd never seen her anywhere. Probably because she was rumored to be the kind of person that liked farmers markets, thrift stores, and things like that, and Mason enjoyed tech shows in his free time.

That would be why, he reasoned.

Not the fact that on his best day he was pretty average looking, and she was the kind of woman that people recreated in VR to fuck. That was fine though. He'd already had her in bed, which was good enough for him. They probably wouldn't have had anything to chat about anyway, if they met in real life. Mason knew nothing about acting, and if Lexi Horn knew anything about nano assembly printing, or disassembly systems, at least as more than something used to make things around the house, it would have been shocking.

People just didn't have that kind of skill after all. It took a lot of schooling to become good at it, so most didn't bother. Even the smart people generally only learned enough to pirate products occasionally. That did take some brains to manage, since Watch would know about it if you did it wrong. Maybe even if you did it right. Mason wondered, and not for the first time, if the system actually looked the other way on things like that, if you didn't do too much of it. That didn't make economic sense, but the thing was an AI, not a program. AI were really rare, but could think for themselves, so it might actually have different ideas than its governmental masters would have wanted.

The front door of R-Street Eats was glass in a wooden frame. The paint was green to match the oversized lettering in the big window. It needed to be touched up in places, since it was cracking, and hadn't been professionally applied the last time it was done. If he had the whole thing right, the layers of built up colors had been mishandled for decades. It was twenty-sixty-three after all, and some of these buildings had been there for over a hundred years.

It meant that it was time for a lot of them to be replaced, before they fell down.

No one came to seat him, though he was waved at by an average to cute woman who looked to be in her thirties. She was dressed in an old fashioned waitress costume. It had a little apron to go with it and an actual skirt. She also had white stockings on, and what looked to be uncomfortable leather shoes. Hopefully that was just for show, since being on your feet for hours would suck if you didn't have good cushions at the end of your legs.

Mason smiled and waved back. It didn't hurt to be nice, after all. Pointing, he indicated where Sam was sitting, and got a nod from the woman, along with a professional smile. It wasn't hard to see who he was there for, most likely.

He was dressed all in black, with a self sealing close nap jacket, and cargo style pants. It wasn't gen-neutral, being pretty manly, he thought. Like he was overcompensating for something, when he stopped to consider the idea. Given that he was in decent shape and probably the fittest person in the room, except maybe Sam, that meant he either had a really small dick, and cared about that which he didn't, or really wanted everyone to know just how much of a guy he truly was. If he'd been there to meet with a gender obvious woman, he wouldn't have bothered, so that meant he was there to see a man, or in this case, a person that no one would know what to think about. Like Sam.

Te had pulled out the stops this time though, and really looked incredible. The clothing was heavy as always, to hide any hint of manly muscle, or womanly curve, and a buff color that would have seemed about right if machining work was about to be done. It was nearly protective clothing. Like for welding, or grinding things into smaller, sharper bits. It was the kind of thing te wore, day to day. At least when they met up.

The face was made up into a fantastical creation however. The base paint layer was smooth, like fine china, and about the same color of off white, with dark blue swirls on the right hand side. Spiral patterns that looked familiar, but weren't something he could identify off the top of his head. It was so over done that not only could you not tell what gender te was, you couldn't even really identify Sam as being who was sitting there.

That didn't mean the look wasn't a good one. It was alien, but impressive.

Which was the point, no doubt.

Mason waved as he walked up, his friend watching him attentively the whole time. There was a small smile, and a half raised hand in return. When te spoke, it was always in a perfect tenor, which really could have been a boy or a girl. The only thing that could be told from it was that whoever it was under the makeup either wasn't very old, or took the really good anti-aging drugs.

"Mason. How are things treating you?" Sam rarely said anything as boring as hello.

"Not too poorly, all things being what they are. Work is good. All the VR women think I'm hot. Same old, you know?" There was a smile to go with it as he slid into the soft, and slightly cracked, fake leather covered seat. It was a faux wood chair, made of old style composite. The stuff lasted forever, but felt wrong, when made to seem like wood. Hollow, almost. It was a strange way to think of it, but he wasn't the only person to ever state it that way.

The person across from him knocked on the table twice with their right hand, the knuckles looking small. It was one of the things that had Mason about half convinced that Sam was actually a female by birth. Small, pale hands, tinted a light shade of dusty black today. It was an unusual color.

The saturation tattoos, imbeds, all had different uses, but Mason wasn't familiar with that one. It was a thing he could do, being part of his own work from time to time, so it was odd him not knowing off the top of his head. Most were easy enough to tell at a glance, if people had large scale mono-colors like that. People with red skin generally had a thermal imbed, for instance. One that kept heat from escaping over their entire bodies, until a certain temperature was reached. Purple indicated various antennae functions. Blue was electrical generation, normally taking the light that hit the skin and turning it into power.

Black though, was a new one for him.

"Let me guess, this makes you... Fifteen percent more interesting at parties?" He reached out and tapped the right hand, which felt wrong on contact. Then he got it, and nodded a few times. "Um, armor?"

Sam nodded, ter head making the white and blue face makeup bob.

"Both. Not that I need the help in public, of course. It's a new interlocking carbon armor. Really it has about ten different uses, that's just the most notable. Heating and cooling, communications filtering, electromagnetic distortion, so a lot of sensors can't pick me up. Not if they're using anything that reads the right signals." There was no hint of bragging, even though something like that had to cost a lot of money to have done. More than most would have dreamed of for something that would just baffled a sensor or two, and make them harder to kill with bullets.

Which meant that Sam really wasn't just sitting back and taking government assistance. No one could have afforded that kind of thing without significant resources.

It was impressive, so Mason gave a low whistle.

"Damn, girl, you really know how to live, don't you? Take me out to dives like this, but treat yourself to half million dollar imbeds first? I couldn't afford that unless I made it myself. Too poor after all those nice meals I've taken you to." Which he could do, naturally. It wasn't that hard, if you had access to top end assemblers. Most didn't though. He'd built his own, or he wouldn't have had them either.

Sam shrugged, te's thin shoulders going up expressively.

"You think I'm a woman?"

Rather than do the polite thing and claim he didn't know, Mason decided to be playful about it. After all, they'd known each other for over half a year. It was about time he at least knew if the person across from him wanted to pee standing up, or not.

The truth was, he truly had no clue. Sam was nice, but had really kept who te was under the makeup to themselves pretty tightly. That didn't mean there weren't some clues. There was always information if you bothered to pay attention. Mason couldn't help it, that being part of who he was.

"Oh, sure. More than that, I know who you are in real life. I can guess, anyway. I haven't been sitting around thinking about it or anything, but you know, you're scanable to my keen and wily intellect."

There was an interested leaning in then, as if he weren't just playing around.

"Really? You think? Okay. Three guesses, and if you get it right I'll tell you a secret that will change your life forever. I mean it too, I'm not just being melodramatic."

"Goody. Um, right... So now I'm on the spot, aren't I? I should have stuck with the girl thing."

Sam raised te's eyebrows, and gave a sharp and informative head tilt.

"Yup. I mean, you don't even know my gender for certain, so guess who's going to look pretty bad inside three guesses? Hint, his name is you."

"Heh. Yeah, that's going to be me. I was totally bluffing. Not that you aren't a girl. By birth, or medical treatments. Your hands are too small, and your hip structure is wrong for a male. You swish a bit when you let your guard down. That could be faked up, but I hear it's hard to do. So... Woman." He was really stuck, but was playing, so it didn't matter if he got it right or not.

Sitting there he stared for a bit, which meant that menus were walked over by the waitress. Carlene, if her name tag was being honest with them. Not that there was a real reason it had to be. A lot of people used fake names at work, anymore.

"You folks give me a wave when you're ready to order." She dropped back then, not hovering over them like some wait people did. Then, dive or not, this place had more than two people in it that night, so she actually had work to do.

Most restaurants barely managed to keep the doors open, but there were at least six people eating there that evening. It was still early too, not even being seven yet.

Mason had to say something, so looked over his shoulder, as if about to deliver a secret.

"All right. That mask doesn't fool me. You're Batman, aren't you? Bruce Wayne, billionaire industrialist." It was the name of a fictional character that everyone knew.

That got a chuckle, which had been the point. If you couldn't be right, at least be funny.

"Not exactly. Close though. I do look good in shiny gimp suits. Then, who doesn't? That's one guess."

That was just true. It was a guess, and a poor one. Still, he didn't know what else to say. There was data in his head, but that didn't mean it was all there, ready to make sense yet.

"Fine, be that way, Mr. Wayne, but don't be shocked when I figure it out. I mean, you've told me a lot... You clearly have a secret identity, and no one would pay for that kind of skin imbed just because they liked to play dress up. You're smart, and have some tech skills, I think, but not a lot of nano design skills. Not at the level needed to design or rip something like that. Which means you're actually rich, even if you do like to hang out in places like this. So, you have a reason for doing that. You're trying to throw people off a trail." He had nothing, and knew it. Not that he was wrong about what he'd said, but that didn't give him a name.

Sam seemed content to wait. Letting him sweat. There was no indication that he was even in the right gender ball park, other than the hands.

Fuck. This was hard.

"You're someone important. A public figure. The whole gen-neutral thing is an act then. A disguise, since it allows you to wear what amounts to a mask in public without anyone really paying too much attention to you. That won't stop the cameras or biometrics, but it will keep people from being able to identify you as easily. Since you aren't a criminal, and I have faith in that one, that means that people would know who you are, on sight?"

There was a shrug again and a smile that either belonged on a very feminine person, or was so well acted that the man doing it was a professional that way.

"Are you asking me? That isn't the game is it? If you want the great prize that I'm offering, and it's really high end and life changing info, then I'm going to have to ask you to apply yourself a little bit harder than that. Who am I?"

It was a great question. One of them even had the answer, but it wasn't him. So, he guessed, letting his subconscious mind work things out. Sometimes that worked, after all.

"Um... Let's see... Lexi Horn?" She was the only famous person he knew of, after all. One that Sam had mentioned a few times. Given that there had been no one else talked about that way, it might mean it was a personal issue for his friend. It could also mean that te just wanted to have sex with her. Possibly both, since people could be messed up that way from time to time.

Sam froze.

"Uh..." The wide eyes seemed scared for a moment, and then narrowed a little bit as te leaned in. There was no talking after that. Not even to say he was wrong about it.

Mason grinned, "and they say random guesses are never right. Well, what's my prize? The meaning of life? Free backstage passes to whatever it is that you do in real life?"

It wasn't like Sam was really Lexi Horn, after all. That would be highly unlikely, except that te leaned forward then and hissed at him. It made it seem a bit more believable actually.

"Fuck it all to hell. I can't believe this. You randomly guessed who I am? For real? Well, yeah, then. I'm Lexi Horn. Are you going to fanboy out on me now? Yell squee and dance around asking for me to sign bodyparts?"

Mason looked across the room, no one was watching them at all.

"Nope. I mean, I've totally banged you in VR, but it isn't like I follow the career. I played a sim or two with you in it, I think. Seriously though? You're really her? That's different. I wouldn't have figured on an actress being as smart as you are. You are pretty good though. It never even occurred to me before now."

Sam gave him a look that was hard to read, what with all the paint on te's face.

"Not consciously. When did you hook that up in virt? Three or four months ago?"

Thinking for a few seconds, he gave a sharp nod. That really was about right.

"Yeah, about that. Do you think I picked up on something subconsciously?"

"Most likely. That, or using special Mason powers. That you aren't totally dead psychically is one of the reasons we became interested in you to start with. I'll go into that later. There's more than one reason. I know it's hard to understand, but you're actually decently interesting. You won't believe me yet though, so if you don't mind waiting for that secret? It won't be long, I promise."

Waving at her, if she was really a woman at all, Mason picked up the menu.

"You know me, I'm good that way. Patient, and all that. Have you eaten here before?"

Te nodded, a slightly subdued thing. Mason knew the answer, since they'd spoken about it, and even gone there a few times, but small talk was, by definition, not important.

"A few times. As you know." There was a bit of a goofy look then, as if he were being a dumbass.

"What's good? I normally just eat what my food printer recommends, most days." That was a bit of snobbery, saying that, Mason knew. Most people couldn't afford that kind of thing, even if they were rich. Not a high end one like he had. He was doing all right, but he only had one because he'd built it.

"Try the chicken strips and coleslaw. They make it from actual food, so it isn't too bad. Um, trade seats with me? The first part of the secret I want to share with you is walking in right now, I think."

It was a strange thing to say, but he did it, moving the composite chair out and sliding into the warm seat that Sam vacated. Gesturing with her head, and it was impossible not to think of her that way instead of as te, now that he knew she was a woman. Then, with her fancy hat still hiding her hair from the world, there were quiet words. Almost whispered at him, like a lover sharing something intimate.

"The man coming in, the dark skinned one? You see him?" It was said in a deep whisper, which wasn't anything like the voice used in the simulations at all.

"Yep. He, uh, seems normal enough to me. A bit chubby, but nothing too bad. Why?"

Sam sat up and took a deep breath.

"Because he's about to be arrested. Just so you know ahead of time, he's completely innocent. More to the point, there hasn't been a crime. The system is about to have a monumental brain-gasm, and the government watchdogs are going to uncover that this man has millions of dollars in his account that he shouldn't. The trick there is that it will only be for a few minutes."

That didn't make sense, so he locked eyes with Sam. They were a light blue, and now that he was thinking of her as a girl, everything seemed to fall into place, making it seem right. It was either that, or Sam had stopped pretending so hard.

Still, Lexi Horn as his best real life friend was really farfetched. Now that he thought about it, Batman was the more likely option by far. It would explain all the disguises at least as well. Possibly better, since you probably had to be careful if you were a vigilante, or Watch would get you almost instantly.

"I don't get it. How could that happen? Some kind of setup?" People did talk about how they were framed by the police and government on occasion. No one believed them.

The system watched everything, so if you were innocent of a crime, it would see that too. It might be possible for some high level government guy or gal to still do it, make a person look guilty who wasn't, sure. A person that was trusted with the right codes for instance, or a linker that could side step into the machine works well enough. They might make you look guilty when you weren't. The local cops though couldn't pull that off.

They just weren't smart enough, on average, and this wasn't halfway through the last century when some guys just lying would be enough to have a person put away.

Sam gave a tiny shake of her head. It seemed delicate now. Girly and feminine.

"The banks have billions of dollars in their systems that are unaccounted for. They're so big that they honestly don't know where that money belongs, so they bounce it around from account to account, constantly. They can't put it in anything they own, since that would be theft, even if they intended to give it back later. In the main no one ever knows about it going on. You've probably had it happen with your accounts, for instance. Unless you knew that it was happening and drained the account the instant it had the funds dumped in, it wouldn't do you any good though. It's a polite fiction to keep everyone in balance with the law, more or less." Sam reached out to play with the paper napkin that was setting in front of her. She didn't tear it up, just rubbing it between her fingers a bit nervously. "Maybe once a year a person lucks into overdrawing their account by a few dollars when that takes place. When it happens, the banks just eat it, most of the time. No one even knows about it taking place, most days. Not even the banking system. It's all automated."

Mason tried to work out what would be happening then, given what he knew.

"So, um... This guy's account had more money than it was supposed to, which should go unnoticed, but it didn't, since the system was watching it as it took place?"

There was a smile then, "kind of like that. Except that the whole thing won't take place for a few minutes. The... People I work with, have access to both the government Watch system and the banking data. This will be a conflict between the bank and the IRS. Not directly, I mean it isn't an AI war or anything, but we know how the algorithms are set up. We can predict when things like this are going to happen, about eighty percent of the time."

"So, why not tell them about it? Let the IRS or the bank know? Make a call and fix it?" He knew that one however. It would be illegal to have that kind of data, even if you only used it to protect the innocent. That was private financial data, kept in secret by both parties, so that the man in question wouldn't be taken advantage of.

Rather than give Mason a dirty look, one which he probably deserved for being so stupid, there was just a bit of straightening in her posture.

"We've tried, of course, in the past. They won't listen to us, since both systems believe themselves to be infallible, or close enough to it. They aren't mental though, so they will figure it out soon enough. No laws are being broken, so other than a single night in jail, this man, Lewis Rhyse won't be in trouble, or shouldn't be. It's the rest of this that I want you to watch."

"What? That doesn't make sense. Why would you want me to watch a man be arrested? Especially an innocent one. That has to be rare, doesn't it?"

There was a tiny lifting of shoulders then, as if to let him know he was being a dumbass.

"Not really. Over half of all arrests are done on meta-data alone anymore. Information gathered from thousands of different sources and put together to make a picture. Half of that ends up being wrong. I'm sure you can see that one. A single AI or advanced program can put things together pretty well, but several of them working at cross purposes makes just as big of a mess as if they were humans. Please, keep your voice down now. I think things are about to heat up here."

Nothing happened, for a bit, so Mason waved the waitress over. Sam had said that it wasn't a hundred percent perfect, if the whole thing wasn't just his weird friend making things up to be entertaining. If so, well, it was better than he would have imagined, or invented, if he were the one doing that part.

Some kind of corrupted government policing thing going after innocent people was a good idea, for a sim or story. It didn't seem very likely in real life though.

He sighed.

"The odds of those two things happening would have to be a million to one." Mason didn't clarify that he meant the banking system dumping funds on the guy at the same moment the IRS program looked at his banking information.

Sam nodded.

"Millions, plural, to one. Something like a hundred million to one, on any given day. But think about it for a second. The U.S. has four hundred million people. Do the math on that. Four people a day have this exact thing happen to them. More or less. It actually varies, between one and seven, but you get the idea." She didn't turn around, but seemed to know what was going on anyway.

"Here we go. Remember, if shooting starts, get down. I should be fine, so stay behind me." She tapped the imbed on the back of her hand. "Bullet proof. Be ready though."

Then, almost as if taking direction from Sam, the police stormed into the little dive of a restaurant, breaking the glass of the front door as they did.

Screaming.

Chapter two

Two things happened in very quick succession. The first was that Sam, whoever he or she really was, stood up a little bit. Not much, just about a quarter way. This gave Mason a bit of cover. A shield that could act as protection or a place to hide if things got intense. Bullet resistant or not, that seemed really brave to Mason, suddenly.

The second thing was that the situation almost instantly went the wrong way entirely. Knowing the whole story, or at least the portion that he'd been told, if it was the truth, the whole thing seemed suddenly very different than it would have otherwise. The door almost exploded inward as an armored man came in. He, or possibly she, was dressed as if they expected death to be upon them from the man they were there to take in. The chubby one that was ducking, like everyone else. The MCT unit, ten armed men and women strong, at least inside the place, yelled the entire time.

"Get down! Get on the floor!" There were loud bangs, and the room filled with a sickening green light. It was coming from one of the MCT members, who filled the doorway. Mason didn't look at them, being smart enough to get what was going on.

"No," Sam hissed at him. "I know it will make you sick, but you need to watch this. You have to see what they do."

It was harder than it sounded like it should be, since the green light made him want to toss his cookies. That he hadn't had dinner yet was all that had kept him from doing it already, and his friend wanted him to stare the damned vortex dazzler down, like it wasn't a problem. The things were literally designed to keep people disoriented without hurting them. He'd never seen one in person before, but it was clear that they worked.

"Down!" The screaming kept going on as they grabbed Lewis Rhyse. It wasn't done gently, but the man didn't try to run, or fight. More than anything he seemed scared.

"I don't know what's going on here." He sounded frightened, and even though two of the large and incredibly strong armored men held him, each holding an arm, the man took a step back with one foot when one of the other men moved in on him, a hand going toward his face like a punch.

Sam, who was looking too, took a deep breath.

"There! Watch!"

Mason did. It was brutal, and didn't seem to have a reason behind it.

When Lewis, who might well be an innocent man wanted for something he hadn't done at all, took a step away from the potentially deadly armored blow, everyone in the room that had to do with the Military Combat Team descended on him with an amount of force that seemed insane. The first man, who had scared Lewis into action explained it out loud, almost as if trying to make the insanity seem justified.

"The suspect is trying to flee! Detain him. Attempting to run is a sign of guilt, go to level two apprehension techniques!"

Mason didn't know what that was, which was probably good, since what he could see through the vomit light made him lose it then and start getting sick. The beating the man took was inhumane, to be certain. His normal human flesh wasn't able to handle what powered armor could do to him, and things cracked and creaked as the men and women yanked, pulled and struck him. Even after the man was incapable of doing anything except groaning, the first armored guy called out that he was resisting.

Verbally. By making pained noises.

That meant more beating until the guy didn't move or make any sounds at all.

The room went quiet, and the green light that had Mason doubled over the white tile floor with hands on knees to stay upright, stopped. It left him half blind and highly disoriented as more yelling came then.

"Get out! If you don't want to be arrested for interfering in police business, get out of here. Now. There will be no other warnings."

Mason didn't think he could walk, but he did it, Sam taking his arm to guide him. She wasn't blind for some reason. Possibly because she'd been smart enough to buy that nifty imbed. He was going to find out what it was, and see about making his own, as soon as he could. This kind of thing couldn't happen.

It was against the law. He was nearly certain of it.

In a move that seemed like it took minutes, but was probably over in a few seconds, he was pulled to the door and through it. Somewhere along the way a hand was near his other arm, so he grabbed it, and pulled the woman it belonged to along with them. It wasn't everyone in the room by far, but for some reason the MCT decided to take mercy on the rest of them, and hadn't just attacked the people that were disoriented and getting sick. Not that he could see.

One of the blue and black robot like bodies, their faces covered totally, lightly pushed the others onto the street. It was done almost gently, compared to the scene that had just taken place inside.

"We need to get out of here. Where did you park your bike?"

"To the left of the door. I can't see. It's about half a block down."

They walked, the waitress being left behind after a few steps, which was good. He only had a two seater. Thankfully it didn't take hours to be able to see again. It was funny though, since just as he could, Sam pulled his hand to the lock, and grunted.

Now te sounded like a man. The voice had gone deeper again. Not a lot though, just enough to lend a bit of truthfulness to the act. Mason was disoriented still, but fumbled with the lock, finding the worn out zero, and manipulating the thing carefully from there. The metal was cool to the touch, even though it was still light out. The silver had bounced a lot of the heat away.

A short two minutes later that was off, and blinking hard, he moved into the driver's seat.

"Get in. Behind me." He couldn't see very well yet, but didn't want to risk staying. It was just so hard to believe that the cops had done that. They'd nearly killed that man, for no reason.

"Can you drive yet?"

Lying, he nodded, then focused as hard as he could, not wanting to die in particular. Thankfully everyone on the road was avoiding the one way street. He had to move past the police transport units, the big things powered by something a lot stronger than super capacitors. They had to be, in order to move their own bulk around. It was illegal for civilian use, but he thought they might be gas powered. Old style fossil fuels. Regardless, they were huge, compared to his little pedal transport. It seemed menacing, and intimidating, as he looked up at the large black and blue machines.

His own bike was so small, and powered only by what a human could do.

Mason had overbuilt the thing, since he tended to do that, including a capacitor that was made of cellulose and ammonia, which let him turn the signaling lights on. He had to use hand controls for them, but they worked, and would prevent the cops from coming after him. Maybe. He hoped so.

On the way back toward home, not knowing what else to do, or where to go, he started to be able to see normally again. From the back seat he could hear Sam breathing slightly heavily, working the other set of pedals. It helped increase the amount of available drive force. Enough so that he wasn't even breathing that hard when he pulled into the parking garage of his apartment complex.

The large gray building was old, but kept in decent repair for all that. The lines on the inside had been replaced a few years before, so instead of being a plain and slightly reflective yellow, they were a constantly glowing green color. It was enough to see by that he rode the ramp to the second story without needing the headlights. Once there he chained his baby to the inset post he'd put in for the purpose in his spot, and climbed out.

Not speaking, he waved at Sam.

Te followed along, moving as if this were some kind of strange trip to a place Sam had never been to before. Which it was. All of their meetings had been either done over the phone, VR, or physically going someplace neither of them lived. Normally bars and coffee houses. Now Mason had to wonder what the reason behind that had been.

He'd kind of thought that Sam was just a bit lonely before. Now it all seemed more like there was a plan behind it all.

A sinister and dark one that involved the cops beating down innocent eatery patrons. It didn't make any sense though. Mason could feel that one, but it might also be the shock. That he was traumatized by what had happened wasn't in doubt. Being a dick about it wasn't going to help anything though, it was clear. Sam was his friend. At least he thought that might be the case.

She wouldn't do anything to get him into trouble.

They walked, using the stairs since he was only one floor up, and they were right there anyway. It was actually a longer trip to get to the elevator. Mason had never really trusted the things either. If the power went out, the stairs would work. The elevator could plummet into a fiery pit.

Oh, sure, that wasn't a real thing, being they were only going three floors up, but it was the idea of that happening that kept him from using the hanging box unless needed. In truth it wasn't just the falling portion of events, but the idea of being trapped in a little box that did it.

Sam didn't say anything, just looking up at the cameras which were situated at the landing. They moved in silence. Mason didn't know what to say, and if Sam was going to share anything with him, te, or she if that was a real thing, didn't seem to want to do anything where anyone could see it happening. For the very first time since they'd met, Mason had to wonder if being around a person he didn't know much about was actually safe.

It was the kind of thought that he didn't want to have. Not just because he felt oddly connected to Sam, the gender-neutral person. It was that things like that weren't real anymore. Violence barely happened now, and when it did it always seemed to involve drugs, or momentary anger getting out of hand. Well, or people fighting with the police. He'd never thought of that as violence before though. They were the good guys. They only ever acted to protect themselves, or others. It was what the news said.

He thumbed the doorpad when they got there. The hallway was pretty clean, done in shades of white and cream. The door itself was a bright white, and had a camera right in the center of it. They all did. Sam stared at it in passing, then pointed on the way past, when he opened the way.

"Do you own the feed on this, or does the building?"

"I do. It's part of the lease. Why?"

"Because I like to know who's tracking my whereabouts. It comes up. Paparazzi. You know how it is, being famous and wanted by millions." There was a playful, and girlish tone to the voice as Mason shut them in. For the first time in a while he double checked to make certain it was locked.

Not that it would save him if an MCT came after them.

"What was that? How did you know that guy was going to be... Murdered like that?" There was no other word for it, but Sam, rubbing a little at the blue and white face paint with a single finger, shook her head.

"Probably not dead. They're very good at not just executing people. As for how we knew it was going to happen, well, it normally does anymore. You won't hear about it on the news, in case that's what you're wondering. I've seen this happen ten times, in person. Not always for the same thing, but only one of those times did the whole thing go smoothly. Innocent people each time." There was a darkness to the words. A heaviness that seemed to make everything around them sag a bit.

Mason wondered if it was acting skill. Even if Sam wasn't a famous actress, there was clearly a certain flair for the dramatic going on. Now that he'd noticed it, that part was clear. Even the whole gen-neutral thing was kind of an act. Not just for Sam either.

Everyone that did it was kind of trying to manipulate the world to their will. No one, or almost no one, was psychologically neutral that way. You had men, women, and people that were both, as well as people that were born as one and felt like another. What wasn't natural was pretending that you were so special that you weren't allowed to be categorized in any normal way. Even that pronoun choice, te, was an affectation that the movement had made up. It was stolen from the word "they" but shortened so that it wouldn't be confused with the plural.

Normal people wouldn't choose to force that kind of thing on the others around them. There was no place in human psychology for things like that. It was confusing, and worse, done on purpose, just to be a pain in the ass.

Which was, he had to admit, what he liked about the movement. It had never been for him, being too much work, but you had to admit that those that were willing to pull it off for any length of time were truly dedicated to their cause. Whatever that really was.

Stripping away the ancient ideas of gender, to bring about a new world. That was the tag line.

Sam coughed a bit, and looked around, taking the place in. The judgment in the light blue eyes wasn't too harsh. The whole thing was in four rooms, with a full sized bathroom rounding it out, and while it wasn't vast, it was more than enough for one person. Most of it was white and light tan. It had been the color scheme when he'd moved in, so everything he added was in keeping with that. Most of what had been put in over the last three years Mason had made himself.

Thanks to the second room in the place.

The layout was the familiar one, he knew. A bedroom, a VR chamber, and a storage area. In his case that last one was used for his equipment. The prototype disassembly unit he was working on, as well as his three print units. Though calling them that would show that the person doing it didn't know what the hell they were talking about.

Right there, in his own apartment, he had what would have amounted to millions of dollars of stuff, if anyone was ever wise enough to understand what they were looking at. It was all to his own original plan too, meaning that he had the copyright for it all. Nothing in the entire place was anything less than legal.

If it weren't for the shaking and residual feeling of being ill from what he'd seen, he might have bothered to feel slightly smug. As it was, Mason decided to just sink onto his frame chair and breathe for a bit. Heavy inhalations that reminded him to exercise more.

The noise in the room was muffled, but annoying suddenly. His neighbors talking past the thin walls, a few yells, since they were probably in virt at the moment. There was even the sound of a dog barking. It was a small beast, but he was nearly certain it was real. If not, then one of his neighbors was a real asshole, since the thing barked for hours, at random times.

Sam sank onto his sofa. It was a big thing, but te made sure not to lean against the back or let the face paint get on the white surface.

"I used to think, when I first saw how they attacked people like that, I used to assume that the police were all evil. I mean they- nearly had to be in order to do that, don't you think? No one tears into someone else like that. A gang of armed and armored people going after someone, the brutality of it... Most people can't even imagine it. That's why you had to see first. Otherwise you wouldn't have believed me." Sam had his, or her, hands on the front of te's heavy buff colored trousers. It was very formal looking, and tense on a level that didn't make sense.

Which was probably all about nerves, and fear, now that whatever plan te had in mind with Mason was really starting. There was a sense of being watched. Not the impersonal kind that the world always held, but a spotlight like focus on him directly. Coming from the person with him. It was more direct eye contact than he was used to, or at all comfortable with.

"Now you don't think they're evil? I... I don't even know what we really saw. You told me it was going to happen, if I'd just seen it..."

"Right." The masklike face gave a slow, but steady nod. "If you'd been there and that had happened, you would have looked away from the dazzler, and not seen that Lewis wasn't really resisting arrest or trying to run. The problem there is that by any sane standard, it was clear that he didn't. The thing is, legally, he did."

That got him to make a face. Probably one akin to what would have happen if his puppy had died. If he'd let himself have one of those. The yippy animal in the distance reminded him why he didn't have one. The constant sound was soothing however, in the moment. Familiar, even as it distracted him from reality for a moment.

"The step back, away from the power glove that came at his face. It's why the MCT guy called that out?" Mason liked to think he wasn't stupid, most days. He wiped his hair out of his face. It was a little long at the moment, the light brown wisps getting in the way more often than he was comfortable with.

"Ding. Exactly. You know that no one can record what the cops are doing on duty? But they record everything else. The high hand to the face like that is a thing they're all taught to do. I don't know what they think it's doing, but almost everyone will step back from it, and it doesn't show on their personal feeds. Part of their accepted practices. So in court it will look like Lewis was trying to get away. Which he was, not wanting to be hit. That the blow wouldn't have landed, missing by about an inch, that won't be part of what is spoken about. His lawyer isn't legally allowed to use that bit, since there's no proof of wrongdoing on the police officers part. There's literally no evidence, so it will be taken as a lie." There was a sense of exhaustion from the person then, and a bit of a white streak on the trousers from the right hand forefinger.

Mason didn't mention it, but Sam looked down and shook te's head.

"Fuck. Anyway, Lew there will probably be in for six months. He has a clean record, but this season the courts are frowning on people attacking the police. Even if they didn't. People do love it when we're all hard on crime."

The gender neutral person stood up, and stretched a bit. It seemed like it was time to go, so Mason got up, in order to see Sam out, wondering what the real point had been. It was a bit of a surprise then when te waved at him.

"Can I clean this stuff off my face? Otherwise I'll get it all over your furniture. Nice stuff, by the way. Make it yourself?" That could have been rude, since homemade things were looked down on as often as not anymore. Only the poor had to make do with their own handiwork.

That wasn't the sound in the voice however.

"Yep. I'm talented that way. Down that hall, to the right. The first door. Just toss the towels in the recyc, after you destroy them. That makeup isn't water based, is it?"

There was a soft chuckle as Sam moved in that general direction.

"You wish. I'll be right back out. Can you get us something to eat? We kind of missed dinner, and there are some things to talk about still."

What any of those things would be, he couldn't imagine.

As Sam vanished into the other room, moving through the tan door with a slight clatter, Mason tried to think through it all.

It didn't take long. After all, he'd been shown that the police acted differently than he'd thought. It had to be what the whole thing was about. It was kind of a known thing that the MCT hit hard and fast, and that people could be hurt when it took place. It just had always seemed like the people taken in like that kind of deserved it. They wouldn't be raided, or slammed, like that, if they weren't guilty.

Sam had made a point of telling him it was going to happen first, in order to prove something. Maybe more than one factor.

For instance, Lewis Rhyse was probably innocent, as claimed. That could be a lie, but there was very little reason for that kind of thing. If he'd been a child murderer, then no one would want to try and make him seem less guilty of it. That meant something important. That the cops had basically savaged a man for no reason, and that it was so common they had built in tricks that let them get away with it. Ones that even they might not be totally cognizant of.

He tried to imagine what he'd do if he saw a black metal glove flying at his own eyes. Stepping back felt reasonable, every time. Even knowing that a horrible beating would happen if he did, the idea of letting himself be hit just didn't work. There would be a flinch, a step, or something, every single time.

You'd need to be insane to just stand there in that situation. That, or so tough that he couldn't see it really happening.

Him being told had another meaning though. That was pretty solid too. Sam had established that te, or possibly the people te worked with, could predict the future. Not perfectly, if what had been said was correct, but close enough that he'd been invited to go and witness what had happened, and it did.

That was a sign of power and knowledge that few would be able to match. Maybe the government could. The Watch program was able to lead the police to criminals before they did anything, it was said. The law required them to wait for a crime to be committed though, before an arrest could be made. It was a failsafe in the system. One put there to keep innocent people from being taken in for looking like they might be guilty of something.

Lewis had just gotten unlucky, given that. The dark skinned man hadn't done anything, except act like a normal person. In fact there was nothing he'd done that Mason wouldn't have, if the situation had been reversed.

Sounds of washing came from the other room, so he got up, and moved to the economy kitchen section of the front room. It was a combined thing, which was handy. He had his food station set up there, and while there was a stove and microwave built in, he'd rarely used them. The printer put things together well enough most of the time. It wasn't gourmet food, but that was down to his own preferences. He could have programmed in almost anything. It cost money to buy different recipes, but he could afford it, if experimenting was too much work. Really, he'd made up about half of his own, even though it took a while to get things right that way. Some of them were probably too gross to give to a guest.

In the end he ran out a few pizza slices each, with veggie toppings. Sam didn't eat meat, except chicken. Not that Mason had ever noticed. He would, but most days didn't, since printing your own food meant starting from vegetable matter bases in the main. On a high end printer, like his, that pretty much didn't matter. It built food from the nano level up, which meant he could take cellulose and turn it into passable meat product without too much effort. Some, but that was all about getting the mouth feel right.

After about fifteen minutes he had the pizza ready, which came out hot, and had run up a few pieces of Italian cream cake, for dessert. He nearly served it with non-alcoholic beer, but then switched to lemonade. After all, he wanted his head to be clear for whatever was coming next. That kind of thing wasn't strong, but the good ones had a bit of a kick put in them, for all they claimed not to. That might have been psychological, but regardless he didn't want to risk it at the moment.

It might not be reality, but he'd lived half of his life in VR, which meant he was adaptable to new situations, in theory. If the police were corrupt, or just had poor policies, then that could be managed. The trick would just be in getting things done without running into them any more than he had to. Really, they'd never been a problem for him, personally.

Mason had a fold out table that set into the wall, nestled into the elbow created by the bar between the kitchen and living room areas. The dining chairs were right under it, and trying not to look like a total heathen, he got the real plates out, along with forks for the cake. What he ended up with wasn't exactly a high dining situation, but it looked decent, he thought.

Passable, considering Sam was just some guy he knew, and there had been no particular plans for him to be hosting the man. Woman? He still didn't really know.

That changed, a moment later, when Sam finally got out of the bathroom. She was shorter looking, and dressed in a light white shirt that showed bumps at the top. Her legs were smooth, shown off by the shorts she had on, and her entire body was, at least on the exposed surfaces, a dusty black. That included her face, which threw him off for a few seconds.

"Pizza okay? Vegetarian." Mason didn't let himself act shocked as the woman moved into the space. She was clearly a bit wary.

Probably afraid that he really would fanboy out, now that he saw who was actually standing there. It was pretty certain, after all.

Lexi, freaking, Horn.

Though she looked a bit funny, with the imbed on. It was definitely her however. Looking shorter than he would have figured. About five-six. It was right, for her, but wrong for Sam, who had always been about five-nine. Then te had always worn boots. Probably with lifts in them.

She smiled, her teeth gleaming compared to the dusky skin. The pale blue eyes were like ice now, since the stark white was gone from around them. There had been some kind of prosthesis too, over the nose to change the shape. There had to have been, or he would have seen through the act sooner.

"Hey, my favorite. Smells good, too. Did you choose the design yourself?" It was the polite thing to say, if someone made food for you on a printer. Asking if they made the selection personally.

He shrugged.

"I did the work on it, from scratch. So if you don't like it, you're obligated to lie and say it's wonderful, anyway, now that you know. Being an actress, I expect quality work that way, too. None of that strained smiling thing as you try not to spit it out." Mason gestured to one of the chairs, not trying to seat her, or anything.

It wasn't the eighteen hundreds, and this was just his buddy, Sam. Not a date.

Besides, even if it was, he'd already banged her like he said. More than once. The fact that for the first time in his life he was with a woman that he'd had sex with in VR, suddenly hit him. That would probably be pretty weird, for her. He was actually comfortable enough seeing Lexi Horn at his table, Mason realized, even if it were real. The fact was, it just didn't seem that way.

Poor Sam was suddenly face to face with some perv that had done things in bed with her that she was probably saving for people she actually liked. That had to be confusing.

Sam nodded, almost as if answering his thoughts. She wasn't though, just looking at the food carefully. After she settled, there was a single, tentative bite, followed by a smile that seemed pretty realistic.

"It's good. I was afraid for a second that I'd be spending the next hour choking, and trying to hide bits of food in the planters." That got a look around and a mournful headshake. "Which I see you don't have. You need a woman's touch around here, you know that?"

Mason took a bite of his own food. It really was good, even if he had come up with the design for it. The basic template was identical for each slice, but he'd arranged the plates so they'd look a bit different. The crust was crispy on the bottom, without being burnt, and the molten cheese floated perfectly on the warm, but not blistering, sauce layer.

Sam, across from him, looked down at the food shyly. It was nearly coy, and not what his buddy should have been doing. They weren't on a fucking date. She was there to try and recruit him or something. It was like she thought that batting her eyes at him would make it so his cock took over and do the thinking for him.

That wasn't going to happen.

"I really don't." He ate a few more small, delicate bites, not wanting to smear things all over himself. He still had his nice jacket on, after all. "Need a woman's touch. VR is more than enough for me that way."

After all, if he wanted more than that, he could print a woman out. A robot who wouldn't be half the hassle of a real one.

Almost as if agreeing with that, dusty black faced Sam, his pal, nodded.

"Fine. Let's get down to business then?"

Chapter three

The idea that they had business outside of a slice of four layer Italian cream cake each was news to Mason Sims. Taking a bite, even though he was starting to feel a bit too full, thanks to the Slimtrix he'd taken that morning. It would leave him feeling bloated and in pain if he pushed it too far, but two small pieces of pizza and half the cake wouldn't do that to him.

Sure, that meant he ate like a little kid most days, not finishing his dinner in order to get at the dessert, but it kept him from getting fat anyway. If he needed more vitamins, he could add it to his ice cream the next day.

Which wasn't actually a bad idea.

If he designed the frozen treat to include encapsulated vitamins, making a lipid shell for what was essentially a multi-tab, it could be used to replace the fat. It would still taste the same, but when it digested would actually be more than simple junk food. It wasn't a completely new idea, but most food printers wouldn't be able to handle what was needed. It was too close to nano assembly that way.

Which just meant the trick would be to make the lipid balls and sell them as a component to be used on less advanced pieces of equipment. That might not work very well, if people didn't care about being healthy, but hey, it was still a good enough idea to be worth running up.

Setting his fork down, the composite plastic shining gold, Mason locked eyes with the actress. She was pretty, even without makeup, he noticed. Her skin was perfect, and while a bit bland at the moment, he was smart enough to know that real people didn't look like virts all the time. He certainly didn't, but that didn't keep Sam from looking back.

Then she took a single bite of pizza, not being finished yet either.

"I know that there's a lot to cover. I just don't know where to start now. It's different for everyone. Some people see the kind of thing we did tonight and just shut down. I don't think that's the kind of man you are, Mason. I know it, in fact. We ran psychological profiles on you already. So, why don't you tell me? What do you think we should do about it?"

It was his turn to stall, which he did with the brisk lemonade drink. It was pretty tart, since that was the way he liked it, but not so much that his guest couldn't drink it.

"Do about what? The police? The government? What could we do? Lodge a complaint and point out the weakness in their system? Maybe run some simulations showing they'd be safer, and hurt fewer people, if they changed a few of their techniques? It's not a horrible plan, but will they listen?" He knew the answer. You didn't change the government. It just responded to threats.

Anyone that had played around in VR long enough knew that one. Normally by the time they were in their early teens. The pattern was always there. If the government was involved, and you ran into a problem with them, you had to hide what you were doing, or try to. Otherwise they'd stop you, even if what your in-game goal was had to be done. Being right wasn't enough to get their cooperation if it challenged their current way of doing things.

"You want to stop aliens from invading? Not if it means running that red light." The words just popped out, and the girl that was his friend, or had claimed to be, grinned happily.

"Exactly that. Trust me, we've tried, more than once, to do that. It works out, by the way. What you just guessed at with the simulations? They could improve their performance by dropping less than seven percent of their current techniques. The police in particular, but the courts, too. The problem comes in because the system won't allow them to change things in general. The more we point out the problem, the harder they fight to keep things the way they've always been."

"Yeah. We haven't even mentioned politicians, yet." He smiled back, and ate more cake for a bit. "Those are some people that love to be in control."

"I know. So... We, my organization, have a plan. Two of them, actually. The first part..." Sam wiped her long hair, which was pulled back into a loose ponytail at the moment, rather than being up under her funny hat. "Can I tell you about that later? Better, I'll let John do it. He's... Well, I can go into all that later, if you don't freak out about the second part."

She glanced around at the apartment, and shook her head a little.

Mason didn't get it yet.

"Okay. Tell me the secret. I can see that things need to change, I guess. I still can't believe that mess tonight."

Instead of doing that, Sam, the young looking woman, stood up and started pacing. Her bare feet tracing out twelve steps to the far wall, spun in place and did it again. Several times. Finally she took a deep breath, and stood there, well out of arms reach.

Seeming very tense. It showed in her shoulders and how rigid her spine was.

"You see... The idea to get to know you, that wasn't done on accident."

"Nooo." Sarcasm dripped from the word as he played it up. "You mean that famous actresses don't always dress up like they're gen-neutral, and befriend random average guys on the street? I'm crushed. I really am, Sam. I mean, it did cross my mind that you wanted me for my sparkling conversation at one or two points, but... Now I don't know." It was tempting to suggest that the woman had been after him for his body, which wasn't that bad, but better could be had in VR, which was what most people did anymore when they wanted that kind of thing. Not all of them, but enough that no one would think he was strange only choosing to do that.

It was safer, less effort, and cleaner. Thanks to virt-sex, the level of sexually passed diseases had gone way down, over the last thirty years or so.

His actress buddy waved at him.

"Well, you do give good conversation, I have to admit that. It's, understand, you were picked out by an AI that spent nearly a hundred years experiential finding the right person. You weren't the only choice that met our needs, just the best combination of factors in one place."

"Ah. I see. You want my secret pizza recipe? That, and the right to make auto-bikes like mine?" It wouldn't be that.

The food was good, but the bike was just barely passable. The power transfer was too inefficient. The calculations that he'd run said that an average person should be able to hit forty-seven miles per hour, and maintain it. So far the best he'd come up with for that was about thirty, and doing that took work that most couldn't keep doing all the time.

In short, it was nice looking, but a piece of crap, compared to what could be made. He'd just been busy, trying to come up with good nano level disassembly.

Wincing, he sighed.

Sam didn't ask what had been figured out, either.

"Yeah. You have to know that you won't be allowed to bring that out, don't you? If you try to monetize the plans, the government will lock it up. The only way to make a real change would be for everyone to be able to just run one of those things up, to use at home."

"I see. So you want me to just give away my best work? It really isn't that easy. You and your people get that, right?"

There was a long pause. It drew out, with more pacing for a while. Mason filled it with eating, but had to stop about five bites later, only half the cake gone. He was getting too full. Too much more and it would become painful, even if he hadn't had that much.

Sam waited, after he stood to clear his plate. He left Sam's, since she hadn't eaten much, even for a thin woman. It could be that his food designs sucked, but it wasn't the case. So he dumped the extra food into the hopper near the sink and put the scraped plate, and silverware into the wash unit. It was half filled with water already, since it had drained and cleaned itself after the last time he'd used the thing. It was silver and hummed lightly, sound being used to scrub it all for him.

It worked away and the water bubbled and boiled, even if it wasn't all that hot.

The entire time Mason did that, Sam walked back and forth. Using quick movements to get it done, seeming agitated.

He could see why, because it was clear that Sam was there to try and get him to do an info dump onto the net, instead of sensibly selling his new and unique design. Which was probably the right thing to do. After all, every time anyone came out with a disassembly unit, or even a complex materials sorter that didn’t work on the smallest of levels, the government shut it down.

That was kind of why he wanted one. Instead of dumping the remains of the cake and the last slice of pizza to rot and break down somewhere, with his new unit Mason could have put the remains of the meal in the device. Then the thing would have reduced the material to its individual molecules, and stored them for later.

He already had a good printer that would be able to use that kind of material. The only real difference was that, by being slightly intrepid, Mason, or anyone with the right disassembly unit, could just fill the hopper on the machine and have working material to do anything.

Printing a car cost about ten thousand dollars at the moment, or would for him. It would cost a whole lot more than that if he hadn't been able to do most of the design work himself. There were power expenses though, as well as the materials that had to be covered. If you didn't have your own copyright you had to pay for that part, too. In something the size and complexity of a vehicle that would run to about fifty different payments to get the rights for it all. Small ones, but they added up.

The same thing with a good disassembler could be done for about two hundred dollars.

Really though, Sam and her people had a set of problems they didn't seem to have plans for. Mason had worked on the idea, if only as a mental exercise.

Still, he waited, not wanting to push the woman.

When she stopped, she seemed troubled.

"I know that it's a lot of money to lose. We need this though. Destabilizing the economy is a risk, but if we don't do it, the government will keep getting worse."

Mason moved back to the table and plunked down, then started tapping the top of the thing. It was a nice white composite color. Cream really. He hit it several times with his knuckles.

"Money isn't the problem, Sam. I'm not that shallow or greedy. Think about it for a bit, will you?"

"I don't get you."

"I know. It can be hard to see it all. It's... Okay, if I dump a good disassembler onto the market, even for free, the government will be able to stop it instantly. Every printer and assembly unit is required to send a message to the Watch system with each object made. That pizza recipe was logged for each slice made. The cake and lemonade, too. If I want new plates, the same thing happens." It made sense to him, but Sam made a face at him.

"So?"

"Do you think the Feds do that for their health? If you tried to print an auto-gun, what would happen?"

"The police would storm the place before you could use it."

"Exactly. More to the point, if you tried to print a gun, it just wouldn't work, since the system would screw your design totally. If they catch you using an assembler that isn't reporting to them, it's assumed that you were making illegal products and probably distributing them. Bombs and things like that. So the machine has to be hooked up, but if it is, you won't be able to make a disassembler. Not directly."

"Which means?"

He tilted his head and tapped the composite again. It was mainly smooth, but there were tiny bits in it that left it feeling a bit like ceramic.

"Ultimately? That no one will be able to use that kind of device. Not really. I can get away with it, possibly, because I've been printing mine one piece at a time and building it that way. Most can't do that. They don't have the needed skills for it."

"So... Why build the thing in the first place? You've spent a lot of time on it."

"Why not? It's interesting, and I can probably use it here. Maybe make you one, or give them to my friends. Then, when it's ready I can sell the plans to some corporation or another and make a lot of money off of it. It's way too complex to just put the plans out for. Even if the government left it up for people to look at, and full explanations were given, almost no one would be able to use it. Not if they had to put it together like I am."

One of the things that Mason had always liked about Sam was that te hadn't been a moron. That apparently didn't go away just because the heavy makeup was gone. It was a little shocking to find that a VR actress was that clever, but it seemed like it was true.

She adapted to the news easily, too. That was one of the positive things that happened to people that did a lot of virt. They learned to flow with things suddenly becoming different.

"So, how do we get around that?" Her finger drew a circle in the air.

It was a simple question, with a complex answer. Rather than go into all of it, Mason shrugged.

"Really, you'd need three different things for it to really work. The disassembly tech, which I nearly have ready to go. I'd also suggest using a more primitive picker style thing, too. Not everyone will be able to use the more complex one. Having nano particulates means nothing if you're using an old extruder, right?"

"Yes?"

"So that's the first part, and doable. Then... Well, a team of steppers might be able to take out the system for long enough to let people get things set up. It would take... A while. A year? If the machine couldn't find who was doing what for that long it would work. I think."

Sam moved to the table, sitting across from him again.

"Let's say that I can put that part together. It won't be easy, or a hundred percent effective. If we can keep, say, half the people setting things like that up safe?"

Then it wouldn't work. That was so clear he made a face at the cute girl.

"You know better, Sam. If half the people get arrested, or given what we just saw, killed, for printing the wrong things, then almost no one would risk it. Honestly... It might be better to go around the problem. Have people print out new assemblers, with a non-hard encoded chip that could be pulled, to prevent the things from tattling with each printing. Then we could use those in a secondary system, which can't be tracked. The next bit would be the hard one then." Well, there were two problems, but he didn't mention the last one.

Sam did it for him.

"Watch."

"Yep. The power draw from devices being made, and the materials used, would be pretty easy to find."

There was a way around that, but it wasn't totally invisible.

The girl sighed.

"That will have to be gotten around. I can possible work something out, though I'm not allowed to tell you how. Power is..."

"The easy part." Mason smiled, and stood up, then jogged out of the room.

The thing he wanted didn't really look like a lot, since it wasn't. It was in a glass jar that was clear, the lid made of metal, with a soft composite seal on it, so that the nano particulate machines inside wouldn't escape.

He sat it in front of the girl, and pointed at it.

"There you go. Magic."

"What is it? Solar paint?"

That was a good guess, but wrong, so he smiled as he plunked his butt back in his chair.

"Nope. The idea is similar, but this actually turns heat into electricity. The efficiency rate is about equal to most solar configurations, but it's made out of a combination of copper and iron, which is cheap to get. It doesn't cost much to make, and if you coat something about the size of this building, you could power a single assembler full time. Night and day. Maybe two or three of them. If people had this, or things like it, they could run the new machines off line, and not be noticed. Not until Watch figured out what was going on. It would happen eventually, but if the saturation of the new machines was high enough-"

There was a bit of an excited nod then from across the table.

"I get it! It's a lot of work, but if we can protect the first groups of people making things, distract the government, we should be able to spread the idea around pretty fast. It will need a failsafe, because people will screw it up otherwise, but it might work."

Mason nodded.

"The big problem is still Watch. Or, well, people being dipsticks. The initial materials used will show up in the system, and even if we can hide that, people will need to cover that they have the new devices at first, until everyone has them. Then people could switch over, inside a few days." It wasn't really possible, not with all those people involved.

Plus there was the other part of things. It was one thing to think about taking the current system down. Being a revolutionary was even kind of romantic. Adventurous, and interesting.

"Should we really do it though? The entire current system, all the jobs, almost everything, will come down, hard and fast. Okay, so if everyone can make enough power on their own, and assemble and disassemble what they need... That will offset a lot of issues, but it doesn't keep a medical facility up and going, does it? It won't get you a place to live either. So in one move we'll pretty much make money meaningless, but it will also leave gaps. Places where you need cash to get by."

There was a shrug then, the light colored top that Sam was wearing moving easily. It tried to fall down a bit when she leaned forward to brace herself on her elbows. The gap at the front showed that she probably wasn't wearing anything under it.

"People will adapt. There will be other things needed then though, or the government would just go house to house and take the things. We don't want a war, but people will need to be protected from the MCTs, and drones. Otherwise it will be a slaughter."

It was an interesting idea to chat about, but Mason didn't really know that he was brave enough for it. Even though it was clear that if Sam and her group didn't have him, they'd need someone similar. A person with the right tech, who was willing to just give it away. That, and to make money an outdated concept. It was a bit frightening to consider, since it meant giving up all he'd earned. If it happened correctly, then it wouldn't matter, since in the end he'd have what he needed. So would everyone else.

He shook his head, but knew that if anyone was ever going to really do this, or something similar, he had to be the one. No one else would.

It was too crazy, even if it worked.

"Um." It was a definitive sound, and got attention from the woman, who leaned in even more. Like she was trying to flash her breasts at him. Mason didn't fall for it. He'd seen them before, and more than that, he got all the sex he needed. It made it harder for women to use that to control him. Most of the time that just meant he didn't coddle them in particular, treating them just like he would anyone else.

Right now it meant that his stupid idea, their incredibly moronic plan, wasn't just about him hoping the actress would suck him off later. If that was the case he could get it anyway, without her even knowing about it.

Still, that got him to think about what it all meant.

"Damn. Well, I guess I won't be having VR sex with you anymore, will I?"

Sam tilted her head, her pretty blue eyes questioning.

"Hmm?"

"You know, you don't fuck people in virt that you know in real life? It screws things up too much. If I keep doing you there, which by the way I haven't been for a while, but say I went back to it, then grabbed your behind in the real world, by reflex, it would be annoying for you. It's a rule. Modern morality at its finest. You know, like how you don't do violent things in VR? Because our brains are too primitive to understand that it isn't real. As far as that goes, nothing we see or experience there is really fake. We've talked about that before." They had, so there was only a nod in response.

"Ah. I have heard something like that. Trust me, once you get to be famous, everyone fucks you in VR, all the time. It's even worse than that. Do you know how many times I've gone to a friend's house only to find that they have a sex-bot version of me? Not just fanboys either. I mean, like adult men, with wives and kids. It's freaking creepy. How do they explain that? 'Don't worry kids, that actress in the other room is just there to suck daddy off when mommy gets boring'."

Mason could see that.

"Don't worry. If I feel the urge to do that I'll get you to come over and pretend to be a sex-bot. It shouldn't be that hard for you. I mean you know the role, right? You, only one tenth as intelligent. Well, it would work until my go-to first move in bed is anal. That might mess you up. I haven't really dated a lot in real life, but I have to imagine that would be considered moving a bit too fast. It's pushing a girl to her knees for oral first, then anal, right?"

Sam, her hands fluttering a bit, laughed like he was doing a comedy routine.

"Oh, God, no doubt! Half the time when I go on a date the guy announces he wants to have sex by trying to push me over something or other. Sometimes in public. It's like they can't even see me as a real person."

"Hence the not doing people you know in real life in VR. The rules are different in the two places, so it's best not to risk it. Overlay is powerful, and we all know it, but I can see it being a real issue for someone like you. Everyone thinks they know you, and a lot of them probably don't handle the idea that you have no clue who they are very well."

She sagged a little then, her head moving up and down.

"Not after they spent all those hundreds, or thousands, of hours with me. I mean, yes, I understand it. Some of them have been with me, almost constantly, for years. Then I look right through them, like I don't recognize them at all. What a horrible bitch I must seem like then."

Giving her a single friendly smile he changed the topic.

"So, I... It isn't that I'm not willing to help, but I can't do most of this. I can, possibly, help set up the designs for it? Is that enough for you, and your people?"

"What? I mean, that would be great! I hadn't thought that you'd help at all. You really won't get anything from it. Except possibly freedom. Plus, if we screw up too much, we'll all probably end up serving the rest of our lives in prison. Like I said, there's more than one plan in place. If we can have those plans though, the designs for the different machines you mentioned... That would work pretty well. Is that offer for all of it, or just the disassembler?"

"Um, it won't work if you don't have it all. It's going to take some doing to figure out how to build the first level printers that can be modified easily enough. They'll need some hardwired instructions, too. I can probably have that for you in a few weeks? Though..."

There wasn't a good way to suggest what he wanted to next. Sam watched him closely. Then again, if this thing worked no one would have any money left, including rich actresses.

"Would you like to start a business with me?"

He got the big spiel ready, but the girl was ahead of him. Sam was smart. It helped a lot.

"So that we can make the nano paint stuff?"

"Right! Then we can sell it, cheap, for people to use at home. We can hide what we're doing, a bit, by coming out with other things at the same time. I have some ideas. Things for food printing. A lipid arrangement for ice cream, among other things. It adds vitamins and minerals, but you won't be able to taste them. If it works."

"Can it be used in other things or only cold products?"

"I don't know yet, but it should be able to at least take low heat levels."

"Neat. Yeah, we can do that. We can start with the ice cream thing. How long will it take for you to run that up?"

The answer was that he didn't really know, but also that it wasn't going to take too long. Nothing really did, if you had a good set up for that kind of design work. Mason did. Right there in his spare room, he had enough equipment to make pretty much everything they'd been talking about. The big problem was that all of his machines reported everything he did to the government. Even the ones that he'd built.

It was the law, and not doing it made you look guilty as fuck.

"I'll set up a prototype in the morning? I get up early. I work from home, but it's better that way."

Most of his work was freelance, and Strome and Bunker was a very normal nine to five business. It wasn't a weekend night, which meant he needed to be available to them during that time. It was getting late, for him.

So, really, without being an ass about it, he was trying to suggest that Sam get the fuck out. He was about to get pushier when the girl stretched. She stayed seated, but arched her back, with her hands going high over her head.

"So, am I sleeping with you, or am I on the sofa?"

It was a good way to put things, if you were trying to control all the options. In this case it was probably all about not letting him have too much time alone, to think about how stupid going up against the entire federal government of the United States really was.

"Sofa? It's designed for it, but no one has ever spent the night since I printed it out. It's a great idea though." It really was, since it used a semi-rigid framework that self filled with air to support your body when you moved, but collapsed, very slowly, to become form fitting.

If Sam was disappointed at not being allowed to sleep with him, it didn't show. He was glad though. Oh, sure, he might have gotten sex off of her, but this way he'd actually be able to sleep that night. Having never had another body in bed with him, Mason had never learned the trick of it. This was better.

Plus, he'd already hit that. It had been all right, but nothing special enough to lose a whole night of sleep over.

Mason printed out a blanket for her, then a pillow. The apartment would be warm enough, but a lot of people enjoyed having things over them while they slept. He didn't say anything, just taking the tan, and very soft, covering over to her.

"Well, if you need anything, let me know? I get up pretty early, so." He had nothing to add to the statement.

"Goodnight! Thanks for letting me stay. I know it's weird, but I'll have to put all my makeup back on when I leave, and it takes about two hours. I need a faster way to do it, but I haven't worked it out yet. Otherwise someone will see me leaving, and that will end up with you being followed around for months, until some paparazzi sees a sex-bot in my likeness and thinks that means I'm sleeping with someone else."

It would explain all those stories on the net about her. Now that he thought about it, it might explain a lot about most famous people. After all, you didn't bother having sex with real people, when VR was just as available without any fuss or difficulty.

It had never made a lot of sense to him anyway, how often the rich and famous were supposed to be in relationships. Still, some people did it. Not him, but enough people that there was no real fear of the population vanishing on them. Not like in Japan.

They were down to about a hundred and forty million people already. That had actually helped them in the latest global warming treaty, but they were worried already.

"Well, no big. I'm single. I... You know I never asked, are you?" He really didn't know the answer to that one. Sam was, but te hadn't been real. Not to anyone but him.

Lexi Horn might be married or something like that even. Okay, that would be strange and odd, since she was pretty young for that kind of thing, but it wasn't impossible.

"Not at the moment." She yawned, and rubbed at her eyes a bit, letting him know that she was sleepy, even though that probably wasn't true. "Well, I should turn in. We have stuff to do in the morning."

He nodded, not thinking about anything until he stripped down and put on his pajamas. They were set to keep him comfortable all night. They'd hold moisture away from him, and not let him get too warm, which was a constant problem for him.

Then what he'd seen earlier hit him. Over and again. The MCT hurting Lewis Rhyse. His fragile human body cracking as he groaned in pain. The sound of metal composite structures hitting soft human flesh. The crying as he muttered that he didn't understand what was going on.

In the end, if Mason didn't stop it from happening, that could be him, or someone he knew.

If he tried, well, then it would probably end up being him for certain.

There was no easy way to beat the government.

Everyone knew that.

Chapter four

When he woke up, Mason Sims did what he normally would have, which was go to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and took one of the Slimtrix in the cabinet. That was a nice tan thing that had been generated to look like real bamboo. It wasn't, since that would cost even more than printing it had.

The little yellow pill, which was actually a brain hormone, had been found nearly forty years before. It basically made the system that let you feel full become very sensitive to changes. Luckily it wasn't big, so went down with a swallow of water from the sink.

Then, without even thinking about the fact that he might have a guest still, he went to the VR room. It was tempting to have sex, having not done that the night before, but he decided that he needed to be in shape now worse than being fully satisfied sexually. If he was going to be involved in stupid rebellion things, it might come up that running away was important. It probably wouldn't, but as sure as he didn't go running regularly, he'd need it. So Mason spoke to the room, setting up what he wanted.

"Um, running program, with some obstacles. Random, natural, rocks, people, animals... Eh..." The program was good enough to work out what he meant, and half a minute later the room flared a bit, then shifted to a rather nice looking and well groomed running path. It looked like it was in a forest, the ground like dirt.

As he jogged, he thought about what was really going on. The room itself wasn't very big, and the floor, for all it felt nearly correct, was made up of tens of thousands of tiny steel balls. The pad they sat in let them spin, but gave a sense of resistance, too. It wasn't perfect, but it was close enough for exercise, most days. The set up he had was good, but not absolute top end. For instance, if he wanted to have sex, he'd have to put on the rest of the outfit.

The laser grid would feed him the right images, and it did look right, but there was no way he was going to feel anything other than on his bare feet. He was in his skin tight shorts, but naked otherwise. It was what he did, so hadn't thought about it when he started.

The run was sedate, to start with. The first thing in the way was just a rock, that seemed to be about a foot and a half high. It was for jumping over, since he hadn't configured the room for that kind of thing yet that day. If he tried to step on it, there wouldn't be anything there to hold him up. It was mainly about keeping the run more interesting. The process was, in general, a mind numbing thing. All exercise was. You ran, or lifted things, and did it until it hurt. That made it pretty easy to want to avoid.

There were pills for that kind of thing. Ones that would give you muscle tone, and even add bulk, but he was young, and being that lazy hadn't made sense to him yet. Later, when he was getting old and staying in shape was hard, then he'd think about it. For now, taking Slimtrix was enough of a cheat to get him through life.

Things sped up, after that. He was still moving at a jog, but the path opened up a bit, leaving what seemed like real holes in the ground. Under him, thousands of feet down, the Earth was a fiery pit. That wasn't what he'd programmed the room for. The idea that he'd been hacked came to mind then. He was going to stop, but there was a roar behind him.

Looking back he saw two things.

First was a ruby red dragon. It was about the size of a large electric car, and had both fiery breath that hit his flesh with enough force that it had to be the blower fan being brought into play. As it came toward him, the girl on its back, who was wearing a white top and shorts, laughed. That was the second thing. There shouldn't be a way for her to be up there. Not without a lot of advanced programming being involved. Sam was smart, but that kind of thing took time to put together. No human, not even a good stepper, could have worked it out that fast. Not that Mason knew of.

"Run! Get'em, Fido!"

Then Fido, who apparently was a dragon, if a faithful one, tried very hard to kill him. It wasn't real, and being an adult, he knew that. Consciously. Deeper down he, like everyone else in the world, couldn't hope to tell that it wasn't actually there. It looked like it, and smelled like it too. Thanks to how he'd chosen to dress, not wanting to get his rig all sweaty, he wouldn't feel the chewing if this beast got him, but a deep part of him couldn't accept that he wasn't about to die.

So he ran faster. As if he weren't in a room designed just to make things seem real, when they weren't. Mason leaped over the holes that came, and then the rocks, as the giant lumbered behind him. After a few moments he was sprinting, doing his best not to die.

Which lasted until he fell down, gasping after about forty seconds.

Then, instead of the very lifelike monster eating him, or pretending to, it vanished, leaving Sam standing there.

"Mind if I run, too? I need to stay in shape. For my job." The woman moved in next to him, and started to step, which was horribly disorienting, since the room projected it was moving, even as he didn't. Gasping, he moved too, not enjoying it in the slightest.

Worse, after a moment she started running, going faster than he'd planned to. It kept going until, thankfully, twenty-minutes later the room shut off, like it was supposed to. It was largely black inside, with the wall lined with laser ports. It wasn't a huge space, being about ten by ten. The floor locked suddenly, which meant both people took several very real steps.

Sam slapped him on the back.

"Nice. I didn't know you liked physical stuff like this. We should go hiking sometime."

Still breathing a bit harder than he liked if people were going to be watching him, Mason nodded.

"Sure. Um, I'm going to go shower. Do you want to do that first?"

The girl lit up.

"Sure, it won't take long. I called my assistant. She's going to stop and get something for breakfast. Just so you know to let her in when she gets here."

He was going to ask what she was talking about, since what was the point of trying to be there secretly if Lexi Horn's personal assistant was going to show up with a box of donuts. He didn't get that chance however, because Sam moved out of the room like they had a time schedule. Which, he if no one else, actually did.

Get up, take his meds, exercise, get a shower, then eat something and start his day, at about eight. He was roughly on track, so far. Things would get a bit messed up, having someone else there, but as long as she didn't mind him working, it wouldn't be that big of a deal.

Not knowing what else to do, he got his clothing ready for the day, and set it on his dresser top. The wood was real looking, and should be. It was. The one thing he owned that was made of the stuff, he thought.

Then, still in his tight black shorts, that hit him mid-thigh, he padded barefoot out to the living room. The floor, which was mainly bare, and made of building composite two or three, was warm. Slightly textured, but very basic. Plain, really.

Sitting on the sofa was a poor plan, being all gross, and there was food coming. It meant that he probably should have tried for the first shower. He didn't know how long Sam was going to take, but she had longer hair, and if she insisted on drying it, that might be a while.

There was a sound from the front door, a pounding that was so booming that he felt a thrill of fear. The MCT had come for him, for plotting against the government. The thought came to him, even as he realized how stupid that really was. They might be able to read minds, but it was impractical to read everyone's all at one time.

Also, if it were the police coming on full hard like that, the door would have been broken open, or exploded. Instead there was just another loud booming sound.

The screen, next to the inside of the door showed the feed. On the other side was a gen-neutral person that seemed to have gotten the idea totally wrong. The man was vastly muscled, and had to be six-six. Most women didn't look that way. The clothing was very workman like however, and the face was made up at least as well as Sam had the night before. It was mainly green and black, but also clear that the cheeks and nose weren't really like that. He could see a very faint line under both of them.

Taking a breath, he opened the door slowly.

"Hello? I-" A large hand came out, hit him in the center of the chest, and knocked him back out of the way. It wasn't really an attack, but the big person moved into the room like they owned the building. Worse it was like he wasn't the one paying his rent, since the tan covered man, or person, since he was going to try and be polite and honor te's style and lifestyle choice, not being a prick most days, clearly seemed in charge suddenly. He fell back, and the other form owned the space instantly.

"I'm here for Lexi Horn. I brought food." The voice was very high pitched. Not fake sounding, but wrong for the body it was attached to. A woman's sound, which didn't fit really. Not for the kind of person you saw in real life. Maybe in a virt show. The box in the other hand was pink, and big enough he was happy he hadn't eaten yet. If he were holding it the thing would have had to have been in both hands.

"Te's in the shower. Sam is. Is that who you meant?" It was probably silly, trying to cover for the girl with her own assistant, but there was a happy smile as te moved over to the fold out table, which was still out and had chairs under it from the night before.

"Sam. That's it. Um, I'm Lisa. Nice to meet you." It didn't seem like Lisa really was, totally, but there was no hitting, or weapons being pulled, even as she sniffed a bit and stared at him.

Then, he was mostly naked.

"We went for a run. VR. I get the next shower. I'm Mason. Mason Sims."

Lisa rolled her eyes, then took her heavy tan jacket off, putting the thing on the back of one of the dining chairs, instead of in the closet by the door. When she turned around the green shirt she was wearing did prove that the woman was horrible at the whole gender neutral thing, if not in the way that he'd figured on at first. She had large breasts, and solid abs. Her face was lean too, under the makeup. Then, being surprised that there was a disguise in play was ridiculous, given everything.

Lisa looked around, and gave a somber nod.

"Do you have anything like plates?"

Because he was a guy, he was supposed to not have that kind of thing, which was annoying. Sexism wasn't dead, it had just changed its name.

"Sure do. Over here. In the kitchen? I keep the food related things there. It's an idea I dreamed up one night." Okay, so he sounded a bit snotty about it, but she'd started it. Acting like he ate off of the top of a cardboard box still. He hadn't done that in years.

It didn't seem to get to her, and the woman with the green face, and funny hat that clearly had lumpy hair under it, which meant long, set to work putting things out quickly.

He'd figured that it was going to be donuts, or maybe pastries, since what else did a person get when they were out, but it was mainly fruit. From the irregular sizes and shapes it was either from an incredibly high end print place, or real. That was cheaper, and would explain why some of the pears still had little leaves attached.

Three plates were set up, so assistant or not, it seemed that Lisa was expecting to get in on it. More to the point, she expected him to eat, too. It was his place, but that didn't mean a PA would know that. That she'd cared enough to pick something up at all was nice. Probably part of the job, but still, it was different than he would have thought.

When a plate was handed over, with a pear on it, and two peaches, he smiled.

"Hey, thanks. It looks good." The pear was a bit hard, but he ate it anyway. It was nearly ripe, which was close enough.

Lisa had a plate that was heaped with food, and sat at one of the chairs to eat, while he stood.

"There's this produce stand near my place in town here. Did Sam get you up to speed on everything?" The woman ate as if it were going out of style, the manly face passive as she did it. There was a lot of eye contact at the same time.

"The thing where you're coming here to be my new cook? Yeah. I have to say, it's impressive. I don't know anyone with a personal chef. I guess I'm hitting the big time now?" It was all just him being funny, but the woman didn't respond at all.

Not at first.

"So, she didn't get you up to speed?"

"How would I know that? You'll need to ask her." Mason didn't want to be a dickhead, but it was a real point. If Lisa was an assistant, then she might, or might not be part of anything else. The whole thing could be a trick, really.

Except that the thing with Lewis Rhyse was real. That man had been hurt, and the business had been trashed pretty well. It was possible that the whole thing had been faked to bring him into the fold, for some reason, or even to frame him for something, but that wasn't the important part. This was reality, and not VR. It could be hard to tell every now and then, but there were ways to do it, if you paid attention. For instance, he was cool all over, the sweat drying as he waited for a shower. That was a good sign, since it was generally not a thing anyone would have bothered with faking.

Before he got to the end of his meal, which didn't take long, even if it left him feeling pretty stuffed, Sam came out into the living room. She wasn't wearing any makeup, but had her buff colored Sam outfit back on. Since she had a bundle of things in her other hand that probably meant she was naked under her clothes.

"Hey. You two met?" Her voice was friendly, that, and warm seeming. The feeling was that she actually wanted him to like Lisa. So far she didn't seem too bad, over all.

It was a bit strange, having two people there in his place. Three was the biggest number that had been there since he'd moved in, and the other time it had happened it had been the guys from the moving company that he'd hired.

Lisa gave a look that was frank and meaningful.

"We exchanged names. I asked him if he'd been briefed, and he pretended not to know what I meant. So, is he an idiot, or just that good?"

Before he could bother being insulted, Sam chuckled.

"Since he's probably the smartest person either of us have ever met, I'm thinking we should go with that second one." She shifted over to Mason, and reached out to pat his shoulder. "Mason is in. At least on the important stuff. More than we were asking for. Not just the disassembler, but some other things we didn't know we needed. It will change the plans, but in a good way. The cover is a business we're starting together. Lexi Horn and Mason Sims. I'm doing the bankrolling and public face stuff, and he'll be providing the designs and first run prototypes. Naturally I'll be stealing all the credit for it. You're good with that, right Mason?" There was a silly look on her face, like she was playing with him.

"Heh. Nope. You should be all humble and tell everyone how wonderful I am. It will make you look better. People expect actresses to be vain and glory seeking. Talking up someone else makes you seem kind and genuine. People love that kind of thing."

There was a half second pause, and then Sam moved to sit in the same chair she'd been in the night before.

"Good point. See, I told you he was smart. So what's on for today?" This was addressed to him, for some reason. Blinking he glanced at Lisa, and then shook his head.

"Well. Um, I need to get to work. I'll try to have the lipid product ready to test in three days or so? I should have the, um, disassembler plans ready in a week. The rest will take more time, since some of it will need to start from scratch. There are things involved. Right now, I need to get that shower and start for the day. Um, what do you two have going on?" He was horrible at small talk, he realized. Normally he didn't notice it, but it was painfully clear suddenly.

Thankfully Sam was a natural in that area.

"Mainly hanging out for the rest of the day. No parties or anything. I can look into getting a business license going? Lisa can stay here with you."

Mason shook his head.

"Not that I don't love having company, but no. Sorry Lisa, it's not anything against you, but it's going to be awkward going in for VR sex later, with you standing there watching me. Plus, I actually need the time to work." He sounded rude, he knew. It was the wrong thing to say, and now everyone would hate him.

It was why virt was better. If he messed up like that in there, he could always just go and restart from the last good save point. Lisa shrugged.

"I hear you. It should be safe enough for you to be alone in your own place. I do get the idea though, Lexi. Things seem to be paying off more than you thought they would, and now you're afraid the troops will swoop in and take him out. That probably won't happen. If it did, then my being here wouldn't make a difference. I'm good, but I can't take out a strike force alone. Do you have anything actionable, or is this just a feeling?"

The actress looked away and then shook her head.

"Neither. I kind of just want to make sure he doesn't escape. This is big, and I don't want to blow it now. You have to understand L. We just went from a bunch of people and a pipe dream, to an actual group that has a plan that might work."

Mason tried to follow along, but then waved and walked out of the room. There was no need for him not to be clean, and his hands were sticky from the fruit. It was annoying, and would eventually get all over the place if he wasn't careful. Maybe, with luck, the women would leave by the time he came out.

That didn't happen. He washed quickly, and dressed as if he was going to make up for time that way, only to find both ladies still there, putting on makeup in his white colored living room. White and bright red, to go with the green and black that Lisa had on.

Rather than stand there politely, waiting for the women to finish, which he'd been assured might take hours. Instead he cleared his throat.

"I'm off to work then. I'll call you when I have the first things ready?" It was what they needed from him, after all.

Sam waited, since Lisa was putting a fake nose bridge on her at the moment.

"Sounds great. Regardless, try to call in at least once a day. If I don't hear from you, I'll come and bother you in person."

"Riiight. That makes sense. Later Sam. Later Lisa."

"Yup." The giant muscled powerhouse went back to work without missing a beat.

The work itself was actually a lot more fun than he'd thought it would be. The lipid housing was a bit tricky, and in the end he had to house the stuff inside a matrix of carbon molecules. The rest was surrounded by fat, with the interior space being just about right to cover anything less than ten microns across.

The trick then was that you had to make each kind of vitamin, mineral, or drug singularly, rather than just plugging in a multi tab. It was a bit tedious, but worked.

In the end, taking a small sip of it, Mason found that it tasted just about like he'd expected. That being like a mouthful of fat.

Without pausing he pulled up a recipe on the float screen in front of him. It had a neural interface, thanks to an imbed that he'd designed for himself which sped things up so much that using anything else was insane. It tracked his movements as he walked to the other room, and set up his food assembler to make some ice cream. The only difference was that he wanted to plug the new fat substitute into place. That meant filling one of the under the counter containers with the stuff.

While that ran up a full batch, he headed back into his office, his screen moving ahead of him, going transparent as he moved, so he'd be less likely to trip.

Normally, after doing something like that he would have rewarded himself for a job well done by a trip into VR. Today he headed back to his workspace, and actually set up the needed order of operations for the disassembler. At the same time he started printing out copies of the heat capture nano set. The thermo-electric one, since having more on hand wouldn't hurt anything. Then, and only after that, did he remember that he had a batch of ice cream sitting in the other room.

"The lunch of the strong!" The ice cream tasted like vanilla. Nothing else in particular. Just like good, fairly high end, ice cream.

"Full of vitamins and minerals though, so your kids won't get scurvy." Talking to himself was a poor habit. It would have been if anyone else was around at any rate.

Something that Sam had mentioned hit him, so he tried making several other things, too. Crackers, some doughnuts, and a butter substitute. It was strange, what worked and what failed utterly. It had to do with the heat levels needed. The doughnuts all had a strong taste of metal to them. A powerful flavor of it. The crackers were fine though. That was because of the way they'd been assembled, he realized. The process for those didn't actually cook the food, just gave the appearance of it.

The butter substitute was actually good. It held its shape on a warm counter, and if he'd done the math right, it wouldn't go bad for weeks. The carbon was in the spots where oxygen needed to be in order to make the lipids go rancid.

It worked so well he made up several fake nut butters, too. They were close enough he couldn't tell the difference. That wasn't saying much, given that he normally ate fake foods. It kind of lent itself to a skewed palate after a while.

He pushed himself like that for the whole day, then had to spend his evening doing the work that he should have been getting to for Strome and Bunker earlier. His actual job. For the people that paid him money to goof around with print designs. In this case he was supposed to be making an alternative design for running shoes. It wasn't hard to make shoes, and no one thought it was. No, his job was to do it in a fashion that would give S&B a way to produce them without infringing on, or having to pay for, anyone else's copyright. Technically he could have done that for himself, and then sold the plans, but it had been their idea. They had some kind of idea for it, and Mason simply didn't.

As strange as it seemed, he spent about six hours staring at his float screen as he walked around his place, looking at everything that had ever been put into a running shoe. Then in about thirty minutes he came up with a new design that no one had ever thought of before. It wasn't really hard, though the nano sized "comfort bubbles" that he'd invented for the soles were pretty much wasted space. They should lower the weight of the things, and leave them more flexible.

It took two tests runs to get through it, because he was sleepy enough when it came down to it that he made a stupid mistake, and printed it backwards. As if gravity wouldn't be part of the equation?

It was funny, so he redid it, and let them just sit there on his work bench as he moved to get into bed. They were shoes, but it made sense to test things first. Which he could do in the morning. He didn't do his best work when he was tired. No one really did.

The next day was quieter, and while he worked out in VR, he also loaded a program that made it seem like a hot actress was giving him a blowjob. One from about eighty years before that someone had put on a catalog on the net. It cost him three dollars to download, but was pretty good, as far as the interactions went. They all felt real.

Alyson here was cute, but really friendly, too. It made him feel like she actually cared about him, when she got to her knees.

Then he cleaned up and was able to get to work without bothering to cuddle for half an hour or listen to her go on about how hard her life was. It probably meant he was a horrible lover, if not a bad person. On the great side, that didn't matter.

Virt women just didn't care. They weren't programmed to.

Mason got the shoe information in after he did a basic test on them. It was funny, but the soles were actually stronger by about fifty percent than they should have been. It was probably the arrangement of air bubbles. The things were light, too, as he'd thought they would be. They were sized to him, so he put them on, and was wearing them when a knock came at the front door.

He expected the police, even if there was no reason in the whole world for that to happen, so when he saw the three people in suits he figured they were on to him already. It would be about the disassembler. Watch had probably worked out what he was trying to do.

He pulled the door open, and tried not to seem creepy, or like he was running. Not even if they were going to hit him in the face.

"Mr. Sims? I'm Henry Stodermier. Ms. Horn asked us to inquire about the relationship that you're developing? She said that she'd connect with you before we got here."

He was about to answer when he realized that Sam hadn't called him. That could be a simple oversight however. If he sent these people away, and they were the cops, or feds, then they might be suspicious, since they clearly knew something.

If they turned out to be lawyers or whatever, even if they did look like VR police detectives, then him making a big deal out of it would seem insane. Suspicious too.

Still, he hadn't gotten the call, and a good chunk of his life was spent in simulations of different things. Some of them were even spy oriented, which meant that he was practically an expert, as long as the people he went up against followed the rules of games closely enough.

"Um, sorry? I'm Mason Sims, but I don't know anyone named Horn. I don't think. Are you from Strome and Bunker? I sent in the shoe design in earlier." He held his right foot out, and pointed his toe, while turning it a bit so they could see his work. "They're pretty comfortable. A little warm maybe, but I can fix that. They'll get their own CR though, so that works."

Playing dumb wasn't a thing he did well, but apparently it was good enough for the moment.

The man in front, Stodermier, gave him a look that said he kind of wanted to start kicking Mason's skinny little ass about then. He took that to be a good sign.

"Lexi Horn? We're supposed to go over the deal you two have?" The fellow made a mistake then, trying to come in, uninvited.

It would have been one, if Mason were tough and able to kick ass. Since he wasn't that kind of guy, he waved the other two inside as well.

"Come on in then. I don't know who you mean. I'm not..." He spread his hands, because Mason didn't have anything to add. If he didn't know who it was, like he was claiming than saying anything would be a risk.

You didn't wax poetic about people you'd never met.

The hard looking woman, with too little makeup to cover the fact that she had been born a man, her blonde hair pulled back in an unflattering way made a sound that was kind of grunty.

"Lexi Horn? The actress? We know that you had her over here last night. Tell us all about it."

That got the fake lawyer man in the front to narrow his eyes.

"Why do I even bring you on these things, Bridger? Every time I make you promise to keep your mouth shut, and every single fucking time you fuck it up."

Mason looked from one to the other, then spoke to the last man, who was a bit chubbier than the other two, but smiled at him.

"I don't suppose you know what this is all about?"

The guy shook his head then, and glared a bit at the others with a hard little grin.

"We were told that someone had tracked Lexi Horn here the other day, and that her biomarkers stayed the night. It's a big story, if we can get it before everyone else has it. So, are you doing her, or what? It's okay to lie and say you are when you aren't. We get paid that way, too."

"Oh. Um, no? Let me see the biomarker prints though? Maybe I can explain what's going on here. Probably not, but it relates to what I do for a living. That kind of data, I mean. I can probably read it."

The people seemed a bit frustrated, but he was given the data, after he called his float screen over with a thought. The woman whistled a little when she saw it.

"Damn. If I had an Argent Prime auto I could sell it and buy one of those for myself. Sweet."

It was, but he didn't cover that he'd built it himself.

Instead he just started to analyze the data they gave him, then, after feeding them some ice cream, he smiled.

Then lied through his teeth.

Chapter five

"I see it... Right here. Look at this distortion." Mason pointed at the screen that floated about five feet up in the air, directly in front of him. It used a combination of fans and electrostatics to do the work, but since the air was really still at the moment was completely silent. It didn't weigh much, so didn't need the extra stabilization. That made it seem like it was hovering using magic, which was the point.

Short of pointing at it and telling the three empty suits staring that he, and he alone, was the high lord of all things tech, there was no better way to let them know how right Mason was.

Not that he was telling the truth.

"See that? Someone had a massive distortion field going. My bet is that it was on purpose." Then he overlaid the readings on his own building, the Claremont, from an outside perspective view.

Watching it run through time it was really clear that whoever had been watching had gotten things exactly right. When Lexi went to sleep on his sofa, he pretended to be shocked by it and laughed. It was phony, but the people with him seemed to buy it well enough.

"Okay, that's it! Duh. Te even mentioned something like that."

"Te?" This was the lead man speaking. His gray hair was slightly slicked back, as if to parody what real business people and lawyers would have been wearing. The blue clothing was about right, but didn't fit him very well.

Mason nodded, and pretended to be sending data to the screen while pointing. To make it seem real, he zoomed in on the scene. It was dramatic, if not perfectly helpful.

"Yeah. I had a buddy of mine, Sam, sleeping over the other night. Te... Don't let this out, but he's actually a man, a gender-neutral though, anyway, he'd told me that he'd gotten a job as a decoy, but wouldn't explain the idea. That does explain the expensive imbed te had. I'd wondered. I mean, most of the time when te wants something like that he comes to me for it. You know, for the reach around discount? Not that we do that. He's really strict about the whole gen-neu thing. I mean te is." Because everyone knew that whole third gender pronoun thing was a pain in the ass to use all the time. If he'd done it right it would, hopefully, confuse these people enough to throw them off a little.

It was the lady, Lizzy, that spoke then, cursing a bit.

"Fucking eggs! We have to sort out decoys now? What the hell is next?"

Mason knew that one, actually.

The system that the person watching Sam had used for tracking was kind of a blind one. The man, or woman, had driven around the city looking for specific bio-markers. Combinations of heat signatures, infrasound patterns generated by heartbeats and blood flow patterns. Plus electrical information that was given off by inskin computers and phones. The trick wasn't that hard, and held about fifteen or twenty different things that would be as good at telling who a person was at a distance as fingerprints would have been.

For instance, with a good enough sensor, it was possible to trace the main veins and arteries in a body using heat. That pattern was specific to only one person. Unless someone actually faked it. Mason had never even thought about it before, but it seemed that the paparazzi and their friends had. It was a clever trick. Even better, they could listen to heartbeats from about a hundred meters away, and follow a person that way. Each person was constantly shouting to the world who they were, if you knew how to listen correctly.

The idea was both a vast invasion of privacy, and made cameras seem a bit tame, suddenly. Without breaking a single rule or law, people could follow you anywhere. Well, possibly not below ground, but if they got a lock on you once, then they could pass the info to their friends, and have a hundred or more people walking and riding around. Each looking for signs of a host of important people that might be in their city or town.

So, clearly, the next thing to come would be using an imbed set to distort and change those things at random for Sam. It wasn't going to be easy to come up with it all either. The heat signature changes could be done by using thermal traps, and changing the patterns on the release, but how was he going to modify infrasound? Very low sound waves traveled vast distances compared to the ones in the audio range. It would take some doing to come up with the right thing that way.

Luckily these three weren't all that savvy as to what could be done with the existent technology.

Henry Stodermier glared at him, like he was lying, and tried to look hard and mean. It kind of worked, but made him seem a lot less like a lawyer than his act was supposed to. Then, he'd never claimed to be one of those. Mason had just seen the suits and jumped to his own conclusions. These were obviously net vultures.

Circling around the scene of what they thought was a story, hoping for bits of rotted information to fall to them. It sounded delicious.

"That's not possible. We didn't put out that app to have our prey get wise to it this quick. The boss is going to love this. Damn. Well, sorry about the trouble then, Sims." He looked a bit sly then, and opened his hands expansively. "I don't suppose we could talk to your pal? Te's getting paid to run interference isn't a great story, but it's something that might fill some screen time."

Shrugging, Mason moved toward the still open door. He'd left it that way in case he'd needed to scream for help. Lizzy and Henry both seemed pretty tough, and that probably meant that the shlubby fellow was carrying ten illegal weapons. If they'd started to beat the truth out of him, Mason would have been screaming about his impending rape as loud as he could. With the door open, Watch would have picked up on it, most likely.

They weren't allowed to set their sensors to listen to what you were saying directly, but if you projected anything beyond your walls, or left a door open, that was perfectly legal. It felt funny to use the government that way, when he was planning to shut them down, but for the time being he needed to utilize what would work.

Plus, it wasn't like he hated them. The government was, in the end, just made up of people. Mason just couldn't get the image of what some of them had done to Lewis Rhyse out of his head. That was all.

Moving to the door, summoning the three with a come here gesture, Mason decided to tell the truth. Not the whole truth, but the made up one that he wanted the others to believe.

"I don't know? Probably not. I don't know how things like that work, but if it was me I'd make my employees sign a non-disclosure agreement. Then pay them better than you can afford to, so that they won't expose the system." It was practically common sense, but the three people suddenly were all staring at him, like he was telling them something important.

Henry nearly growled as they all went out the front door.

"Oh? That's what you'd do, is it?"

He nodded, trying to play innocent.

"Yeah. It makes sense. I can ask though. Stodermier? I can have Sam get in touch with you if te wants to make a bit of extra cash?"

There was a dark and slow nod then, and a tiny headshake.

"Not a lot, but some. Times are hard, for most. We can't afford to pay too much." Then he wandered off, into the rust colored hallway. It had been repainted about six months before, so still seemed clean and fresh, but it was an ugly color.

As the door closed, Mason muttered to himself, trying to play spy still. If he were in that kind of world, and one where people came to his door pretending to be paparazzi counted as suspicious in his book, then he needed to hold to the whole story really tightly for a while.

"Sam, what the fudge are you getting up to?"

Then he cleaned up the dishes that he'd served the ice cream in, and smiled. That had really worked well. It was good, and didn't seem like a multi-vitamin tab. If he laced the food with other things he could use it for a lot, without anyone knowing about it. If he were a creep, that was.

Being that he wasn't one of those, or no more of one than most people, he moved to his work room, and started to map out an imbed system that would alter various biomarkers on command. At first the idea of making it random, just to scramble things had seemed right, but then it occurred to him that while Sam might not want people to know te was Lexi, Lexi would want to seem like herself when in public. Otherwise people would just catch on and start using some other means to track her.

For the next day and a half he worked on that, interspersing his S&B project modifications. The new shoes needed heat releasing vents on them, he'd discovered after wearing them around for a bit. They were insulated, due to the nano bubbles, which acted like little heat traps. That let him put in three different sets of information all of which changed the things a bit, giving the company even more copyright options. It was nice enough work that his boss, Stacy, sent a message telling him what a good boy he was.

Working so hard and everything.

It wasn't until a few days later however, in which time he hadn't left the apartment, or gotten in touch with anyone, other than to make a raw material order, or to send plans in for his job, that Sam and Lisa came to visit.

When he got to the door, he wasn't certain it was them at first. His float had come with him, so he used his test program to read the biomarkers, just to make certain.

If it wasn't Sam, then someone else had actually figured out how to fake all those life signs before he had. It was possible, but not very likely.

He pulled open the door, to see the two matching orange faces. The shorter one was scowling at him, which wasn't normal.

"You were supposed to be in touch-"

Mason cut her off.

"Hey Sam. How are you doing, L? Come in. I have a present for you. Both of you." Adding a bit about that being kept down his pants was a bit too much, so he stifled the urge. As far as the world knew these two in their matching black jumpers were non-sexual, and teasing that kind of person, while funny, was also considered really rude. "Come on in."

He reached out and tugged at Sam's sleeve, actually moving te's body into the apartment. Lisa walked, under te's own power. As soon as they were in, he put a finger to his lips and backed into the space, then led them both to his work room. It was a bit cluttered in there, but that was mainly due to the fact that he had a lot going on at the moment, not that he was messy.

Feeling fairly secure, he explained himself before anyone could ask about it.

"Sorry. A few days ago three people came here, claiming that you'd sent them. I played dumb, and suggested that the bio-markers that seemed like Lexi Horn that had been traced to my sofa were, in fact, my buddy Sam, who had a job as a decoy. Still has, as far as I know. Unless you got fired? Henry Stodermier, some woman named Lizzy, who used to be a guy I think, and some other guy."

Before he could ask if the names meant anything, both of the pumpkin faced women made little frustrated sounds.

Lisa swore.

"Fucking leeches."

Sam however just made a frustrated sound.

"Yeah. Those three, their entire network, keeps finding everyone, all the time. If they can get me dressed like this, no one is safe."

Dramatically, Mason reached over to the bland cream colored work bench top, the composite supporting two containers of clear liquid that had sponge rollers on them. He picked one of them up, and held it high in the air.

"Ah, but you see, I have the answer right here. I was allowed to look at the data, so worked out how they're doing it. With this imbed I can change you. Make you better. Able to walk where others cannot, and stand where all men fear to tread!" It was from one of the virts that Lexi Horn had been in. Only the opening lines though, that had been in the advertisements. More to the point it was close enough that she smiled.

"Sorry?"

Pointing at the imbed applicator, he spun the roller on the top with a single finger from his left hand.

"You have an inskin?" It was the kind of computer system link that most people had. Mason didn't, having put together an imbedded data stream instead, of his own design. They worked about the same though. His just hadn't cost a month's salary, was faster and connected to more network options if he wanted them.

"Sure. Everyone does. And?"

"With that you'll be able to select one of ten different bio-marker profiles. You can choose from Sam, Lexi, and a few other people that I made up. Obviously, there's a fake Lexi, too, and you can just turn the thing off to be yourself. It will change how you look to infrared and ultraviolet, as well as alter the little sounds that your body makes. That might feel a little weird, since your whole body has to vibrate a bit for that to work. Not much though, so you might not notice it. That will let you come and go when you want. Not just here, but anywhere, if you use it right."

There was a low and slow whistle from Lisa then.

"Okay. I can see it. Do you know how much this is worth? Most won't need it, but half of Lexi's friends, the famous ones, would be willing to pay a lot for it. Can you make more?"

"Hmm? Oh, yeah. It isn't hard now that I have the design for it. I did register it, so, you know, Watch won't be fooled by it. Just people that aren't authorized to be following you around all the time. I mean, it probably could be used that way, to trick Watch, but that isn't the point of it. I'm a good, law abiding citizen, after all." He sounded like he was overselling the idea, and Sam snorted a little bit.

"This is incredible. How do we do this?" She waved at the vial with the roller. "And what color will it turn me?"

He tapped the clear plastic case at the bottom. It was about the size of a spray bottle, holding half a liter of fluid, but almost no color of its own.

"It should make you just ever so slightly darker than you are, in whatever shade you are at the moment. It has to go on to your skin though. So for you, with that imbed you have, you'll be slightly more black. A darker gray? When you take that off, for your next role or whatever, then you'll need a new application, because the standard stripping agent will remove this, too." He looked at Lisa, and shrugged.

Then he pulled up her sleeve a little bit, and saw that she was well tanned, but didn't look to have anything on her other than some normal skin coloration.

"You'll probably be about the same. Is that an artificial dye?" He pointed, and she got what he meant, nodding.

"Yep. So, um, you know that I can't afford this kind of thing, right?" She grinned a bit, and looked off to the side, like not having an extra million dollars lying around was a huge sin. Then, she hung around with Lexi Horn, who no doubt had rich friends, so maybe it was.

Sam shrugged, "I can cover you. No big thing."

Mason didn't comment, since it was nice that they thought his work was worth that much. It was, but outside of certain circles most wouldn't have gotten that part. Not until the bill came.

"Which would normally be a great idea, except that I don't want a money trail between us yet. If those people can track bio-markers, they can probably follow where the large flows of digits are going, just as well. That's illegal, but so is stalking, right?"

Sam nodded, and Lisa actually slapped him on the arm. She was so big and strong that it hurt a bit. It was, he figured, rather more than human strength, meaning some kind of augmentation. Probably genetic. He didn't work in that field, but she wasn't wearing powered armor, so it made sense to him.

"See, I knew signing on to be your cook would pay off."

He snapped his fingers.

"Right! Speaking of which, I have some things for you two to try before you go. I hate to be a pain, but you both need to get the face paint off. Anything else that blocks your skin, too. Then we can get this into place. Sorry to be a pain that way, but it's how it works." Imbeds had to have skin contact, so that the compound that turned them into what were essentially tattoos could go to work.

Everyone knew that, so the women both nodded, and left the room.

Not wanting to waste his life on other people, Mason got back to work, and managed to finish the printing of one of the last pieces of the disassembly device. All he had left was a housing section. That and some kind of alternate power source that Watch wouldn't be able to trace. Really, he could have set that up already, but he didn't want to test the thing there, if he had a choice.

Using his float, which adjusted to be over his desk at the right height, he got the last bit going. It would probably be done before the two women had their makeup back on.

As it stood it was nearly finished, the machine drawing the whole thing upward as it was put together, when both ladies came back. They had their jumpsuits on, but their faces were both bare. Given that they were holding bundles of other clothes, it was kind of clear they were naked under that black top layer.

"Good. Okay, you both have had things like this before? You know how it's done?"

Sam had, as her slightly charcoal colored skin attested, but Lisa shook her head.

Mason could see that. Even cheap imbeds were about the price of a new electric car.

"The trick is getting it all over your body. For this one it doesn't have to be perfect, but you'll want to prevent streaks, which will happen if you miss spots. Work it into your hair, put it on the soles of your feet and your palms. Everywhere." He was about to feel shy, but then decided not to care. He wasn't trying to bang either of them, so a lot of the pressure was gone that way. "I mean that too. Wet a finger and go up your behind with it, and do the front, too. The better the coverage the better it's going to work. There are two of you, so you can get each other's backs. These two bottles are the same, so don't worry about that. Then we wait, and let it dry. Once you have it applied, that will take twenty minutes or so. Use the whole thing for each of you." It probably wasn't needed, but they were a lot more likely not to miss anything if they did it that way.

Then he left the room. The floor would be able to take the nano compounds and not be stained, but he wasn't certain the bathroom floor could do the same.

Not having anything to do at that point, Mason moved to the little kitchen space, which was open to the whole room, and started a new batch of ice cream, then ran up some crackers, and peanut butter substitute. He did some jelly, too.

Then he shook his head, his eyes going to the ceiling in exasperation at the same time.

"Freaking great." Jelly was fat free, but the sugars involved could be used a lot like the fat had been in the carbon cage. It would make it a little less sweet, but not enough to notice, he bet.

Calling his screen over, he worked on that while the ladies applied things to their naked flesh. He wasn't exactly dead below the waist or anything, and understood that they probably wouldn't have blinked much if he'd done the applications himself. Even the parts where things were put inside them. If they'd gone to a parlor for it, then that would have been expected.

The thing there was that if he had done that, it wouldn't have been very professional. It would have turned sexual, and that wasn't what he wanted. Sam was his friend, and Lisa was probably going to be, eventually, unless she turned out to be a jerk, or hated puppies. That was more important to him than getting a free feel or two.

He had VR for that anyway. When you could have any woman in the world, literally just by walking to the next room, it changed how you thought about things. A lot, really. There was a psychological explanation for it, actually.

For most of human history, regardless of how things were presented in given cultures, men had been enslaved to women. That didn't always show, since in some places they'd responded by enslaving them right back, often with force, but in free cultures it hadn't worked that way. Men were driven to have sex, which meant that for most of them, not being top specimens, exactly, that any woman that had been willing to flirt with the idea had a lot of influence over them.

VR and sexbots had changed that for a lot of men though.

Mason could see that one, too. He liked women all right, as people. They were often nice and could be friendly and polite.

The thing there was that when he monitored old movies and shows, the women in them were allowed to get away with insane levels of misbehavior. The men took it, too. Even the ones that would never have been allowed to have sex with the female leads acted like women were nearly sacred. They sacrificed their lives at times, just to save them. It was so pervasive that everything from more than forty years before had that idea worked deep into it. The people from back then probably hadn't been able to see it, either.

Now, since men didn't need women that way, they were treated equally. That had led to the baby crisis, but that wasn't his problem. Not on a personal level. He was only responsible for what he, personally, did in life.

The crisis had started about fifteen years before, at about the same time that everyone could afford the best VR units, and they were finally really as good as reality.

Over half of men stopped having sex with women, and while most of those that did were considered less than perfect, it left half of all women realizing that they still had a biological clock ticking, and that they needed men to make a baby.

Which wasn't totally true, but it had been what most women had done at the time. Go and find some random guy, normally a rather dumb and good looking one. Then get him drunk enough that he didn't realize he was having unprotected sex with the women. That meant that one guy was often the father of children with five or six different mothers.

Of course the government demanded that the poor dope pay for each of his kids, which left those guys either going to prison, for failure to pay, or working at great jobs, and living like they were incredibly poor anyway.

That phenomenon had pushed the good looking guys to VR, too. It had made the whole thing even worse, since women were still having kids, but the pool of men that were being used for it was shrinking fast. Thankfully the smarter women were going in for IVF, and having their kids genetically modified, so diversity was being maintained.

In a way it was a bit funny. Mason had grown up in a world where women were just slightly different, but truly equal, people. They were treated about the same as men, in most cases. His father though had told him about how things used to be, back when women controlled things, and pretended they had no power at all.

Oddly, his mother saw that one differently. To her, those were the good old days when people jumped to open doors for her, and the natural order was in play.

In a way, Mason had opted out of the system. He liked sex, but didn't want the baggage that went with it. He got enough of it that he wasn't driven to make a fool of himself with the women around him. Then again, he didn't go out very often, or do much that was accomplished in the real world. Most of the people he met were on the network and probably not real anyway. Not even on the other end of the line.

They were all just programs.

Predictable and easy to deal with, compared to real people.

The two ladies, his friends, came out about half an hour later, both wearing their clothing again. The faces were bare and the hair wet, but the proteins there wouldn't grab the nanos of the imbed. The nails on the hands and feet wouldn't either.

He glanced at Sam's face and nodded.

"Good. It looks almost the same, more or less. Have you tried to bring it up yet? The file should be under altbioset." Both of the women looked up and slightly left, as he brought his float screen up.

The app used to read the markers worked pretty well, so he noticed as they changed the signals coming from them.

Lisa moved forward, as if standing in front of the monitor would help him get a clear reading. It was funny, actually, but showed that she didn't really understand what was going on.

"I have it set to Mark O. Is that right?" She spoke the name of the persona as if she were giving a file name.

"Try Kerry." That one was designed with her in mind. At least when she wasn't in costume. "If you're dressed like a regular person, and need to vanish, use that one. If you can't be you, safely. Sam, try, um, Sam."

That reading was more manly than she actually was, being built off of Mason's. The screen shifted after about ten seconds, and held steady.

"Good. You can see the one marked Fake Lexi? That's for when Sam is making money as a decoy. If you use this right people should be pretty darned confused in short order. You can do the same, Lisa. Pretending to be fake Sam too. That will put Lexi Horn all over town, looking different each time. How does it feel?" He was a bit worried that the low frequency flexing their skin was doing would be annoying, but Sam closed her eyes and made little head motions.

"Not bad. I think I can feel what you mean. Like a heartbeat, a little? It isn't strong. Can I see your screen?"

"Sure." He sent it toward her with a thought, letting it rest in front of her face, if a bit down. That was where most people read comfortably.

For about ten minutes she and Lisa crowded around the thing, making changes to their bio-markers. Eventually they got bored though, so he fed them ice cream, crackers with butter spread, peanut butter and some jelly.

After the first few bites, Sam understood the idea and lit up.

"The supplement fat? I can't taste it as anything other than, well, food. It's not bad!"

"You thought it would be?"

There was no answer then, but after a moment, Lisa nodded.

"Sure. Printed food sucks. If you hadn't told me this was fake, I wouldn't have known. What's it for?"

He was about to explain the idea, how the nutrients could be added to low end printed foods, but Sam waved her hand a little first, taking the floor.

"It's part of that cover operation we have going on. We're going into business, and using that to hide behind, we will take over the world!"

Which was the plan, but it sounded so different, when you said it out loud like that.

Kind of stupid, really.

Chapter six

It took a while to get the two women back into disguise, dressed in their shapeless clothing and made up to look like pumpkins again. Not that they really were, lacking the cool vertical lines they needed for that, or tiny green things on top of their silly hats. Mason was about to suggest it, since watching them paint each other and adhere bits of plastic to their faces wasn't exactly exciting.

Instead he assembled the new machine, and brought it out, carrying the prototype lengthwise, so he could get the thing through the door. It was nearly as big as the dining table, and almost three feet high, so it took some work to move the black composite structure around. The thing wasn't exactly light, either.

The girls, if he wanted to denigrate them that much, since they were both adults, had taken the chairs. Sam was standing, putting the finishing touches on Lisa's face. She really did look wrong, being that color. The idea was simple enough though. The heavy face paint hid the prosthetics, which in turn were used to prevent the bio-metric machines from working. The cameras that Watch used would be able to find them anywhere, otherwise. So would almost anyone that had a private tap into the system. A system at least. There was more than one, after a fashion. Watch had almost everything hooked up to it, but there was also the merchant series, and probably more than that.

Almost every store, shop, club and restaurant had privately owned cameras used for security. Those ran through a common database, so that people cheating them, or just being a pain in the ass, could be tracked and dealt with.

Watch wasn't going to share data with famous people stalkers, but there were other ways of doing the same thing. A fake nose and some larger cheekbones, a more angular jaw line, all of these could help throw things off.

It was also highly illegal. Just like wearing a full face mask was. For the same reason, too. It could be used to defeat the biometrics. There were probably some special allowances for very famous people and their assistants though.

After all, it was clear that people really would go to almost any length to follow them.

Mason tried to be careful, since breaking his new toy before he got to try it out would be annoying. He could redo it all, but having to build it that carefully, so that the government wouldn't know about it yet, took too long. He'd worked on the idea for years, but the printing had taken about three weeks, which was forever practically. So he lowered the black box, like it was made of glass.

Lisa looked over, since Sam moved back away from her for a moment to inspect her efforts.

"What's this? A new ice cream maker?"

Looking at it, the four by three by two box really could have been almost any kind of industrial machine. It had an opening on the top, but that could have been the side, and there was a set of spigots near the bottom. They were a bit small for a good flow of frozen food, but Mason could kind of see it, now that it had been pointed out.

"Good guess. Wrong, but I can really see how you'd think that. It's a nano disassembler, as promised. I need to test it, but that will take some set up, if I don't want Watch coming down on me inside ten minutes of turning it on."

Sam turned, and smiled, then made a distinctly girlish sound.

"Goody. We can work that out. We need someplace off grid. I'll work on it. For now, keep that safe. I might send some people around to help move it, if that's good with you? It will be easier to find a place, and move it there first, then have the rest of us go along." She looked at it and shrugged. "I can understand if you don't want to do it that way. We could steal it."

That was possible, after all. Sam and her friends might not be revolutionaries at all, and could just be a tech stealing gang. If so, the problems that he would have working it still stood. It had to be done off grid, or else. It would be a shame to lose it, but he patted it a few times and stood up.

"That should work. Your plan. I can always make another one if I have to."

Lisa nodded a bit, and stood, then walked over the device.

"It looks good. Solid. All your stuff does. So, we should scoot. It's Friday, and that means we're going to be working." She made a face. "Parties. I'd invite you, but you're a bit small for a bodyguard. Sorry, assistant. It's illegal to have private security now."

The vast woman patted him on the back, sending him staggering a bit. Almost as if she were trying to make a point as to why he wouldn't be there to guard someone. It was a strange thought, since he couldn't see a reason that anyone would want him there. It was just so true that he didn't even feel bad about it.

After all, that he was standing there with two people that would be off at that kind of thing, going in real life and not VR, was so rare as to be nearly unbelievable. Him going too would be too hard to explain.

Mason looked at her and shook his head.

"Yeah, I can see that one. No problem. I have work to do anyway. You two go, and get that taken care of, and I'll do my thing, here. Thanks."

Sam looked at him, and seemed like she was going to apologize, but then just laughed.

"Got it. Like I said, I'll send some people, in a few days. Maybe sooner." Then, because the woman was strange, if nice, she walked over and hugged him. "Be good. I'll see you Monday? We really do have work to do. We should try to get away for a week or so. Can you get the time off?"

He did have about four months of time off built up, but it probably wasn't going to be needed.

"Maybe? If I can know about it far enough in advance. I get time for vacation. I just haven't had any reason to use it before, since I started at S&B. I don't know how easy or hard it will be to set things up." Which was true. He really didn't, having never tried it before.

Sam smiled and squeezed his arm. It would have been flirty, if her head didn't look a bit like a Halloween fruit display.

"Do it. Even if we don't need a test on this next week, we can head to the beach. I have a house there. A cabin really. Nothing huge. It will be fun. Maybe John can come along with us?" She looked at Lisa, who seemed to be thinking of something.

"That could work. It will take some doing, and might not happen. It will depend on him getting time off, and who the hell knows what Genesh has planned? Consistency and that boy do not mix well."

There was a soft smile and a nod then.

"That is one way of putting it. Well, get the time, Mason. We'll do something." Then she and Lisa walked out, as he considered the whole thing.

It wouldn't hurt him to lose a few days of vacation, even if he just stayed at home and worked the whole time. After all, he hadn't gone much of anyplace for years. As he walked them to the door, it felt kind of exciting. Doing something, almost anything, was a bit of an adventure. Going to the beach with friends was a good enough reason for getting time off.

So was testing his new disassembler. It would work, the simulations had shown that, but you always had to make sure of it.

Like everything always did, the work he'd done had made more. First he had to figure out how to hide nutrients of value inside a sugar bomb, then he set up a new data set for bio-marker masking. Each person would need to have their own set of information, or else things would become too obvious.

If other people had the current imbed, then it would be great for hiding Sam and Lexi, but kind of obvious that the person using it was trying to not be noticed. At least to the hundred people in the city that would bother trying to track the rich and famous. Or the underground, if it came to that.

When those two things were set in motion well enough, he went to the VR room. It was tempting to just get laid and go to bed, but that was a bit boring. Seeing how Sam and Lisa really lived, going to parties and things like that, made him feel a bit staid. He hadn't even been out of his apartment since the restaurant. It wasn't fear however.

No, if the MCT or even the regular police were ever to come for him, being at home wouldn't be safe either.

To that end he did something that he hadn't thought of in years. He searched out a basic self-defense program, and practiced fighting techniques. It was illegal to have games with realistic violence in them, and had been for nearly thirty years, since it didn't work in the world of virt too well. Rather, it worked too well, and was kind of thrilling, but people had kept getting confused, and attacking people in real life, not able to tell the difference. Little things would set people off, so the government had put an end to it.

Which wasn't really true, altogether.

You could play endless flat games that had a violent theme. That actually seemed to lower aggression on the physical level for some reason that no one had ever discovered a reason for. People played shooters sometimes that way. In three dimensions you could play in cartoon worlds that had shooting, stabbing and things like that, too. They were unrealistic and kept the means of aggression to specific and very unlikely instruments, so that people wouldn't gain a lot of combat skill that translated to the real world.

What Mason loaded was a basic martial arts class.

By the end of it he'd learned several useful things. For instance, being assertive was sometimes useful, if you were attacked. So was running away, which was his own favorite technique, he decided. The instructor, who seemed like a rather plush older woman, had also taught him all about eye scratching and how to properly kick and slap an attacking man in the groin. It was an old program though. He could tell, because there was no mention of the fact that women were just as likely to attack you as men were.

Also, the VR quality kind of sucked.

Still, the info was there, and easy enough to learn, if not exactly high precision fighting.

After that Mason found and loaded a chunky older woman into the sex program. She looked almost exactly like the class instructor. She wasn't very good in bed, but it was different than his normal type. It was always good to not let yourself get into a rut.

Then he cleaned up and went to bed, it being a bit late for him. Nearly eleven.

So he was a bit scared when someone pounded on his door, at about four. That wasn't enough sleep for him, or anywhere near. Mason liked to get at least eight hours and worked best on about nine. This five thing wasn't going to cut it.

When he got to the door, and checked the screen to the left, it showed what the camera on the other side was seeing. That was three men. One of them being held between the other two. He was the smallest, being slender and short looking. The others looked like they'd be able to rip Lisa apart. Literally. As in pull her muscular arms right off. One was nearly black, and had a bald head.

The other looked muscular, and tall, but normal, otherwise.

The only thing out of place was their clothing. That was all pretty nice, actually.

Knowing he was about to die, falling for the obvious trick that these stalkers or thieves had going on, he opened the door, not bothering to hide behind it. There was no way his body was going to stop either of these men from coming in. Maybe if they got the drunk looking central man to do it, he could hold him off for a while.

That one did not look like he was having a good night.

"Hello? Is your friend there all right?" When the door opened, he was face to face with the guy, who was clearly in trouble, now that Mason was closer. "Crap! Get him in, onto the sofa. What happened?"

Rather than laughing at him, once they were inside, the man tried to talk to him. It was hard to understand, but different than any high or drunk individual that he'd ever seen before.

He was also the only person that Mason had ever met with blue hair. People had a lot of different colors, but that didn't mean they came to his home like this.

"Heya. I's fine. Thangs."

The white guy on the right, who was carrying the man by the time they got to the white colored sofa got his package into place, tucking one of the pillows under his head. Then he turned, stood straight and looked ready to fight.

Mason hoped not, since he doubted this man would want to fuck afterward. Not in a fun or relaxing way.

Rather than yell or order him around, he waved at the guy behind him with a thick hand. One attached to a lethally looking muscled arm.

"He had a nano hive put in, earlier this evening. Something's wrong with it. The basic idea is that it's supposed to have opiate analogs, that can move in and out of place? But it doesn't seem to be working right. We tried to turn it off." He dug in his pants pocket on the right, and came out with a tiny silver box. It had two old fashioned controls on it. A metal switch, which was flipped to off, and a dial that was turned all the way down to zero.

Mason froze for a second, working through what was needed. At the same time he held his right hand up.

"Right. I need my lab. It's in the other room, down the hall, second door on the left. Bring him. Now." He ran then, because, or so it seemed, when robbers came to his house to take his new toy, the very best plan was to lead them directly to it.

Then, either the little guy needed help, or they really were going to take the disassembly unit. There was no use thinking that he was going to fight them off. No matter how many groin slaps he used.

So he called back to the men, who were following, if more slowly, dragging blue head along.

"Lay him out on the floor. I don't have a chair in here." He had a stool, but there was no way the man was balancing on it. Not even with help.

A nano hive. A fucking hive! The man had said that, but if it was true Mason was going to have to call in the government himself, and have whoever made it locked up. A hive was a very specific thing, and the important part was that they grew. On their own. They had self replicating mechanisms, which was where the problems always came into play.

The idea wasn't a horrible one, on the surface. You created a nano construct, or set, and instead of replacing them every six months, you made it so that they slowly replaced themselves, at just the perfect speed to become permanent. It wasn't really needed with most imbeds, since the skin held things in pretty good stasis that way for long periods of time.

In the body, especially in the brain, things moved fast and hard though, so nanos only tended to last about a month, if that. They were great, for cleaning things up and doing simple repairs, and as was the point here, acting as drugs that could be turned on and off.

You didn't try to make them into a freaking hive though.

Without waiting for him to be all the way on the ground, the large black man being pushed out of the way a bit, Mason knelt and ran a hand scanning unit over the man's entire body, while calling his float screen over.

"Sorry guys, but move. You're in my way."

The one with hair pulled on the other guy a bit, and moved into the hallway. They both kept watching however. Neither spoke, seeming to actually understand that he was trying to work. Because he hated jerks, and didn't want to be one himself, he started calling out what he was seeing.

"Okay, this is a hive. You called it, big guy. I'm going to have to take it out. That means a nano war, which can be messy, which is why we don't call it a nano celebration. So get ready for that. Right now his brain is being eaten. Slowly, thank god, but if we can get it now, instead of waiting three days, he probably won't have any long term problems from it. I..." Mason stopped talking, just kneeling there, looking at the float screen, the flimsy heaving a little, which was because he was breathing that hard, he realized. Near panicked on this strange man's behalf.

Then he worked for a while ignoring the others that were there, still wearing his pajamas. Thank god he wore something to sleep in every night. Sure, he looked twelve, but they were comfortable, and were at least a nice black and blue striped set. He'd nearly worn his Link-Girl ones. That would be embarrassing, since it was a kid's show. A cartoon, and the only thing he watched regularly.

The trick with fighting a nano hive was in overwhelming it, fast. The old gray-goo idea, thankfully, had never panned out, since things got in the way of the entire Earth being consumed by self replicating bots like that. Normally it was a lack of needed building components that did it. That didn't mean that slowly, over the course of days or weeks, it couldn't kill a person however.

Since making a hive was illegal, and normally caught early on, by Watch, it didn't come up very often like this.

It shouldn't have. Not ever. Anyone with even fifteen minutes of assembly studies in college would know better. In fact, he was pretty certain that the professor for that class had started the very first lecture with the phrase, "never turn nanos into a hive." It had been on the test, too. In fact, every test he'd taken had worked it in for that course.

Luckily he had a good machine for fighting that kind of thing not five feet from him. Most devices wouldn't have had a hope of making enough of a new nano set to do much, but his could. It was his own design work, so he'd been able to print the thing himself without it costing him five million dollars or more.

It started pumping out tiny machines, assembling them at a rate of a thousand per second. They were so little that it would take hours to beat the ones in this man's brain. Thankfully, it wasn't hard to introduce them. Mason let the man inhale the dust that was collected every few minutes. That meant they were all getting some, and that the room was no doubt covered with them, but the hive was also escaping every time the younger man exhaled, so that wasn't a horrible thing. If even one of them got out, it might infect someone else.

Then it could, in potential, spread like a disease. One that eventually ate your brain.

After the first hour, Mason sighed and spun the float around, thinking at it to make it move. It had a full color, if transparent, view of the activity inside the man's head. There were red and blue microdots, each a thousand times larger than the actual nanos involved.

"We're the blue ones. We just started to win. Now, if we can keep this up for a while, it should be fine. I don't suppose either of you know where he got this from?" He stared at the men, feeling self-righteous. Right up until he recalled that they'd just shown up on his doorstep at four in the morning, and might be robbers, or insane killers.

That wasn't normal, coming to his place that early, and pretty much had to be bad.

The big black one rumbled a little. It wasn't a laugh, just a low sound that reminded Mason of thunder in the distance.

"We can find out. What's the plan once we have a target?"

Mason stopped and looked at the man. It probably seemed hostile since the guy bristled a little, but he didn't mean it that way. He was just confused.

"I don't know what you're planning, but I was thinking that Watch should learn about whoever did this? Releasing a hive is... In the nano world there isn't a worse crime. Seriously, if you'd gone to a hospital instead of coming here, this thing would probably be in five people by now. In a week it would be in hundreds and after that, who knows? The body won't fight it off, so anyone exposed would be infected and die. As it stands, we need to make sure you both snort some of this dust before you go. We can't let this escape this room."

The white guy, who had a short brush cut, and looked like he'd once had some blond mixed in it, shook his head.

"No can do. If we let that part out, then our client will be zapped for purchasing an illegal medical device. He would not do well in a prison environment."

Mason took a slow breath, and closed his eyes. There were things to consider other than his own anger.

"Right. Fuck. What if this a-hole is still selling this crap though? I wasn't kidding when I said the county hospital is not ready for a hive outbreak. People can die. They will if this is handled wrong."

The men both nodded, and then went to the living room. Probably discussing the merits of killing him and dumping his body in the forest. Where there were very few cameras. Mason just kept working, which meant he was right there when the blue headed kid, who might have been about eighteen, opened his eyes and spoke.

He was clearly British, or at least was very good at faking it if he wasn't.

"Say, love, can I have a sip of water?"

"Sure. One sec." Then he stood and popped his head out. "Can one of you get some water from the kitchen? Your friend is awake."

They both came, after a minute, carrying a composite tumbler each. One of those was handed to him. Probably the one with the poison in it. He really was thirsty though, so drank it, hoping that paranoia was just a hobby of his now, and not a real lifestyle requirement.

Draining the thing he gave it back to the large black man, while his friend helped the blue kid to sit up, so he could drink his without drowning.

When he finished his own, taking it in huge gulps, the boy blinked at him.

"Well, that was fun. I don't suppose anyone knows where we are? I still have my pants on, so it couldn't have been that great of a night."

The big fellow with lighter skin color took the clear pink cup back.

"His house. We pounded on the door and he took you in. Then saved you from the nano hive in your dumbass head. Lucky for you. That was... I'd say it was stupid, but you'd take that as a compliment. By the way, you nearly died, and if you don't like hearing that you fucked up, go ahead and fire me. I have other job offers. Some of them are even with sane people."

The kid, who seemed like someone had drugged him, smiled dreamily. It was probably that there were enough nanos left that they were leaving him pretty high. That in mind, Mason got him the next small brown cup of dust, which was almost empty looking, and held it under the kid's nose.

"Snort it. It's what's taking out the ones in your head. The killer ones, just in case that part didn't get to you yet. I know it can be hard."

"Right. I get you. No problem." He sniffed loudly, then passed the cup back. "Thanks. Adam Genesh. You probably knew that though." At least the kid didn't seem like he was stuck up about it, which was good.

Because frankly that just wasn't the case.

"Nope. Sorry. Mason Sims. I'm sure you've never heard of me."

Rather than get snotty about his fame not being known to Mason immediately, the kid smiled.

"My oversight then, ya? I'll know the name next time, I bet. So, what do I owe you for this?" He looked around, his eyes not focusing very well still.

Mason tightened his jaw, wondering if his next words were going to be the last ones he was given a chance to utter.

"The name of the hack that you got this mess from? You do know that hives are illegal, right? No one has managed to keep one stable outside of a lab. Guess what? Your brain is not a stable, well regulated environment for something like that. We need to find this guy, and take him down. Somehow. I don't even care how, personally. I get that you probably won't want to go to butt rape prison for buying from him, but we need to shut him down."

There was a wince, and a little laugh from the blue haired boy.

"Her. Fangirl. She did tell me it was experimental. I don't think she means any harm. Maybe if we just talk to her and explain? Real sweetie. Did this color shift dye for me." He looked up and left, using his inskin, and his hair turned first a deep green and then landed on a great shade of purple.

Not trusting the girl in question's work, Mason scanned the kid's head, ready to start all over again. This one was made well enough. It wasn't elegant work, but it did the trick, and wouldn't kill anyone. It seemed to be pirated, with the copyright tags taken off, but he didn't judge that one too harshly. A lot of people couldn't afford things otherwise.

"Better. Maybe? Hives are... Risky isn't even the word. They always end up corrupting. You need to have a control field around them all the time, with a clean up nano set involved, just to build them up past a few million members of a colony. Otherwise they'll start to mutate and escape." No one seemed to understand him, but he wasn't going to explain it. They either didn't care, which was fine, it not being their field, or they weren't bright enough to easily get it, which would mean he was just talking to himself anyway.

The big white man seemed happier then.

"We can do that one. Get us her picture and address and we'll head out now. Should we risk calling first, or just go in?" This was said to Mason, who nearly yelled at the man. That wouldn't help, since the guy was just being polite, not really deferring to him. Which was good, because he didn't know the answer to the question.

Then, it wasn't about that. Mason was the one with the nanos that could stop this thing. They were going to need more of those, if this girl hadn't just been trying to impress Adam here.

Genesh.

That was one of the names that Sam and Lisa had mentioned. That, and John, who worked with him. So, either this was the world's biggest coincidence, or a wonderfully exacting con, to get him to lower his guard so they could steal his new toy...

Or this was them, and the whole thing he was involved in was a lot less polished and professional than he'd hoped for.

Not that Sam had mentioned Genesh as someone in the know. Which meant that he had to act like he didn't know anything about an underground, just in case some of these people weren't in on it. Like hive brain, for instance.

"Mason, any chance of getting another cup of water, love?"

He nodded, and held out his hand for the correct tumbler, in case it was just a ploy to get him out of the room for a minute. If so, it was more polite than could have happened. No one had pulled a weapon or judo kicked him, yet.

"Be right back." It was just tap water, and while it was filtered, it really didn't take too long to get back into the room.

Instead of whispering quietly amongst themselves, the large pale man blocked the door, as the darker one was inside, trying to hold the purple haired kid for some reason. He was just trying to leave, not having a seizure or anything.

"I have things to do, gents. Don't let me..." He wasn't being angry either, but seemed to be trying to tap at the back of his left arm covertly.

Mason ducked past the big man in the door, and held the cup out.

"Who are you calling?"

"Eh? That would be Hunter. The fangirl? To tell her that leaving town might be in order?"

Mason shook his head.

"Nah. We'll just help her clean things up and remind her why giving you a hive isn't a great way to win you over. What with the brain eating, and all that. I'm sure it won't be a problem. Unless it was a murder attempt, in which case warning her might not be a great idea, either. Why not just, I don't know, ask her if she wants to come to breakfast? I was all into the idea of having her arrested, but maybe it's not needed? As long as the problem is really fixed, maybe we can handle it ourselves?"

That got a firm nod, from a young man that was clearly feeling a lot less drugged now. In another hour all of the things in his head should be defunct.

"I don't know. Maybe an early supper? I think she has school during the day. What day is it?"

The question caused the date to flash to the side of Mason's left side, then vanish.

"It's Saturday. She's in school? How old is she?"

Adam blushed a bit, and then shrugged.

"Dunno, mate. Twelve? Maybe older? It's not like I was shagging her or anything. A lot of my fans aren't exactly geezers, right?"

Mason nodded then, and looked at the other two men, one by one.

"Well, that explains some things. Even brilliant people are a little moronic at that age. I hear it lasts into the thirties or so?"

The white muscle man smiled at him then.

"You're what, about twenty-five?"

"Yep. There's no reason you can't be an idiot and self-aware."

No one laughed, but it did lighten the mood. Then, being watched carefully because no one trusted him not to scream run, Adam called his tiny, and underage, nano drug supplier.

Chapter seven

The adventure of Hunter, the fangirl drug supplier, wasn't nearly as much fun as Mason had hoped it would be. First, the big white guy who kept acting like he was in charge even though he also kept claiming he was working for Adam, took the other large man off to the girl's home. Leaving him there to babysit the singer.

That, it turned out, was what an Adam Genesh was. Some kind of performer that played instruments and sang at people. Mason smiled at the description, since it had come from the guy himself. He liked music, but didn't actually follow it very closely. It was part of the background of life, as much for him as anyone else.

It was, he knew, due to how distracted he was by his work. Most people would have probably really known who Genesh was, if he showed up on their doorstep at too early to be awake in the morning. At least the younger people would have. Anyone under fifty.

The same was true of Sam.

When te had turned out to be the famous Lexi Horn, the appropriate response would have been blushing, screaming and clapping his hands like a little child. The thing was, even though he'd seen some of her work before, Mason just had never bothered to focus on VR like most people did. Really, when he thought about what he'd been doing lately he could see the difference pretty clearly.

Most people were in VR for about ten hours a day. They got up in the morning, plugged in and lived there. Some, the lower class people that couldn't afford anything else, jobs being so hard to find for a lot of them, would spend nearly sixteen hours a day that way. Plugged in until they formed sores from the suit. If you were poor you didn't have a room that adapted to you very well, so it was all about the outfit.

Even the cheap ones were pretty comfortable, but no one was designed to be in virt that long. It probably gave them horrible delusional disorders, though he'd never looked that one up, personally.

When he compared that to himself, he understood how different he really was. How strange and not like the others. Mason had, in the last four days, spent no more than three hours in virt. Even people with good jobs spent that long inside most days.

Which pointed out why he was meeting up with famous people and not having the same issues that a lot of folks would. He really couldn't place anything Adam had done, for instance. When he called his float over, and brought up a song the other man lit up. He was on the sofa, but sitting upright, smiling.

"Like that one, do you? It's not too bad." He was being modest. It was a cultivated thing, but better than if he were sitting there acting like he was special.

The song was complex, rhythmic, and showed real skill in the playing. The singing wasn't that bad either, but it was clear the voice had been manipulated.

The thing was, Mason had never heard it before. He was nearly certain of it. The legend in the corner of the flimsy screen said that it was currently the number three song, worldwide. Number one in English speaking places.

Sighing, he admitted the whole thing.

"I've never heard it. Which says a lot about me, given those ratings. It is pretty good. You know though, work and stuff. It gets in the way of other things."

If the guy seemed upset to hear it he didn't let it show.

"Yeah? I seem to remember Lexi mentioning that part. All the work. Lexi Horn? You've heard of her, right?" This time he was being more playful.

"Honestly? Barely. I played 'Rampart', but only after a friend of mine brought it up." Now that he'd thought about that friend had been Sam, which was part of why he'd been able to guess who te was in the first place.

Adam clapped.

"Ha! If you saw that, then you've heard some of my stuff. I have two pieces used in that one. See, I really am famous!" Closing his eyes, the man's face changed.

Not into a different shape, but what seemed to be better color, a soft tan, rushed into his cheeks, along with a hint of red. Then his eyes shifted, with what seemed like heavy makeup rimming the lids. It was a bit overdone for nine in the morning, but looked better than the dark circles that had been there.

Adam slapped his own cheek, on the right side.

"In case the papo catch on to where I am. I haven't been able to shake them for more than a day lately. No one knows why that is. You should get something on your face, too, or they'll think we were in bed together." Then he looked at the pajamas and seemed smarmy. It actually took over his entire demeanor for a second. "Fucking. They never, ever, assume that it was something as innocent as sleep. Or that people weren't together, either."

The purple haired man looked at him expectantly then, as Mason sat there blinking.

"Um, I don't have anything like that. I suppose I could run up an imbed set, but will anyone actually care what I look like? I'm not anyone, really. I just do nano and material designs."

With a shrug the kid looked around the place, then coughed, once.

"Right. You hide in a middle class setup like this, and then fill it with more expensive things than I have in my entire mansion. Sure, you aren't anyone. That being the case, then what kind of being are you, Mason Sims? Trust me, even when a star shows up in the morning, the average person doesn't just let them in, much less save their life. So, yeah, makeup, and some nicer clothing. Besides, the paparazzi and stalkers really will be here soon."

Tapping his left wrist, Mason sighed. He could run some imbeds up for Adam and his people that would stop them being found too easily. It wouldn't take long, though he was going to need the assembler that was still in use. The hive killing compound was still being printed, just in case little Hunter had gone crazy and passed the drug out to all her friends. If not they could follow the route out of the building and spread the stuff around, just in case something got out.

Almost as if on cue, he got a call. At first he figured that it would be the giant white guy, since he was supposed to get in touch, but the image that came up when he keyed his imbed activation wasn't him at all. It wasn't anyone he recognized.

"Mason Sims?" The blonde woman, who looked like she hated mornings with a passion, practically glared at him.

"Yes?" She'd called him directly, which meant there was no use denying who it was. His code only went to his head, after all. No one else could pick up for him or anything.

"Hello. You don't know me, I'm Cynthia Echini. From Famous Times? The network?"

He looked at her funny, knowing that what the woman would be seeing was an approximation of his facial expression over a slightly bland version of his own face. Most people avatared their images out, but he'd just used a standard three dimensional shot of his own head for it.

That probably explained why this woman looked both like she was going to be ill, and still seemed pretty at the same time. Not actress or model good looking, but nice enough that he would have done her, if they were in VR.

Then he tilted his head a bit, and spoke out loud.

"Cynthia Echini, from Famous Times? I'm not up on that kind of thing. Sorry. Are you selling subscriptions?" That actually made sense, once he thought about it. That, or someone had tracked Sam or Adam to his place.

The woman wasn't helpful that way.

"Oh, funny. No, I was wondering if you know where Henry Stodermier is? He and his crew messaged me the other day, saying that they were just leaving your apartment, and then I didn't hear from him again. He could be off on a bender, but his partners don't know where he is either. The police don't have anything either, and since they should be able to find him to within fifty feet, dead or alive..."

"Crap. That isn't good. Um, I don't have a clue. He was here, and he showed me some bio-marker readings that showed that Lexi Horn had spent the night. That isn't true, it was just my friend Sam. Te has a job pretending to be that actress. Probably to throw you off. I said I'd tell te to call Henry, since he promised to pay for a story on it. Not much, but... No, that's the only time I ever met him. The others are all right?" It was weird, but thankfully, the woman nodded.

"Lizzy and Chuck are both fine. Well, it was a long shot. I just... Well, it could be anything, couldn't it?" She had the feeling of a person that was about to cut the line, and who was close to giving up.

"Um... Hey, not to be, you know, telling you what to do, but you have a system set up to track people. Bio-markers and all that. Why not put his data in the database? If you haven't yet, I mean. It might not turn up anything, but I find it hard to believe the Watch wouldn't know where he is." Though, the government might not tell, if they were involved somehow.

The blonde lady blinked at him, her flawless face seeming surprised.

"That's... A really good idea. Thanks. I'll set that up. Do you want me to tell you if we find anything out? I know I hate it when I get questioned and no one follows up with me."

Mason nodded.

"Yeah. I'll try to look from this end, too. Can I get a copy of the app you and your people use? I have a copycat right now, but not the official one." It was true and he didn't explain why he had that kind of thing, even though he'd been using it to sabotage the effectiveness of the other one for Sam and Lisa.

"Sending to your link, now. Thanks. Most people would have just said no and hung up."

The data flow ended almost instantly, and there was a blip off to the right that showed the program was in his computer. That was the phone however, which wasn't very powerful, so, almost without thinking, Mason passed it over to his float.

"Not a problem. I'll get with you if I find him. Thanks for letting me know. I mean, I've actually met him, in person. That pretty much means he's one of my ten people. I don't get out much." Most didn't.

It was a good enough explanation it seemed, and the woman tabbed off, blinking out of existence.

Without waiting to let Adam know what was going on, Mason summoned his float screen over, and started working. It was rude, he didn't doubt, but he had the Famous Times app isolated and running, as well as four new sets of fake bio-marker imbeds waiting to be run up. The first one would have to be Adam, since even if he didn't know who the man was, the app did, and was blinking at him madly.

If he hadn't taken it off the system already, it would have tattled on the man already. No doubt with all those papo coming to get vid of them.

Fucking.

Even if they weren't. As an afterthought he actually set up a decent makeup imbed, too. It was original design work, but didn't take long, since he just looked up some copy written designs and cribbed heavily. It was part of his job, doing things like that, so no one would blink about it, and he could use it for free, whenever he wanted. To that end, he logged it into the system as soon as he had the plans for it, as the holder of the design. That way it wouldn't tag him when he printed it later.

The riskiest thing that he'd done was the nano hive killer design. That was totally legal however, so he didn't worry too much about it. After all, if someone did go to the hospital with that hive in their head, they'd be able to handle it now. If they could figure out what was going on in time.

If Big White Guy hadn't mentioned it being a hive, Mason probably would have been half a day slower, figuring it out. No one made hives, because you had to be mentally challenged to not understand how stupid it was. That meant no one looked for them first thing.

A brilliant twelve-year-old girl might fit that bill though. She probably thought she was in love, too. With the goofball on his sofa.

"Which is why they invented VR." He said that out loud, and looked over at the other guy, who seemed to be talking on the phone. Because that wasn't going to have him traced nearly instantly?

He looked up then, through whoever he was seeing in his head, but spot to Mason directly.

"It's John. He wants you to look at Hunter's lab readings? It seems good to me, but I know music, not tiny robots."

"Good idea. Pass the data link over? Um, here... I'm blue." That was the line he was passing over. To make it easy to find. It was the kind of thing you did with your friends, when they were right there with you. So, he was a bit shocked that he got it right.

At least he saw John, who was the big white man after all, flash up in front of him. This was on a live stream though, not a display, which meant he had a camera on him. After a moment there was a nod, and the scene turned around to show a crying girl that was plump, but kind of cute anyway, and a rather messy bedroom.

The walls played moving images of Adam, which was creepy. There was no way anyone could sleep with that going on all the time. Hopefully she turned it off at night.

Mason didn't comment, just tabbing the info key, to look at the collected data. The girl had her own nano rig, though it was a very, very tiny one. It had probably been why she'd gone with a hive. Making anything piecemeal would take her weeks, if not longer. The hair coloring for Adam had probably been a month of setting things up and getting the actual product out. It was also pirated work, instead of something more legit. That meant she'd disabled the portion of the printer that would send things to Watch, or she would have gotten a notice about what she was doing. Hence getting away with making a hive.

"The room is clean. Spread some of the neutralizer around anyway." He didn't want to be a prick, but took a deep breath then. "Also, get with her mom. She's been breaking a lot of laws here. If Watch finds her with her junior pirate kit there she'll be locked up until she's eighteen. Since I nearly called them myself earlier, you have to understand how close you are to vanishing for a long time, Hunter." That got louder crying.

"I'm sorry. I just wanted him to like me." It was pitiful sounding, and Adam winced and looked away.

She was a fangirl after all, and even Mason got the idea. If she hadn't been giving him free things that were hard to find anywhere else, he never would have noticed her.

It was exactly the kind of thing that Mason was horrible with though. If the girl would have just set up a VR sim, she could have done pretty much whatever she wanted with the man, but that hadn't been good enough for her, for some reason.

Probably love. That was a strong enough thing to make problems. After all, he'd felt that himself before, when he was in school. With Deb. Luckily for him that had ended quickly enough. It had turned out that she was a horrible person, in the end. Not just the kind that didn't want him, but who thought that anyone not at least as good looking as the best actors was beneath her, even for friendship. Being the fattest kid in the class meant he did not make the grade.

Lesson learned, he'd moved on. Hunter could too, if she were smart enough.

"I wouldn't waste my time on him that way. He's an all right guy, but you can meet real people, if that's your thing. Ones you know? Anyway, I won't lecture you on that. We don't have time, because we're going to go over why exactly making a nano hive is always a bad idea, instead. Give her the screen, please?" Then, almost as if it were what he did for a living, Mason gave a lesson that should have been delivered in school.

How not to destroy the world and kill people by being an idiot.

At the end he finally got to see the girl's mom, who didn't look old enough to have a child. She seemed scared, and actually wrung her hands, though she also seemed to get what a giant bullet her daughter had just managed to dodge.

Mason looked at her on the screen, and smiled, trying not to seem sinister.

"So, you need to get rid of the assembler, and if you get a new one again, Hunter, don't pirate anything like that. Just make your own designs. It's a bit more work, but not that hard. You're smart, or you wouldn't have come up with that hive. Just use the family printer to make your own unit for it, but make sure you report everything you do. Also, no more hives. That was not good." Then, because he'd been a kid once too, he sent over the plans for a good nano assembly device, directly to Hunter. "Use this one instead, and make sure to register it. I own the copyright on the design, and have okayed you making a single copy for personal use. Every time you make something, I expect a report, too. Send that to me before you hit print."

It would be a hassle, but the girl nodded, her rosy cheeks damp looking still, as it floated in front of him, the camera pointed at her face.

"I will. I... Sorry." She seemed upset still, which wouldn't be about nearly killing lots of people.

No, it was going to be about nearly taking out Adam. The man hadn't spoken the entire time, which was probably a sign that he understood something about what was going on. Maybe even more than Mason did.

He passed the link back over without warning, since making life easy for singers wasn't a particular goal of his.

To his credit, Adam didn't shut her down instantly.

"Hey love! No harm this time. Best listen to Mason here though, and do what he says. I'll check in with you, every now and then, if that's good?" He looked pained, then wiped that from his face, made some small talk and finally got off the line without speaking seriously again.

Then he gave Mason a look that was near miserable.

"One of the costs of being famous that no one ever tells you about. People see you all the time, you're there with them for hours a day, and they love you for it. If you're even a little bit nice to them, it becomes real to them. She's a good kid. I should have come across like an arse, and protected her from me. Instead I was... Damn-it." There was no real heat in the word.

Mason thought he understood.

"Instead you flirted, and treated her like an adult, and now you can't tell her that you were just being you?"

"That's pretty close to what happened. I don't even think of it, most of the time. It's second nature now. I mean, I've been a celebrity since I was twelve myself. When I was thirteen I had my first orgy. A real one, I mean, not with machines or in virt. That kind of thing changes how you think about things. I mean, look at me now? I'm sitting on some stranger's couch, and having him save my life. This isn't even the first time something like this has happened. Oh, the life saving part is great, but really, it's happened before. I don't know how to be a real person, some days." There was a look then, as if he were asking for help.

Mason shook his head.

"No one does, anymore. I was thinking about that earlier. Most people live in VR, most of the time. In a way that's great. They can have experiences and do things that otherwise would never come up. Climb a pristine version of Everest, drive a race car, go into space and tour one of the stations without risking anything. Talk to people around the world, and make love with pretty much anyone they want, on demand. That isn't how things used to be though. Can anyone tell us what's real now? I think the important thing is to always try to be a good person, no matter where you are."

That got a nod, since it was pseudo-deep enough that the singer had to think for a bit.

"I hear that. Okay, so what do good people do? Other than not lead little girls on?"

Mason didn't know, really. Not in any way he could define easily.

"Right now? They get cleaned up and eat... Um, brunch? I can print something out."

The purple headed kid made a face, but didn't say no. He probably wanted fresh food, but he was getting whatever was waiting in the food printer recipe set. Part of being a good person had to include not whining about the little things.

They took turns showering, which clearly baffled Adam, who hinted that having someone to wash his back would be nice, several times. Then, since the first of the imbeds were ready, he helped Adam get the bio-marker baffle on. That was a bit disruptive, since the other guy got a hard on, and tried to get Mason to do something about it.

"No? Not to be mean, but I tend to stick to VR. It's safer. Anyway, stay here for twenty minutes and don't move. It needs to soak in. I'll go get some food ready. What do you like?"

"Anything love. If you're going to just leave me hanging like this. It's been hours since I've had any. Nearly half a day. Are you sure you couldn't just blow me?" There was a plaintive tone to it.

"Imbed drying, remember? Plus, like I said, nope."

The man grinned then, and stood there, posing a little bit in the center of the work room. There was a gentle hum as the next set of things printed out. They went more quickly, since he had a container of base solution already made up for imbeds. He was going to have to print more out though, after all of this. Doing the math on it, he realized that he had enough for three full sets, before he had to redo the batch of driving compound.

The food was pretty basic, though he used the nutrient fat, and sugar, where he could. So they ended up with what seemed like scrambled eggs, toast, and fake ham slices, with butter and grape jelly. Before he ate he had to run and take his daily dose of Slimtrix, since he'd gotten side tracked by what had happened.

Then as that printed, people started coming. The first set being John and his giant buddy, Mike. That made sense, given their job was to watch Adam.

John smiled at him.

"Is he still even here?"

Before he could say anything, the guy walked out, naked, and not erect anymore, a grin on his face. On his well made up, and pleased looking face, that was.

"Don't let the imagination run gents. I just got a new imbed. I don't know what it does. I'm hoping it will make my dick bigger though."

Mason shook his head then.

"You'd need genetic changes for that, not nano work. This will just make it harder for the paparazzi to find you. Here, let me show you all."

They gathered around the float screen, while Adam was coached as to how he could shift what his bio-readings were.

Mason tapped the screen, very gently. It warped a bit under his finger, and left a smudge.

"This one is the signal that is sent out by his inskin. Adam, go to the Kenny persona, please?" The instant he did, the entire readout changed. Including who his internal computer claimed he was. "It probably won't fool the government, but it will get around Famous Times and anyone using their finder app. See?" He brought it up to demonstrate.

The two big assistants, if that was what the code for bodyguard was that week, both seemed to think it was Christmas. John actually slapped him on the back.

"Freaking great! This will help a lot. Do you know who else their system has? How did you get access?"

He stared at the man's face for a bit, and worked out that he was hinting at something illegal, which it hadn't been in the slightest.

"Cynthia Echini, from that network, called me earlier and gave it to me. Oh, um, Henry Stodermier is missing. He's here, in their system." That showed on the screen, and he noticed when he brought Sam up, so was Lisa. Including her last name.

Lisa Williams.

John pointed at the name and shook his head.

"Fuck. Do they have all of us?"

That it turned out was the case. Mike Emery was in there, associated with Adam, and so was John. John Williams.

"Same last name?" Mason looked at him. They were similar, being big and powerful looking people, but didn't really look the same through the face.

"Married. Going on ten years now." He seemed proud of it, for some reason.

"Oh? Good thing I haven't slept with either of you then." He turned to the still naked Adam. "See? Keeping that kind of thing to VR pays off. Now I don't have giants hitting me."

The guys all chuckled, and John sent Adam off for his clothing, his bio-markers set to be Kenny still.

John smiled at the kid's back, then turned to glance at Mason.

"We'll need to put in new people as assistants, if they're tracking the staff, too. The agency will love it, but it won't be the first time we had to do something like that."

Holding up a hand, he moved to pull plates, and reset the printer, so that there would be enough food for everyone.

"I have bio-bafflers for you two, being set up right now. You should eat first. It takes a while to for the base to dry and soak in."

Unlike Adam Genesh, these two didn't turn their nose up at printed food, just eating what was offered, and thanking him for it. They also didn't glow about how great it was, but he'd live. They didn't spit it out, and that was a good start.

Then, at about one in the afternoon, just after everyone was dressed again, the next set of people showed up at the door. This time it was a girl who looked to be about fifteen, and a man in his forties.

When Adam saw them he practically ran over.

"Tara! George! Come in. This is Mason. The guy I told you about? He can make you invisible, sort of. It's sooo sprong, I swear. Here, watch this. Mason, bring up that program from before?" There was no please, and John closed his eyes, and looked constipated for a bit.

"Adam... Did you think to ask first, if this was all right? I mean, before you just offered other people millions of dollars of imbed work?"

The kid shrugged.

"Nah. Mason's good that way. I'll cover the material and energy costs. That works, right?" He seemed excited enough about it all, so Mason shrugged.

"For these two. Anyone else needs to be cleared first. If we aren't careful about this, how it's used, people will catch on, and that will make it harder to keep on top of. I mean, we can change the signals constantly, but a person walking around with an ever shifting pattern is nearly as obvious as one that looks like Adam or one of his friends."

The girl, Tara, nodded, as if she understood what that all meant. The older guy didn't though. They were both really good looking, and dressed up in ways that would catch attention, anywhere they went.

Luckily he'd been printing out base for imbeds all afternoon, so he had enough for both of them. It was work, setting up the new personalities, since Tara needed to be young in all of hers. That meant doing the work from scratch.

She kept touching his arm too, while he worked on the float screen in the living room.

"Sorry about the hassle. I could pay you? I didn't know what Adam had in mind when we came over, or that I'd be a particular problem." She was contrite, and innocent seeming about it all the entire time.

He shook his head a little.

"It's only work. So, are you an actress or something? Or a singer like Adam?" He didn't recognize her, and the girl suddenly went still.

"Wait, you don't know who I am?"

"Nope. I mean, you're Tara, but other than that, no. Don't take it personally, I just don't get to watch things very often. I don't know who Adam is either, really." He gave a weak smile, but the girl took his arm, wrapping hers around it, pushing her medium sized breast against him. It felt exactly like it would have in VR, though she smelled a bit more strongly. It wasn't unpleasant, just being perfume.

"Really? In that case, pleased to meet you, Mason. I'm nobody in particular."

That got everyone else in the room to chuckle, as if it were funny. He smiled too, and then shook her off, gently.

The tale of Hunter the twelve-year-old was too close in time for him to really bother enjoying Tara the fifteen-year-old, or whoever she was, rubbing up against him.

That got a chuckle too, for some reason, if only from Adam.

Chapter eight

Mason worked, through the early part of the day. The programming took a little bit of time, and George had an off brand, but powerful, inskin, instead of a Selecta, like most of the others had. That meant switching operating systems so that it could be synched correctly. That issue took about two hours, and no one really bothered him, though people kept coming. It was a slow trickle, so was easy to ignore at first, but at about six someone practically sat on him, getting his attention.

It was a drunken woman, wearing a nice shiny dress. Other than that, and that the woman was pretty, he had no clue who she was.

"Oops. Sorry, not trying to get fresh. This place is a bit small. Cozy. Better than my place in town here, so I'm not complaining, but normally the parties are held at larger places." For all she sounded apologetic, the woman, who wasn't very big physically, didn't get off his lap. Instead she tried to squirm onto it more. That would be due to the lack of other places to sit, he realized. Some of the people were on the floor, but in the dress this woman had on, that wasn't going to be comfortable.

There were five people on the sofa, which at best was designed for three, and his single chair had three bodies in it. The rest of the people were either on the bare floor, chatting and eating snacks off napkins, or were standing around, looking muscular and edgy. Those were the assistants, no doubt.

Thankfully a thinner looking man had taken over printing food out in the kitchen. There should have been plenty of raw material for it, though it was clear the man didn't know how to do more than basic things with the machine. He kept making the same few items. Mainly crackers with cheese.

Mason knew that he should go help, since it was his party, apparently. How it had happened, he wasn't certain. Except of course, he wasn't a complete moron and figured out that it would be down to the famous people inviting other notables over, to try and get in on the free imbeds. Since he was, currently, the only provider of the Bio-bafflers, that seemed like a good plan.

Straining a bit, he looked at the woman in his lap, and faked a smile.

"Um, hey, why don't you take my seat here? I need to go and make sure George gets his imbed." He waved to the man, who was sitting in his only chair, with two girls on his lap. One of them was actually a child too. The other was Tara. The littler one was, however, well away from any part of George that would require Watch to be alerted, thankfully. If she was nine, then someone had forgotten to tell her to age that year.

That probably meant she was someone's kid. Hopefully George, because otherwise that scene was pretty creepy, even if it wasn't morally wrong.

"You're up, George. This way?" There were people in the other rooms. The VR chamber door was open, and people were just sitting there, having made the space project some benches for them to lounge on. It was a good use of space, really.

The bathroom door was closed, and three people stood outside of his workroom door. In line. None of them were anyone he recognized.

"Hello? We need in. I..." Mason was about to ask if they needed the restroom, which was across the hallway, but a man that looked to be about fifty or so slapped at his arm.

"You the one doing the magic imbeds? I haven't been able to get the stalkers off my ass for months now. My girlfriend is going to leave me if they don't stop, so I was hoping to get in on this? Adam said that not everyone could?"

Looking at the man, he could feel a bit of desperation coming from him.

"Right. Go get with John. The, uh, white muscle guy? John Williams, in the other room. Have him walk you through how to use it, and if he thinks you can do it without messing up too much, he'll put you on a list. He doesn't know he's in charge yet, so you should all go and ambush him with that." Smiling, he waved in the right direction.

"The same for everyone out there who wants in on it. If they can't make it... Well, then they go on a different list and I'll try to figure something out for them. It isn't hard to manage this, but if you don't do it right, it will ruin the whole thing, for everyone. So, George?"

The older man slapped him on the arm again, and didn't smile, heading to the other room directly. The two other people, a man and a woman that actually looked a lot alike, moved away then too.

Thankfully no one had been in there messing with his things. George's imbed set was ready, and his larger assembler, the one that didn't do nano work directly, was printing out more roller bottles for him. He'd set it up for ten, but didn't doubt that he'd need more than that by the end of the night.

It wasn't even late and he already felt wiped out. That was thanks to getting up at four. He was normally an early riser, but that was ridiculous.

If John was going to whine about being put to work at a party, the man very kindly didn't do it to him directly. That was good, since George needed help getting his back covered. The funny thing was that he seemed shocked when Mason waved for him to do the rest himself.

"Really? Normally the shop does that part. You mean I can just smooth it in place myself? With my hand?"

"Yep. Don't be shy about getting it, um, up inside yourself. We should have worked out a better system for this. I can't just send you out into the other room like this. You need to dry first. People will need the bathroom. Well, I can set up the next few sets, and work on that while it sinks in. You should be fine now. Work it into your scalp a little better maybe?" The naked man complied, as if him standing there with no clothing was just natural to him.

Not that it really bugged Mason. He saw naked people all the time. In virt. Ducking out, his float in front of him, about three feet away, he found a corner that hadn't been taken yet, and sank down, working the whole time.

Names and current bio-marker profiles popped up on the screen, and he took care of them one at a time. Most of them got easier as he went on. The little girl was actually the hardest though, so far. It would be really difficult to convince anyone that what they were seeing wasn't a small child, after all.

An adult that looked like George might just be some person with a good eye for makeup and a square jaw line, after all. Possibly even a woman, dressing up. In the right outfit anyone could be gender-neutral, too.

So with that in mind, Mason set to work, and designed an imbed for a tiny girl that would, on demand, make her look like both a boy to sensors, several different girls, and Max. A gen-neu little person. Who was twenty-seven. That would take some props to really sell, but should work if no one was actively stalking the kid. The problem there was that at least some people were.

It wasn't lost on him that John had put her data through, but about half the others were just milling and looking miserable. Too stupid, or more likely, too high on something, to pass even the most basic of tests. That made them the kind of person who was a risk to the new set up. They'd leave it on at the wrong time, and people would just record all of the different markers that meant it was them.

It was, clearly, a programming problem. He'd have to work out how to give them new markers that would control their own deployment. That was really hard to do however. It would be easier to hire someone to do it for them that wasn't high all the time.

Smiling he absently waved John over.

"Thanks for the help. The, um, the people that need help, how many of them have assistants that can do it for them? I think I can transfer the control key to them? It's not the same, but-"

The big fellow smiled.

"Right. I'll get that going. Good thinking. Otherwise half of them would probably have called the stalkers to complain about not getting in on it, too." There didn't seem to be a lot of doubt in his tone about it. "You good? Do you need food, or something to drink? Water?" He seemed to be pushing that one, for some reason.

Then, someone had brought other things in. Colored bottles that sat on his single two person table.

"Water, and maybe something to eat, if that's possible? I forgot earlier, since I had a late breakfast."

There was no indication it would really be coming directly, the man just left, and returned with a half filled plate and one of the big pink composite tumblers a bit later. Mason drained it and nibbled at the crackers.

"'Kay. I have the next six imbeds ready. We can sort them, so that people who might not mind being in at the same time are together? I don't know who's-who that way. Mellissa will need a helper and a private room. Non-negotiable." She was a kid after all. The adults weren't picky though, and when asked none of them balked at being shoved into a little room and rubbed down by him. Especially after George announced that Mason wasn't going to go all anal probe on them.

That got a laugh.

The five people in with him were a mixed bunch. Shiny silver dress woman, who had red hair and a dazzling white smile was one of the three women, an older man, the one with a girlfriend that was going to leave him if he didn't fix professional stalking for all time was there, too. They all stripped down without being asked, but when he mentioned that they couldn't have makeup on, three of them needed to shower.

It wouldn't have been an issue, but someone had locked themselves inside. Apparently to have sex. That, or, the older guy informed him, simply turning off his imbedded makeup with a thought, to do drugs.

"Let's hope it's that last one? Otherwise this could take forever."

After enough pounding that he was worried about disturbing the peace, two people came out. Both were women, and one was Tara, from earlier. She still needed her imbed, but it would take a bit to finish assembling. It was in the next batch though, so Mason waved at her.

"After this group?"

"Sprong." She said it with a half dead tone to her voice, which could have been exhaustion, but it wasn't that late yet. Her eyes were glassy too, which probably meant drugs that she shouldn't have been on. Especially in his home.

Plus, he had no clue what sprong meant. Hopefully it was a good thing.

Mason ended up painting the backs of all five naked people, but only with the rollers, not needing, as the man had pointed out, to insert anything inside of them. Shiny dress woman, who was currently naked perky breast lady, smiled at him.

"Professional, too? Can I get other things done? I was thinking of getting a makeup imbed. Doing the real thing three times a day takes too long."

Doing the math in his head, he nodded.

"Can you come by tomorrow? I ran up the specs for one today. Adam said I should get one, so it won't be too big of a thing to print out two of them. Call it noon?" He was going to sleep, in there somewhere, and for some reason he didn't think it was going to be in the next eight hours.

Shiny dress tilted her head.

"Would four be all right? I tend to sleep late. I can..." She stopped as he agreed with her. This woman was obviously a pro at this kind of stuff.

"Here at four? You can help me get my back. That's the hardest part to do well, alone." It was why he didn't really have any all over imbeds, most of the time.

They were all left there, drying, as he finally managed to get a break. He even got to use the bathroom, and took a moment to clean it up. Someone had vomited already, and made a mess. All his towels had been used. The ones that were out. He had a full set, for some reason. This exact situation, it seemed. It wasn't like he was a family of six, but they were tucked into the cupboard along with a full set of wash clothes, so he put them all out, figuring someone would need them. Sooner or later.

Then he dashed to the kitchen, and started to print out some better food. The thin man that was working it, and had been, seemed happy enough for the help.

"Finally, someone that knows what they're doing. I know just enough to see that this is a very high end machine, but using it for anything other than store bought crackers, and cheese spread is beyond me. It's a shame too, since we should be able to make almost anything with this thing." He waved at the box, which just sat there for the moment. The tubes that fed in the raw working material were all black, but hidden from view, leaving a plain composite box, with a door in the side, about the size of an old fashioned microwave.

He called the float screen over, hovering it high enough so that no drunken people would easily walk into it, and as soon as it was in place, called up his recipe list.

"It's listed under primary foods, on the index, which should show on your inskin. That way you won't have to keep paying the copyright fees for everything printed out, since these are all proprietary. Or, I guess, so I won't have to pay? Anyway, these are all better. Here, fish fingers.... Tartar sauce... and some coleslaw?" It was showing off, really, since he'd worked forever to get that last one down. The slaw was nearly impossible to get right, since it required hundreds of little fake cabbage pieces not to seem incredibly bland. Each had a different shape, and there were fifteen differently shaped bits of carrot with it. It looked, and as importantly smelled, real, when it came out. Mason handed it to the man, who gave a slightly pained grin, and took a bite, his eyes closing as he did. Then he tried a bit of each.

"Well, fuck me with a fish. I've been serving people crap all night, haven't I? That's going to look great tomorrow on the news. Master chef sinks to new low, printing food not fit for dogs because he sucks. I don't suppose we could keep this just between us?" The man didn't seem too upset, really.

Though he did take another bite of fish.

"I've made better, using the real thing. I've never had better printed though. Not anywhere. Can you do lemon zest on this? We could tinker with things a bit..." The man got lost in his description, so Mason alternated between taking notes and running out some ice cream. After tasting it, the man shook his head a bit.

"It's... Fine, I suppose. Can we make some changes?" As soon as Mason nodded in response the whole gallon went into the sink, so no one would eat it. Then for nearly an hour they made various dishes, and changed the recipes on it, until the man, Ben, decided it was good enough. Then he went to work on other things, until John came to pull him away again.

"Right, Tara's turn. Who else?" That turned out to be the look alike couple, Ben, and a rather ugly man that seemed amused by the whole thing. He wasn't old, or young, being directly in-between those two states of being. If he was famous at all, it was lost on Mason, but that was hardly news to him.

The man stopped him in the door, his hand going out professionally.

"Hello. I'm Daryl Keens. The Canadian Ambassador to Bahrain. It was suggested that I try to get in on this, since a similar system has been in use in various Middle Eastern Countries. I will, of course, understand if you wish to decline? I certainly can't afford to pay whatever the going rate is. Not if you have to run in this crowd to afford it." There was a polite smile then, as he waited.

Because everything ran on money. Even as most people didn't have enough to do more than barely survive anymore. That fact was probably why Sam had never whined about losing her own fortune if their plan worked. Fifty years before, people had complained about the upper one percent owning half the world's wealth. Now the argument was that the upper one percent of that group had forty percent, and the one percenters that were left had most of the rest. Ninety percent of the world lived on about seven percent of the wealth generated each year.

Even people with good sounding jobs seemed to be struggling. At least enough so million dollar purchases seemed out of reach. That was true for him too, so he hadn't really thought about it. He could be rich, if he wanted, just off the backs of the people in the other room.

That was one option.

The other was to screw the entire system and make things a good bit more fair. It might end up being more work for him, but he'd make it. If they did it right, they all would. Even those rich fuckers that thought they should own everything. The really rich ones. The people that ran the world.

He smiled, realizing that those particular people were probably going to want him to be really, really dead, soon.

"It's free. As long as you can pass the test. It will only last until you get an imbed taken out. You know how that works. Have your people get in touch with me and I'll send the specs over to them. Don't let any stupid people get control over it though? Please? They'll screw it up for everyone."

The man didn't laugh, but let himself be led into the other room. He at least, was a bit embarrassed, and spent the whole time not looking at Tara. Not that she would have cared. She was so high that it was unlikely she was going to remember anything the next day. Still, with a little help from the look alike couple she managed to get the job done. Ben was pretty comfortable with it all too, but the poor ambassador looked like he was going to pass out.

The man didn't have a perfect body, but that just meant no one was staring at him too closely. At the twenty-minute mark, they were all released. It was late now, for him, being ten at night, but he had a strange feeling that no one was going to just leave because he yawned a few times. Not even if he stretched and made a dramatic production of it, patting his hand over his mouth the whole time.

There were more people coming, though several others slipped out, keeping the numbers about the same the whole time. Ben had gone back to making things, and called him over more than once, to help him with some problem or another.

The guy was good. The quality of the food being put out went up several times, and he was leaving the recipes in the box, which meant Mason could have some of them later. He was full from his nibbling, but everything was suddenly finding a home with someone.

At about ten-thirty, or a little later, music started. It wasn't too loud, thankfully. He had neighbors, and while yappy dog did join in, no one came by to complain. Shortly after that, the door opened, and Sam finally walked in, with Lisa.

Rather, Lexi Horn came in, looking ready to steal hearts along with all the good jobs, and her assistant, Lisa, moved into the space like someone would die if they got too close. It was kind of different from the last time they were there. Mason waved a bit, from the kitchen, expecting to be ignored, since he didn't know Lexi Horn. He'd waved to everyone coming in though, because it was his lease they were all violating with their late night revelry.

There was no great disappointment there, since Lexi moved directly to a man he didn't know and started chatting while Lisa kept scoping the place out. The man was well dressed, had iron gray hair and looked sober enough, considering he had a brightly colored drink in his hand. The trick seemed to be in not drinking it. The thing was nearly full, and he didn't even pretend to be sipping from it. Lexi got a kiss from him, which probably meant it was her date,

That she had a date to the party at his house was weird, but it could be the normal thing for her group. They stood there chatting, and the man nodded along for a while. Then he carefully set his drink down on the low table, turned, and pushed Lexi Horn over the arm of the sofa face first. That left her in the lap of a different man, who tried to kiss her while the old guy worked at the front of his pants. The girl, his friend, Sam, didn't protest much, just seeming annoyed. Even as her nice dress was being pulled up from behind.

Lisa didn't move, her face going hard. It meant something, but he didn't know what. Honestly, he didn't really care. This guy was clearly having some issues.

Walking over, he tapped the man on the shoulder, getting him to stare in an almost confused fashion.

"What?" The guy barked at him, sounding angry. Then, if Mason were in VR and a character walked up and interrupted just as he was about to get busy, he would have been bugged by it just as much.

"This is real." He said it firmly, and pulled the man upright. That got the guy to push him a bit, and since the other man was the bigger one, Mason moved several steps back. "This is real. You're in my apartment, and all these people are really here, watching you. This isn't VR. Cover up quick. I don't think anyone has gotten pictures yet." Not that he knew of. He looked around, and did find at least three pointed that way.

Mason stepped in front of the confused guy, so that he wasn't flashing his dick to the room.

Instead of seeming pleased to have his error pointed out before he'd accidently raped someone, or embarrassed at his mistake, the man tried to push him again.

"So? If I want to fuck some bitch, she better bend over. Do you know who I am?"

He had to shake his head at that one, too.

"Nope. But you're ruining my boring party, so why not back off a little bit?"

"I'm Charlton Warburg! I run the VR industry, and if you don't mind your own business you'll never work in it again!"

"Oh? Um, not to be a pain in the ass, but I don't work in VR. Not even in an industry that's close enough to it that someone from there would have much control over me. So, again, stop doing that, and at least find a girl that doesn't have that shocky look on her face? I'm sure half the women here would have sex with you. Or you can borrow the VR room? That's better anyway. Aren't you worried that she'll get pregnant, and you'll end up paying for the kid for the rest of its life?" It was probably that he was more worried about that for himself than not that got the man to look at him funny.

Slowly, like a clock ticking, he seemed to figure out that no one that looked like Mason would be in VR. Not from of a video capture rig or camera. Then the man stopped and looked away, like he was reading something. Then he blinked several times and swallowed hard.

Rather than push him more, Carlton tucked himself into his pants.

"That... Really is a good point. I wasn't thinking that way. Sorry. What did you say your name was again? In case I want to ruin you later?" He sounded a bit smarmy, but not so much that it seemed like a real threat. It probably meant it truly was. A casual statement about what he could really do to someone, if he decided to.

Mason stuck his hand out to shake, trying not to think about the fact that this guys dick had just been in his own as he grasped it, by reflex.

"I'm Mason Sims. I work in nano, and assembly design. Freelance."

The man stopped then, seeming a little slow for someone that sober. Like a person that was busily hearing someone else talk to them and trying to pretend it wasn't happening.

"The one giving out tens of millions of dollars of imbeds here?"

That was about right, so he nodded. Then watched as the man realized what that had to mean. The only kind of person that could afford to give away that level of wealth had to be rich beyond even what he had. Maybe even holding the kind of money that his parents had. Because this man had clearly been given the industry he was in. There was no other way to explain how slow he was.

Smart enough to know he couldn't afford to be drunk or high however.

Also smart enough to not start a bigger mess than he had to, it seemed. At least not until he learned that Mason was just some guy. Then the fire might well rain down.

"Well, now I feel a bit silly. I know, why don't you take a turn with Lexi? She's a little lackluster in the sack, but she does clean up nicely, don't you think?"

He grinned, and then had to resist hitting the man.

"Not right now, thank you. I try to keep things to VR that way. That you don't is... Kind of shocking. You know, support your own product and all that? It really does feel the same as real life. So if that was you and your team putting it together, great job, but..."

The man gave him a knowing smile, and reached over, to stroke Lexi's behind. It was an absent thing. The kind of VR like action that got people in trouble if they didn't follow simple social rules about not doing people they knew in virt. She hadn't gotten up yet, though the kissing from the man she was sprawled across had stopped. Looking at the guy, who was very attractive for a male, it was clear that he was very nearly in a state of panic at the moment. A lot of people in the room looked that way.

In fact, most of them did.

Not him, because the man he was insulting and questioning wasn't his boss's boss, or whatever. Just a party guest that didn't seem to get that reality and simulation were different things anymore. That could happen. When it did it was the responsibility of those with a better grounding to help them get back to the real world.

Charlton stood there for a minute, and then leaned in, whispering to him. It was creepy, sinister and smelled a bit of something like tobaccos.

"You see, Mr. Sims, when you fuck someone in VR, or have them do things for you, the second you finish and tab the button, it's over. They're gone forever, and the act, whatever it was, is also gone. It never truly existed. That's both the wonder and failure of the virtual experience. If I take one of these people, these puppets that have to do what I say if they ever want to work again, they remember it for years. That's why I do it. Because I can and no one in the world with the power to stop me will. You're correct about the possibility of children though. I do get carried away at times, and should keep that in mind. It came up recently for me, so... I must really remember to go in from the back from now on. That won't produce babies."

There was silence in the room, so everyone heard Mason when he spoke, shaking his head a bit.

"That... Is pretty messed up. I mean, like insane level wrong. Don't do that to people. Even if you don't know why you shouldn't, just don't. People are real, and you need to treat them like they are. Always. Do you understand that?" It was important, to make sure people knew the difference, before they ended up in prison for rape, or worse, murder. This guy had gotten close that day already, and for some reason no one else wanted to risk helping him out.

Everyone was staring at him then. All the celebrities that he didn't know, and their huge, highly muscular, assistants. Ben looked white as a sheet across the room, and more than one set of large people looked ready to rush him, even if they worked for others in the room and not Warburg. His two big friends were actively going for weapons already, even. Enabling the delusional man. No wonder he went around screwing starlets in the open at parties. Everyone in the place seemed to be ready to back his right to do it with lethal force.

Mason just stood there, and tilted his head. This man may think he was the master of VR, but that wasn't going to help him here. Really, given the current plans, Mason was probably going to end up destroying his entire world in the end.

Plus if his goons attacked him, he'd bleed all over the man, and then report the crime. Watch might hide an attack for someone powerful enough. Mason didn't know how that would play out for certain, but it might not, at the same time.

If he died, well, that would suck. There were, he decided, simply some things you couldn't back down from. Not if you wanted the world to be worth living in. One of his rules was that he didn't let people hurt anyone around him, if he could help it. So he just smiled a bit and looked directly into the powerful man's eyes, not backing down from his moral, no rape at parties stance.

The man furrowed his brow, stared back, and seemed not to understand what was going on for some reason.

"What?"

Mason squared his shoulders. If he was going down, and from the response of the room, he honestly was, it was going to be for a real reason.

"I said, it's wrong. So stop doing it. Even if you like it, that doesn't make it right. So stop. Now."

Then, as if he didn't know where he was suddenly the older, slightly larger, and very well dressed man took several sharp steps back. His men, along with several others in the room, bristled.

"I... Well, if you say so. I guess I won't do that anymore. I certainly don't wish to disrupt your party. That would be rude."

It was nearly funny, and probably a joke, but he played along. It was better than being killed.

"Thanks. Now, let's get back to this boring party that's sprung up? I need to see to the next round of people." Then he smiled at Charlton and gave a single nod. "You do know that I don't have a clue who anyone here is, don't you? They all just showed up. Well, nothing for it now, let's get back to work."

No one moved for a long time, but finally they did, the next group not wanting to miss out on the free things.

That was Mason's guess, anyway.

Chapter nine

The party really was pretty much an excuse to wait until each person filtered through his work room, in groups of about five or six per hour. It was constant work on his part, since he had to make up new bio-marker signal sets for almost everyone. Plus, the second half of the night was devoted to people that he wasn't going to allow control over their own imbed to.

About half of them realized it was a great idea, and the other half were straight forward too stupid to get that they weren't bright enough to handle it. Pretty, but dull on a level that should have probably meant they didn't make it in the world. They did though, since others took care of them, for the most part.

Which he was about to help with.

No one brought up the thing with Charlton, even the man himself. He came in with his assistants, who were vast and angry looking men. Each of the two seemed ready to kill Mason the whole time, even when they stripped down to bare skin and let him help cover all of them with clear liquid. For all that the older man had seemed a bit out of it earlier, he had an easier time just waiting for the driving compound to set, and for his skin to dry, than a lot of the others had. It was boring, just standing there, even if there was some music coming from the other room.

As he put his very nice clothing back on, Charlton looked at him directly. The others weren't really paying attention any longer, as if any possible threat from Mason that might have been there had passed. It had never really existed, but the idea was silly, when he thought about it. He'd just put an imbed on all three men, plus the nervous looking women that were over in the corner.

That could have been anything, or done anything, that he wanted it to. Not that he'd ever thought about it before, but there had to be a way to set up a multi-imbed process that would allow him to kill anyone that had it. Luckily for him, even if he felt a bit threatened, he wasn't like that. Life was, if not precious, then at least a thing that should be guarded, when possible.

After staring, probably trying to intimidate him, if not sizing him up as a possible sex partner, Charlton spoke, his voice almost humorous.

"I've had people ruined for less than what you did."

"You mean that thing earlier where I helped keep you out of prison? You're welcome, by the way. I saved you all that uncomfortable anal sex of your own. Seriously, don't go around being like that. Especially with people that you could probably just ask to do things with you. Not that it isn't wrong to do that too, but at least... It's..." He waved his hands, frustrated and at a loss for words. After all, he couldn't think of a single reason that this man should need anyone to explain this to him.

Charlton Warburg, whoever the hell he was, laughed and waved his hands back a bit, like it was all very funny.

"People at my level don't go to prison, Mason. We have people to do that kind of thing for us. Anyway, I hope that I didn't disrupt your party too much? That would be against the rules. I didn't know that you'd object to me having a bit of fun however. I'm sure you understand?"

He didn't. Not even the slightest bit.

Rather than have the two giant men attack and kill him then, since it would apparently be their job to also go to prison for it, he shrugged. It looked like he was the one that didn't understand how reality worked.

"Well, keep it in mind for the next party? You all know how to use the new imbed, and more importantly, when?" He got a grudging nod from one of the two large men, as he buttoned his heavy shirt front. It was military in style, but a deep blue. That was a color that no one used in the States, he didn't think. Maybe the Coast Guard, but their outfits looked different, at least in the games.

"Got it. You're lucky." The gruff muscleman didn't explain why, so Mason shook his head a little. He understood a threat when he heard one, and wasn't going to get in a fight with someone that was designed to kill.

"Is that what we're going to call home invasions now? Luck?" There was more head shaking then, as the men left, leaving the two thin and frightened looking women with him. They were done as well, but had waited there, with him, while the other men left.

One of them seemed ready to pass out when he started to hand her what he hoped was her clothing. It was a nice red dress, and matching under things. He felt a bit awkward about it, but there were going to be at least two more groups, and he didn't really want to leave Charlton in the front room alone for long.

The man could get rapey, it seemed.

Looking at him like he was insane, or scary, the lady took her outfit back, and then handed it to the other woman. Mason grinned at that and started to pass over the right clothes.

"Sorry. You two understand how to use the imbed?" They'd gotten a lesson on it, but were both kind of stupid and didn't have people there with them to help them out. It was really annoying, so Mason had built in an override, in case he had to take control of things for them at some point.

Given that he wasn't really certain what their names were, that would be an issue in the end.

"Deidre, isn't it?" He looked at the one shimmying into a little black dress. She was what might kindly be called doe eyed. It was beyond what reality would allow, slightly. Her big brown orbs were nearly twenty percent larger than they should have been. It worked for her, but was also just on the edge of being creeptastic. She was a real life woman that had been spliced to look like a cartoon character.

Her voice had that kind of quality too, being higher in pitch than was normal, if only a bit. Breathy and scared, too. Mixed with enough sexual signaling that it was confusing, or would have been to a lot of men.

"Thank you, Mason. This is really nice of you. Is there anything I can do, in return?"

He'd been in VR enough in life to know an obvious offer of sex when he heard one. He'd even done that kind of thing from time to time with representations of women that were a lot like the one in front of him. Possibly even her, actually. It was weird to see her in the real world, looking like she did, but not unattractive.

"Call me, if you have any trouble, or get confused about what to do with the imbed? I'd rather be woken up in the middle of the night to deal with it than have people accidently do the wrong thing, so it's all right to get in touch." He nearly added an understood to the end, as if he were talking to a small child, but he was dealing with grown women. He looked at the other one, who was standing there in all red now, adjusting her breasts. She was lighter in skin tone and had normal person eyes, but swallowed at him nervously when he looked at her directly. "You too? When in doubt, get in touch, um..." He didn't have a name for this one, and was about to be embarrassed when she just smiled sweetly.

It was a very good look for her. Better than the slight shaking that had been going on a moment before.

"Leslie Conrad. I can just call you when I need anything?" She said it like that was real, so he raised his eyebrows.

If he said no, she'd probably never call, even when she was supposed to. He could see a trap in her words, however.

"For anything technology related. Or I suppose if you have any other real problems. I can't help with everything, but I'd rather you make mistakes on the side of caution for the first bit. Just remember, most nights I try to sleep when it's dark out." He sighed, since it had been nearly a day now, since Adam and the others had pounded on his door.

Mason had worked nearly the whole time, since then. Leslie clapped her hands together, and Deidre smiled.

"I have people now? For tech things only, but still, that's coming up in the world! You can call on me if you need any acting done." She made it sound like it was just a thing that could come up in her world.

"Sounds good. Now, let's get the next group of people around? I need to get to bed soon, if I can." Mason would get grumpier, if he didn't sleep soon.

The last group turned out to be actors and actresses that all seemed surprised that they were being included. John had put them on the list, but also arranged for them to stay to the end. They were, as one of the young men pointed out, basically all on the D-list. Whatever that was.

A cute girl that looked to be about nineteen winked at him and explained.

"We're all on the lists for things, but aren't really famous enough to count, most of the time. We only make the network links, even the gossip pages, when we're near someone more famous. None of us are really going to be followed that hard, even if we are on that app." She seemed humble enough about it, and batted her sleepy looking blue eyes at him. She needed to get a shower though, he realized, since she had what seemed like real makeup on.

The woman sighed, and so did the other four that were left, trooping off together to the bathroom. They had to share the last clean towel, Mason noticed. They all had real goop on their faces to make them prettier.

Sighing, he thought about how to ruin an economy, and spoke to them after they were all naked and standing in his work room.

"Tomorrow, I mean later today now, at four..." Everyone looked at him, fake interest on their exhausted faces. "If you show up, I'm going to be doing some makeup imbeds. Free, like this is. You won't get a call for it, so if you don't come, you don't get it, but if you do... Well, you each have an invitation?" It was stupid of him. Not because he could have charged them for it. Part of his goal was to make that kind of thing, money, mean something different.

It was just that he was going to have a house full of people again, if he wasn't careful.

As it was he set the nano assembler to making the seven copies he thought he might need already, then put in for fifteen in all. It would end up working all night, but he could sleep while that happened. The roller bottles would have to be set up before he went to bed, but... The thought made him yawn.

He stayed in his workroom, doing that, as the D-listers dried and got a bit of a lecture about how to control the new tech, as well as how to get in touch with him. During the day. He was firm on that point.

This group was actually a bit huggy, on the way out, but left directly, getting the idea well enough. Now, if only the others would pick up on the theme he was trying to present, that of an empty apartment, he could get a few hours sleep before they started showing up again.

That didn't seem to be what anyone else had in mind, however. The living room had four people in it that were standing, or at least sitting and talking. Adam Genesh was sleeping over in the corner of the space, having pulled two of the sofa cushions off for that purpose. He was wrapped around someone that upon closer inspection turned out to be little Tara. Not that she was that small, but she was too young for the guy. At least in the real world.

Mason had a sneaking suspicion that Adam didn't really follow rules though, most days. None of these people did. Not the normal ones that he lived by.

There were people in his bed too. At least three of them, and he had no clue as to who they were. Thankfully the others were kind of familiar to him by now.

Sam, dressed up as Lexi, sat on the remaining sofa cushion, Lisa standing behind her, looking stoic, and a bit sleepy. John was using one of the dining room chairs, and Mike was standing by the front door, having just walked the last of the D-list out. Rather politely.

That left Ben, the chef, who was in the Kitchen, making something. He turned when Mason walked in and nodded his head.

"If you can help me make a decent cup of coffee, I'll make us both rich." He'd clearly been trying, and failing, at it, taking a sip and dumping the cup in his hand after making a face.

It was a big deal, apparently, since everyone else in the room seemed interested in the idea. Coffee was rare and expensive, since the crops really hadn't been doing well for the last twenty years or so. It sold for a little over a hundred dollars a pound. So even if they had to print it out themselves, a good quality blend really would make them wealthy.

He nodded, and stumbled over to the machine, even though he really needed his float screen. That came when he thought about it, and he started in, working out what portions everyone else had been getting wrong about coffee so far. People had, naturally, gotten close, so he cribbed from that, and made some changes. Ten tries later Ben took a sip off of the blue mug in his hand and sighed.

"All right. We aren't going to do better without sleep. Can you save this one? Here, everyone, try it."

Mugs were passed out from his cupboard, including to him. He took a drink, and nearly spit the swill out, since it was bitter and burnt tasting, but the rest of them acted like he and Ben had put together the best thing in the world. Shuddering, he set his down, making a face. John smiled at him, and drank about half of his in one go.

"An acquired taste." Then he set his blue cup down and stood. "So, about earlier..."

Sam nodded, her face nearly blank.

"Yeah. That was... Insane, Mason. I mean you walked up to one of the thousand or so most powerful men in the world and told him no. How are you still alive?" There was a quit awe in her voice, which was better than the anger that he'd sort of thought might come.

No one wanted to be raped, but he'd endangered the plan. Only his little part of it, but until they had the tech set up, him dying would be annoying. Not that he was the only person in the world that could get the work done, but not many others at his level of ability would be willing to.

It was a thing that he'd never really known about himself before, but in his heart, Mason Sims was kind of a subversive. The thing with that one was that these people, the ones in that room, seemed to understand that. Well, not Ben and Adam maybe, but the others looked to have a clue.

Without having to be told, he understood that they were probably being listened to, so he shrugged and turned to Sam.

"I hope I didn't get you, any of you, into any trouble? I mean, I just met you all today, so it wouldn't be fair to blame any of you for it. Charlton seemed, I dunno, good probably isn't the word for it, but not upset over it all. The guy is pretty confused about things though. Some kind of VR dementia?" It wasn't a real term. Not a clinical one.

Everyone knew what he meant however, and Ben, who'd taken the other chair by the cluttered dining room table shook his head.

"Nope. All of them, all the top people, are pretty much like that. It might be similar, to that kind of unreality thing, I guess. They never have to deal with real world consequences, and almost no one can call them on what they do, so they grow up just knowing that they're untouchable. They do what they want, and if other people don't like it, well, tough. We have to work, and part of the cost going in is sometimes putting up with that kind of person. We all knew that going in."

Except Mason, who worked as a freelancer in an industry where no one cared that much about who did what. They cared about who owned the copyright on it, and that was pretty much the only thing of value. VR, movies and t-shows were the same, really. Except that they all had actors and actresses that were important too. Not irreplaceable, however.

That seemed to be the theme of what was said next.

Sam looked at him, her eyes glinting a little.

"So, my hero. I guess I should keep you around, like a good luck charm? That wasn't the first time something like that has happened to me, but it's the only time anyone said anything about it, other than to call me a slut the next day on the networks." She was playing for Ben, it seemed. Everyone else would know that they knew each other, most likely.

Maybe not though, so Mason smiled.

"I guess I got lucky. Charlton was in a good mood, or whatever that was. I think he didn't want to be rude to the host of the party, in his own way. So it probably won't work anywhere else. That... Is that really normal? I mean, I swear, the other parties I've gone to weren't like that."

Okay, so Mark Mitchell's tenth birthday party might not be a good barometer of such things, but that one had just been cake and some prizes, with the little guy getting some presents at the end. No one had been bent over anything, and if that had started to happen, there would have been an outcry, he was almost certain.

John picked up his cup and took a drink from it.

"It was close, whatever it was. We should all get some sleep if we can. Do you have a cleaning service set to come in on the weekends?" That was pointed to him.

Mason shook his head.

"Nope. I'll get to it, after I get up. I told people, a few, to come around at about four to get makeup imbeds. That's already printing out. Adam there mentioned that I should get one, so that I could look good for the cameras that would be trying to show us in bed together? Something like that. So I already have the new design, and copyright on it." That got waved away, as Sam rolled her eyes at him. It was out of character though, given that Lexi wasn't really supposed to know him.

That was the way he was playing it.

"Damn. I just got a new one when I had the shield put in, too. Hey, can you do things like that? This, I mean?" She held out her right arm, to show the tinted skin.

Sam already knew that he could, or at least that he'd said so, but Lexi didn't, so he had to reassess his idea about how well she was doing not knowing him at the moment. Instead of taking her hand directly he went to the other room and got his little scanner out. She let him take full readings, not understanding, or possibly not caring, that he knew an awful lot about her from them.

Like how very frightened she was at the moment. He couldn't tell why, but the chemicals were in her system. If it were him it would have been about nearly being raped, but that might not be what she was thinking about at the moment.

The girl was also a bit younger than he'd assumed. He'd always thought of Sam as a contemporary, but Lexi Horn was about four years younger than he was. Twenty-one, or about that, biologically speaking. There were some strange things to the readings, in the electrical ranges. It probably meant she had things inside her that he didn't know about. That wasn't impossible. In the main she seemed healthy though, and he focused on the specific imbed that she'd gotten.

Her shield was of good quality, and had been applied consistently over her whole body. Mason had already worked out how to mimic the thing, in his head, but hadn't run the plans out yet, not feeling the need, personally.

Nodding he tried to seem professional with the woman, "I can even make a few improvements on it. More than enough for it to get a new copyright. For instance, I can make it lighter in color. It will still be black tinted, but by adding in nano copper, that can be partially green, too, making it harder to see. That will be stronger on the base level, by about five times. It should be as flexible." He tapped her hand a few times, nearly slapping it before the interlocking pieces stiffened under the force enough to notice.

That portion would be about the same. There was only so much you could do that way. He started to work on it, jotting down notes, and then smiled and shook his head.

"I need to get some sleep. There are bodies in my bed though. Would it be rude to pull them out, and take their place?"

John grinned, "probably. Plenty of floor though. I call one of the pillows."

That meant getting blankets for all of them, which had him printing those and some pillows out, before the lights were turned off. He ended up on the living room floor, lying on his side, about three feet from both Sam and Ben. It wasn't comfy, but he slept anyway, needing to.

It was hard, especially when the buzzing in his head started. There was a flashing light as well, and it woke him, though he still had to take a minute to realize what was going on. Someone was calling him. It was annoying, he decided, as he picked up, his avatar being projected as a default.

"Mason Sims. How may I help you?"

"Mr. Sims? This is Deidre Omry? From earlier? You said that I should call you if I needed help with the new thing? Um, help? There's a man following me. I don't know if he's papo or not. Sometimes people just recognize me. I was getting some coffee, and when I left the place he followed, so what do I do, if he has that app from the vultures?"

Mason sat, looking at the woman's face. Her avatar, rather than the real thing. It was transparent, so he could see the dark room he was in, and a quick glance to the left showed that it was nearly noon anyway. Time to get up, or near enough. Otherwise his whole schedule would be thrown off.

"Do you have a camera on you?"

There was a pause, and the sound of heels clicking as she walked on what sounded like concrete.

"Yes. What do I do with it?"

He guided her through getting a picture of the man that was following her, since they didn't want to act like he was some kind of professional if he was just looking to kidnap her or something. He looked pretty normal though. A little chubby, and wearing a windbreaker, which couldn't be in fashion. He didn't have a lot of hair and wore wire rimmed glasses. That was probably so that he could carry a camera rig on his face in public, rather than his eyes being bad. You just got that fixed now, most of the time.

Bringing up a map, Mason got Deidre's position. She was downtown, and there were a lot of places to go. The man was only about twenty meters behind her, and closing.

When he ran the face, it turned out that he really was just a guy that did freelance work for one of the networks. That particular one even had a name.

"He's Gerald Zackary Dogget, from Gossip Guy? So, that means he's almost certainly tracking you. We can lose him, if you go to the next business, there's a back way out. I'll change the bio-markers for you as soon as he can't see you anymore."

Sam sat up, her brow furrowed.

"Who is that?"

She was pointing at his face, indicating who was on the phone with him.

"Um, Deidre Omry. She was here last night, and didn't have anyone to handle things for her, so I told her to call if she needed help. A man is following her. From a-"

She nodded, having heard what he'd said.

"Tell her to turn and face him. Smile, and let him get the pictures. She isn't so big that she can turn down the free publicity. How's her makeup?"

He had to speak the words, so that the women could hear him, and her answer wasn't a happy one.

"Um, she says that it isn't great. She washed it off last night, and doesn't have an imbed. You know to come here at four for that, today?" He was being confusing, but the woman seemed relieved.

"Lexi says I should let him get me though? Like this?"

There was a shrug from Sam, who had moved closer to him, still sitting on the floor and looking exhausted.

"Do it. They'll use the worst still shot they can get, to show that you're actually not a goddess, but like I said, you can't afford to miss out on being seen."

Mason told the girl what had been said, and stayed with her as the man practically mugged her with a camera. He was on video too though, so all of it was being seen at the same time.

Finally Deidre had to walk away, and with a bit of help, vanished. As far as sensors went. It was a bit of walking for her to stay out of sight, but they managed it.

Then Mason stood up, knowing that someone had to clean up all the mess. Since he was his own maid service, that meant getting to work, before people started coming again.

Chapter ten

"You know..." Mason was half bent over, picking up spent napkins that had been thrown on top of a small pile of something that looked to have come from a dog. At least he hoped that was the case, because otherwise someone had simply failed to get to the bathroom in time. "If someone really wanted to make the famous look bad, they could just do a show about the residue of parties. I mean, if we can call that thing last night one of those. I know it wasn't very good, but..."

Sam, still wearing the dress from the night before, helped him pick the room up, even though it was kind of clear she'd rather be sleeping herself. Adam still was, snoring away gently across the room, even as they moved around and talked. Ben too. The assistants were all up, though they wisely headed to get cleaned up first thing.

It was bit gross, taking care of all the mess, but his place was small enough that it didn't take that long. It wasn't even a problem until he realized that he couldn't strip the sheets off his bed, because there were people in it. Having sex.

One of them was George, from the night before, and there was a man and a woman with him. It seemed consensual enough, though the woman was working pretty hard, entertaining both men at once. Mason sighed, and just stood in the doorway for a bit, then turned and left. Then, just because he lived there, he walked in, and got his clothing for the day, ignoring them. It was embarrassing, but he had some things to actually do.

Like shower. That was hard to do, since he didn't have any clean towels, though he printed a new one out, before going in. It took an extra ten minutes, but was worth it, he felt. The tan thing was clean, and smelled fresh, which none of the others he had would. There was a washing machine in the building, on the ground floor near the back. Actually, there were six of them, so he traipsed down there with two large cloth bags, each kind of bland gray in color, and started two big loads of things. No one would steal them, meaning he didn't have to babysit his underwear. When he got back home, taking the stairs just for the exercise value, everyone that had been there was gone.

The only thing that showed that they'd been there was the messy bed.

"Which I won't have to launder, if I burn the sheets." It was tempting, since bodily fluids were probably all over the things now. It was gross. He slept there, and those people had just... Befouled it with their slime.

That reminded him to sanitize his VR unit too. It seemed clean, but he couldn't tell who might have done what with it while he wasn't looking. Since he was alone, having nearly an hour before people might show up, if anyone did at all, he worked up a plan for a simple three dimensional printer that would make most things, and could be converted to a nano level set up by simply pulling the control and report card. It was built in, so you had to snap it out of place.

That way, when they were printed the first time, even Watch might not get the idea. People would be able to put them in their homes, and even use them normally, for months or years. Then when it came time to throw off the shackles of the government, two minutes and a hammer would upgrade the machines into something that would be able to do almost anything that was needed.

Including make power capture devices, and disassemblers. There were some issues to work out with the whole thing, but by the time a gentle tapping sound came at his door, at about ten before four, he pretty much had the basics ready to go. If not for actual printing, then at least for the computer based simulation portion. That would need to be done offline. The portion that needed to be tested was the removal of the reporting card.

Watch wouldn't need to know about that option, or what the machine could actually do, otherwise.

The screen to the left of the door showed a rather normal looking woman on the other side. Her hair was pulled back and she had on gray sweats. The kind that people used to exercise in, when no one was looking. That, plus a small bag in her right hand was all she had though. No assistant, or anything like that. She was lean, and pretty enough in a pale way, but didn't seem special.

Part of that would be all the people that had been there the night before. She didn't seem very large, and when he stared hard enough it was clear that it was his friend from the night before. Shiny dress.

When he opened the door he smiled.

"You know, I never did get your name? I'm Mason, by the way. Mason Sims." He put his hand out, which was taken. People in his world didn't shake a lot, but the people the night before had. That, and hugged.

"Carry Samson. I wasn't sure if you'd remember me..."

He nodded, "free makeup imbed, four o'clock. You get to help me with my back, since I'm getting the same thing. There should be some other people coming. Maybe. I told them about it. We can go first, and then run the others through in batches. It won't take too long. They're all the same this time."

The woman looked at him and grinned, seeming happy to be recalled. That or the idea that she was really getting it for free worked in her world.

"Thanks. I can help, if you want? I scheduled the whole day for it, until this evening. There's a party. I also got an invite to spend the week with Lexi Horn, at her beach cottage. It has a plus one... Would you like to, I mean, you're probably busy?"

He fought a blink, and looked at the woman, who didn't seem like she'd be one of the first draft for an underground rebellion to his mind. She did seem nice, and friendly enough, but not exactly like a person willing to face a firing squad when they failed. That wasn't the plan, but being smart he knew that most of the time things like what he had in mind would simply fail. That had to be the truth. Otherwise the world would already be different.

Still, it was a way for him to get into the whole beach trip without Sam inviting him directly, which might work. They could pretend to get together as for setting up the other things they needed there, as if they had just become buddies.

"I'd love to go with you, if that was the question?" It would most likely mean sleeping with her, which... Honestly he wasn't ready for.

That was the other side of the VR problem. Mason was used to selecting a woman, or on occasion, though rarely, two, and pretty much doing whatever he wanted at the moment. That was how it worked. You just did things, and what felt good to you was fine.

Real people probably expected to be treated with respect and dignity. The only thing there was that he wasn't totally certain what that meant anymore. His entire sex life had been done in a certain way, and now, possibly, he needed to know how to change that up.

Thankfully the remedy for that one was probably the same as the problem. Unlike information on how to fight, sex lessons were pretty easy to find. Mason just hadn't bothered, since his virt partners hadn't cared.

The woman smiled, her face pale and a bit bland at the moment.

"That's perfect. I didn't know if you'd want to go with me. I'm not all that famous."

He gave her a funny look and then shook his head.

"You know, all those people here last night? I really don't know them. You got that, right? I think someone had the wrong apartment, and then people just stayed." More to the point, John had come, probably to pick up the disassembly device, and then they'd gotten distracted by Adam and his handy nano hive problem.

At four, almost exactly, a load of people came, nearly ten of them. More than he'd invited, since a few people had brought others with them. Shaking his head, he shrugged.

"Carry and I are going first, and, um, why not you three?" It was two women, dressed sort of like Carry had, and a man that looked a bit familiar from the night before. He'd gotten the bio-baffler, but was missing the woman he'd been with. The one that looked like him.

"Then we'll do up the rest, all at once. You can stand in the living room if you don't mind the casual nudity?"

It seemed very likely that the only one that might would be him. Everyone else just started to strip down like it was the most normal thing in the world. He tapped into his imbed system and darkened the windows across the room, so that no one would be able to see in. It wasn't illegal to be naked in your own apartment, but some of these people would be spied on.

Probably with the claim that they'd been at an orgy.

It was way more efficient however, so given that no one was shy, he ran them all through at one time. Carry, being good to her word, used the roller on his back. The others weren't shy about helping out either, even if they were used to people waiting on them.

Then, these were the people that couldn't really afford things like this, so maybe it was less the case for them than it had been for the people the night before. The other people.

Everyone here had pretty standard inskin computer systems, making it easy to link them all in. The program for the makeup was simple enough, but had some neat options that mimicked the higher end products. For instance, if you looked into a mirror, the program would give you the best application for your features at the moment, and match it to your clothing. There was, once that was established, a feature that would change things depending on lighting.

It was possible, using this imbed, with the program that he'd provided, to look your best twenty-four hours per day. You could even swim in it and look good. It had a hair color portion too, which allowed for ninety different pallette choices.

He was about to explain that to Carry, who was right next to him, when his phone rang. Two calls in one day was a lot for him. Deidre was in the other room too, naked by his sofa, so it probably wouldn't be her. Instead it was Sam.

His buddy.

The face was white and blue again, with pretty swirls on the right hand side.

"Sam! You won't believe what I'm doing right now. Things have gotten strange since I saw you last."

Without missing a beat the mild tenor responded.

"Really? See, I turn my back for half a minute and you go and get yourself in trouble. What is it, did you come up with a new way to remove plaque from teeth?"

"Nope. I'm standing in a room with a bunch of really attractive people, totally nude. I'd say I felt underdressed, but... Yeah."

He noticed that Carry was looking at him, her eyes slipping down his body. He had okay abs, but she kept going downward, her eyes lingering there. That part of him, well, honestly, he'd never thought about being self-conscious that way before. VR men were sometimes bigger, and sometimes smaller, that way. He figured that meant he was in the middle, more or less.

The woman seemed friendly enough when she made eye contact, so he probably wasn't some vast disappointment. That or she was a good enough actress to fake being interested in him when she didn't need to be. Smiling back, blushing a bit at the same time, he went on with Sam.

"So, why did you call? Are you coming over to dinner later? Or we could go out? That last thing was, um, let me pick this time?" That got a laugh, which seemed real.

"One scene of horrible fear and violence and you get all skittish on me. Sounds good though. I got a job. Out of town, for a few days. Can we do that tonight? My friend will drive us, he has an electric van. It isn't pretty, but it works."

"Sure. What time is good for you?" It was getting weird, talking to Sam like he wasn't also Lexi. Spy rules were in effect, if only in his head, however, so he had to do it.

"Call it seven? I'll meet you out front of your place. Near the brown building?" That was down the street a bit, and near one of the rare spots where the Watch cameras had a blind spot. He'd noticed that before, all on his own.

"See you then." When he broke the line, Carry was looking at him, making eye contact this time, like she was curious.

"Te's just a friend of mine. Sam. You two should meet. Te's actually into famous people, I think."

She looked hopeful, then had to shake her head.

"I can't. Not tonight. Soon? I don't know a lot of gender-neutral people. Are they a man or woman?"

He grinned.

"Te is te. That's kind of the point. Messing with the rest of us in order to screw up our perception of what we can expect from others. I think that's it, anyway. Sam is nice. Smart, which is one of my favorite things." It was, but the woman sighed and shook her head.

"Do you like pretty too? I can do that. In fact..." She brought up her makeup, and ran through a full body color change, looking down. "I think we can both do that now. Let's play in front of the mirror?"

About five minutes later half the people there were trying to get in front of the thing, which was meant for one person at a time. Mason put his clothing back on, personally. It wasn't chilly in his apartment, not with all the bodies, but he was starting to get a little uneasy. More than half the people had taken to checking him out, like they were with each other. Sure, he wasn't that bad, but the distraction of the people around him should have been enough.

No one tried to bend him over a sofa arm, so he was good.

That started a trend, and ten minutes later not only had most of them gotten dressed, but they'd started to leave. It was much better than the night before that way. The only thing that was truly different was that most of the people, men and women, stopped to give him a hug first.

"Thanks Mason!" This came from Deidre, who kissed his cheek. "That really helped earlier. I was freaking out, I can still call you, if I need to?"

He nodded, trying not to be annoyed with the slightly damp contact on his cheek. Her huge eyes made it easier to think of her as not being totally real, for him. Probably other people too, which might explain why so many things scared her in the world. If that was the case, then he'd just made it even worse, since simply taking her makeup off now wouldn't leave her invisible. That was the point, making her good looking all the time, but the program had decided that her personal best look was in slightly cartoon like, and unreal, colors.

She looked good, but like a virt, at the same time.

Which meant she was going to be vulnerable. Really, a lot of them would be.

"Um, hey, can you all come back, in about a week? I'll, I might have something for you. Next Sunday?" He didn't want to tell them what, but most of the nodded. A little distantly, but they did it.

Carry nudged him, her gray sweats suddenly looking like they weren't on an attractive mother of two, but rather a super star in a movie pretending to be one.

"Is that when you're extracting payment for all this? Well, I'll try to leave you too tired out for that, if I can. I have all week." If anyone else understood what she meant, they didn't let it show.

"Nope. Just a new imbed. I don't want to give it away yet, because having a thousand people at my door will annoy my neighbors. So, just you people, and a few others. I'll go over it with you in a few days, Carry." Because she was going to be a captive audience, if he had time.

Mason ended up getting more hugs, and a few pecks on the cheek, before the place finally cleared out.

"Alone at last." He glanced left, and saw that he had a full hour to get ready for his hang out time with Sam.

Being dressed well enough already, unless they were going someplace higher class than he wanted to pay for, he was set up that way for the evening. That left him with time to work up a very basic, and cheap to make, disassembly stripping unit. It pretty much just chopped stuff apart and sorted it all. It was simple enough, but wasn't allowed for use by the public. Now that he thought about it, he understood why that was.

If people could do that, they could build a good life for themselves out of trash, rocks and the occasional tree branch. His nano disassembler was pretty interesting, but you could really do a whole lot at a much lower level of technology.

The reason you couldn't have disassemblers was real enough, of course. If you could take things apart you could get the materials for guns and bombs, without anyone else knowing about it. He supposed that you could also drop a gun into the device he'd made and make weapons vanish without a single trace.

That was a bit of an issue, really. He could make it so that people had enough, in a world that was increasingly run by an ever smaller and more powerful elite, or he could leave it being safe. If people could make untraceable weapons, they might use them, after all.

Mason didn't think they would, if they had pretty much everything they needed. There might be some that would get angry over not being loved back, and that kind of thing, but VR had taken a lot of heat out of things of that nature. If the blonde down the street didn't like you, some other blonde in virt that night would. If no one wanted have you in real life, again, they would in a simulation that was so close to reality it could be hard to tell the difference some days.

He was about half done with the new plan when he let himself out, and locked up behind him. Too many people had come the day before for him to be comfortable leaving things open now. Even if they didn't steal, he could see his neighbors going in just to ruin his stuff, in retaliation for all the noise.

So locking up tight was the order of the day. Which reminded him that he had things in the wash still. He jogged down the stairs, three flights of them, and changed the loads to the dryers before he needed to dash out to meet Sam and whoever te was bringing to drive.

That still meant waiting though, standing near the brown brick building that had seen better days about a hundred years before. Picking the right spot, he cuddled right between where the street cameras would be able to see him, slightly behind a decorative tree.

An older model van, gray and white in color, and looking as sketchy as hell, started to pull up, the driver looking over at him from behind a painted face mask that matched the one that the passenger had. Lisa and Sam. Even with all their gear on, he recognized them

Then they suddenly pulled away.

He stared at them, with an open mouth as he tried to gesture for them to come back. It wasn't happening on the one-way street, but Sam did put ter head out of the window, so it was clear Mason was noticed. Not knowing what to do he watched them turn right and vanish around the building. Feeling a little baffled he wondered if running was in order.

Lisa was some kind of security expert, and had aborted the pickup. Glancing around he tried to figure out what was happening. He was in the right spot. Using an angle map that showed what each camera should be able to see, he realized that there was a small chance that one of the things down the street might be able to make out his face. Not that Watch wouldn't know it was him, given who was standing there.

Trying to act casual, he repositioned himself, so that even if it caught him, it would only get the back of his head. Then he stopped moving, since there were gait recognition programs that would be able to track him that way.

Coming back around, the van whirred up and stayed stopped this time. The sliding side door opened quietly, as Sam's painted face was exposed.

"Want a ride?" There was a playful tone to it, but nothing else was explained. Not until he was pulled inside, into an old and well worn composite seat. It had cracks in it and the yellow foam interior showed.

It was Lisa, in the front, who laughed and explained.

"I pulled up, and then didn't recognize you. You look... Hot. So much so that I couldn't make instant ident. Sam realized it was you from your body language. Good disguise."

That was confusing for a few seconds, until he realized that he'd left his new imbed running. It was tempting to turn it off then, but Mason didn't. There was no harm in looking good, after all. His skin was a bit more tan, as far as he could tell, but Sam actually stared at him, her face close enough he could smell te's makeup.

"Very good. Why the change up? Because of what Adam said?"

"In part. I'd told some other people that I'd hook them up, and had it planned anyway. I look all right though? It isn't what I'd normally do." He started to feel really self-conscious about it, but Sam patted his arm, being reassuring, rather than flirtatious.

"Yeah. It's a good look for you, actually. You fit in with the rest of us now. The party people. You can be our celebrity tech specialist. Now I just have to find you a girlfriend, so no one will put you and me together too much. Not outside of business."

It was a really strange thing to say, since he had all the women he wanted and Sam knew that. Still, the networks might not.

"Didn't you send Carry in for that? She told me that she'd been invited to Lexi Horn's beach cottage for a week, and asked me to be her plus one."

Sam laughed.

"I didn't mention anything of the sort. I mean, yes, she got an invite, along with a few others since they make for good cover, but I didn't tell her to bring you. That was all her. Well, good. We kind of need to point out that you and I aren't together, after last night. People had to have suspected, the way you jumped in and stopped Warburg. No one does that kind of thing." She looked at him then, her blue eyes lingering on his brown for a while.

Lisa made a sound that rumbled a bit, like a purr.

"That might have been it, you know? Carry got a million dollar imbed, from a guy that then walked right up to one of the most powerful people in the world, and told him to tuck his stick back in his pants. A girl could do a lot worse than someone like that. Even being seen with you now might be good publicity, if the word gets around. Not that anyone will really hear about it, but people find out, in the press, and then kind of focus on people, just to see what they might do next. It would be pretty shrewd for someone like Samson right now. Even if you do only screw in VR. She might just expect something that way, after getting you into a top vacation like this. She doesn't really know who you are, I bet. That means, to her mind she kind of outranks you. That means doing what she wants in bed."

He sighed, since it was probably true.

"I need to look into old school protection, and also take some lessons. I'll do that tonight. You people... You all do so many things in real life. It's weird." He smiled though, not wanting them to think he really meant it. Even though he did.

He was describing the life that his friend Sam had to live with, every day.

Te nodded, and touched his arm, which was way closer than they normally got.

"You can do it. Lisa and I will give you pointers. I know, you can practice with us. It will be fun."

Looking right into her eyes he shook his head, which made her squint a little.

"No. It won't really be fun at all. It will be me messing up, and looking stupid, I bet. We can do that though, if you get a chance? At least look at the VR record, and make sure I'm not going to seem like I don't know what I'm doing."

Lisa chuckled from the front seat again, "a point. It isn't that hard to manage. It's just a matter of remembering that the other person with you is real. We can virt that with you, and you'll do fine. Really, Carry probably wouldn't mention it if you treated her like she was VR. It's one of the rules. You don't complain. Not people at her level of the game."

Sam pulled back a tiny bit, and nodded. Te's face was somber, under the white and blue paint. The scent of it reminded him of a circus VR he'd watched once.

"True, but it never hurts to learn a new skill. Remember though, this kind of relationship tends to last about six weeks. That's how long the networks will be interested in it. The polite thing will be to stay with her and be seen for that time, then suggest who she should be with next for best exposure. Unless you really both like each other, then it can last longer, but that's so rare it will seem phony if you do it."

If Lisa didn't agree, she didn't mention it.

"Hey, you like barbeque, right?" The words seemed to be directed to him, though the muscular lady didn't take her eyes off the road to indicate who she meant.

"Um, sure. Why?"

"We're going to my house. Change of plans, but it's secluded enough that we can keep it from turning into something bigger than we want. John wanted to make sure you weren't overwhelmed too soon. I think he wants to talk some shop, but we need to get out of the city for that. Mike's cooking. That means Adam will be there, but he's more or less in on things. I mean, he probably thinks we're developing a drug empire, but believe it or not, the guy won't squeal on us just for that."

Mason gave a nod, "I see. I can run some legal things up for that. They aren't hard or unknown, they just tend to be a little bit of a poor business plan. Selling nanos once a month isn't nearly as lucrative as chemicals that people need twenty times in the same span. On the good side we can turn them on and off. There's an old design of mine that will work pretty well that way. Better than what's available right now." He ran the specs in his head, wishing he had his float screen along. It was just easier to work with for him.

Mason closed his eyes, and was surprised a while later when Sam put a hand on his leg.

"Honey, we're home." It was said in a funny and singsong voice, but the hand was taken away before he got his eyes open. It was nearly cuddly, for Sam.

It was an actual house too, not an apartment building. There were trees around it, though he could see other houses up and down the street. It was in the suburbs then, not the country. Still, it was more isolated than his place was. Any of his neighbors could have set up a microphone at any point, or infrared and pointed at their own wall, getting everything on the other side.

That there was no reason to before had stopped it from happening most likely, but it was perfectly legal. Here it would be harder to do, because of the extra space around the building. Not impossible, but harder to pull off, without a warrant. Getting something like that could take the cops ten, maybe even fifteen minutes, in the modern age.

If they knew that they needed one.

Which was, he didn't doubt, the point of them being there.

Chapter eleven

It turned out that Mike didn't just like barbeque, he was a freaking master of it. Self-styled, but that didn't stop the giant dark skinned man from trying his best. Even better, they had other things to round out the meal of cooked chicken and steak. Potato salad, slaw, and some rolls that were clearly from a bakery. It was all real food, which was a treat for Mason, if no one else.

Most days he just printed out what he needed. There was a difference.

Everyone kept telling him so.

Sam only nibbled at the corn she'd taken, which he understood. After all, the yellow kernels had been left on the cob, making it strange and hard to eat. The others did it, like it was special and wonderful, but he just skipped that one. If he needed to cram things between his teeth, he could do it more efficiently than that. The rest of it was pretty good, and the world around them smelled faintly of smoke and cooked meat, which was nice. It reminded him of home, even though he was pretty certain his parents had only done something like that once or twice in his entire childhood.

They'd been good parents, but still the product of the age they lived in. That meant doing things like making sure Mason had gotten the right drugs to keep him healthy, and that he didn't start out screwing sheep in virt before he formed anything like a social attachment to a person.

There hadn't been a lot of time for things like camping however. Not the real kind, with fires and tents. He'd done that, of course. In VR. It really was the same thing, he knew. The only real difference was that when he needed to pee, he could unhook and use the bathroom.

There was a wooden table, that had benches attached to it, that sat on a composite slab in the back yard. That part was impressive, since John and Lisa actually had a lawn, with grass and flowers around the edge. It wasn't perfectly kept up, but was nicer than the nothing that he, as a strict city dweller, was used to. He didn't even have a pot with a weed in it.

Looking around for a bit, he locked eyes with John and smiled.

"This is nice. I like it." It was a bit awkward feeling, but Lisa smiled at him happily about the words.

"We got it for a steal. The commute is a bit intense, but other than that it's great. Too bad we hardly ever get to see it. That's the business though."

Everyone at the table nodded. Mike was standing at a grill, which was a black colored metal box with gray and white smoke pouring from it. He had a long handled silver food turner in his right hand, held like a weapon. Everything any of the bigger people did looked like that. As if they were ready to kill with whatever was at hand. Lisa held a printed fork, made of flimsy composite material, and still had the same air about her.

Sam, dressed as te's gen-neu self had taken the seat right next to Mason, te's leg touching his. It was close, and a bit suspicious. No one else was doing that kind of thing there. It was really a bit strange, given that that wasn't the kind of relationship they had. Mason didn't think so anyway.

It was a question he had to suppose. They were friends, and about as close to being together as he'd ever really been with anyone in his entire life. Something wasn't right though, which he picked up on as the food was passed around.

It was John that spoke first, his voice smooth and deeper than normal. He was at the far end of the table, and had a heap of food that was about five times what Mason could have made himself eat on the plate in front of him. It was a cheap paper thing that could be tossed when they were done.

"Things have been speeding up in the last few days." The others all nodded, and Sam cuddled a little closer to his side. It wasn't very neutral seeming. In fact it felt distinctly feminine, which might give the act away. Then, anyone watching them there would already know who they all were.

Well, Adam didn't nod, just taking a small bite of potato salad. His hair was back to being blue, and he looked very young as he sat there, on the other side of Mason. He didn't try to cuddle though, thankfully. That would have been awkward, since he was on the side that was needed to eat.

"Yeah. I guess this is the time we need to really decide if we're doing this or not? Do we take the plunge and possibly lose everything we have, or float along, safe in the knowledge that our own little worlds are secure for now? That won't last forever. Not for me or Lexi." The youthful face turned to him, and then glanced at everyone else, one by one. He stopped when he got to Mason. "You can probably go the distance, but the rest of us are more or less disposable. The life span of a singer like me is about ten years, if I keep producing new material. I have about two or three years left, and then the only way I make the networks will be when I inevitably suicide."

There was a depth to what was being said, and a darkness that was unusual for the boy.

Sam nodded.

"An actress like me will probably last about fifteen years. I started young, but by thirty or possibly thirty-five it will be over. I got lucky that way. I was promoted early on, and some of the things I was in went big. Otherwise I'd be doing whatever I can to make enough money to live on, like most of the others. I think it's worth the risk." She turned to Mason, pressing her bland body against his side hard enough that he knew te was a girl under her jumpsuit. "You said you had something? Some kind of nano drug?"

He looked at the others, experienced enough at games to simply nod, rather than be shocked that they weren't discussing rebellion openly. They could be heard here. Anyone that wanted to could point a mic their way. True, it wouldn't be admissible in court without a warrant, but going on about hating the system would probably allow one of those to be gotten without much fuss. There might be stalkers listening too, if they had the basic ability to track addresses.

"I do. It's legal, too. I even have the copyright on the tech design, so we won't have to go over licensing properties. It's a sort of nano set that sits... I wish I had my float screen..." He held his hand up to the back of his head, a single finger over the right spot. "It sets up a small network in the brain, that agitates this area on command. It activates the pleasure center. On the good side, it's instant, and not addictive."

John looked over, and acted like they really were there to discuss the drug idea.

"The bad side?"

He shrugged, "we can only sell so much of it. A single dose will last a month, or slightly longer. It isn't expensive to make however, and like I said, legal. For now. So, while it might well be able to replace most other drugs, it won't make even a fraction of the money they do."

Not that he cared about that, given his other plans, but Adam seemed excited, and touched his right arm. His fork hand. Mason glared a bit, and shook his head.

"Never grab a man's eating hand." It was an attempt at a joke, and everyone laughed, for once. He normally got polite chuckles, but people were nervous at the moment.

The kid finally got control of himself and nodded.

"So, what's my part in this? I mean, you have Mason, and the drug stuff. I'm in, and need something, but there's no reason that you need me. Is there?" He sounded pretty certain of that, and everyone looked over at him.

That was fair. Dump it all on the new guy that figured they were going to fail and end up in prison anyway.

"You... John and Mike, are going to move some gear for us. I have a machine and some supplies that will be needed at the beach place. I'd like you on power systems after that. It won't be full time, but it will take work to set it up. Can you get that done tonight? Some of the stuff is large and we don't want to alert anyone that might try and grab the idea from us." Not that anyone would. You either had all the needed pieces for the drug like nano compound, or you didn't. He did, making the whole thing possible that way.

For real. He could print some up that night and do the programming at the same time, if he got in early enough.

Mike looked at him coolly.

"We're eating first. There have to be priorities." It sounded like food was one of them, so Mason smiled and agreed.

"Yep. Sam told me that te and Lisa were going to do the cover operation?" He was passing the buck, but his friend nodded and put her hand on his left thigh.

"We have that all planned. We'll be watched, so we need a cover, as to why we're all getting together. We have the food supplement thing. Ben wants in on that, too, by the way. That, and your printed coffee. It should be enough to allow us to get away for a while to chat in secret." Te squeezed his leg a bit, and looked over at John. "A lot of this is resting on Mason. We should make sure to... Protect our asset?"

The big people all nodded, and oddly enough, so did Adam.

"Fuck yeah, we should, love. Get him one of those bullet proof imbeds like you have. We should all get them. It's... Expensive, but that, and hire an assistant for him. Love ya, mate, but you have all the sense that God gave a goose. Walking up on Warburg, and giving him orders... Maybe two assistants? Do you know anyone good that can work cheap, John?" It was telling that he went straight to him for that, but the man nodded.

"If we can swing the shield imbed, then I know a few that will be willing to go at bottom rates, I bet. What did yours run you, Lexi?"

She shrugged, "half a million. They said it should last about six months. Mason, you said something about that?" She was being leading, and probably trying to manipulate him with sex. It would have been more effective if she'd looked like a girl at the moment, which thankfully wasn't the case. He needed a clear head, and the hand on his leg was distracting.

So he took it off, firmly, and shook his head at her a little. That got him smiled at, by nearly everyone.

"I can do that. Really, we can all have them. I need to work on it, but should be able to improve the strength by several times. Maybe more than that. Some way of protecting against light based weapons too. Dazzlers and that kind of thing? I saw one of those about a week ago and nearly got sick." It had been more than nearly, but Sam didn't tattle on him over that part, just nodding a little.

The large people all stopped and stared at him though, and John spoke very quietly.

"You can do that? How many people can you set that up for, without it being a big financial burden for you?" It seemed very important suddenly, and everyone except Adam was watching him like a hawk.

Mason took a bite of the coleslaw, which was real. Not perfectly made, but at least as good as his printed recipe. It needed something though. Ben would probably know what.

"With all my equipment set up?" He stared at John, trying to send a message, and not knowing the man well enough to get if it was going to transmit or not. "Probably more than you can find people for. We can make a party of it? Like the other night? I need a few days to work on it, so that I get it right, but it won't be hard." It wasn't illegal to make that kind of thing, after all.

It would just look really funny, if he did it where Watch could see it happening. That was fine, since they needed to test the new assembler units anyway. He could print a few up to take with them. Or, rather, one, since it would take up a lot of space. If they needed more, he could do it there.

Lisa and Mike both looked at John, and the man smiled. It wasn't a pleased thing, but it was real anyway.

"That... Will work. So, everyone knows what their jobs are for this next week?"

Adam wanted to know more about setting up power structures, so Mason filled the time that everyone was busy eating with that. It wasn't difficult, but it really was important.

The kid surprised him then.

"Should I be doing it? I mean, if this chain has a weak link, it has to be me, right? What if I mess it up?"

John shook his head then.

"If you fuck this up, then everything will probably fail. I have faith in you. You aren't a moron, Adam. A bit raw and young, but that can be fixed with experience and time. You won't fail in this. You won't mess it up. Because you can't."

Plus, if it came to it, Mason could redo the work in a few hours. It wouldn't make for a relaxing vacation, but he'd never had one of those as an adult anyway. That reminded him of something.

"You know, I should call in to work and ask for that time off. I'm freelance, so it shouldn't be a huge problem, but I don't want them to need me and be left flailing around." Standing, he moved away from the table, and put the call in to Stacy's capture service.

She was clearly not taking calls at the moment. Given that it was near ten on a Sunday, Mason got it. She probably had a family, or a virt she wanted to spend time with. The second one was the better plan, but he wasn't going to judge if she'd managed to trick some guy into fathering a child with her. Someone had to keep the planet populated.

Probably that one stupid guy, who already had a hundred and fifty-three kids.

The message didn't take long, and while he felt uneasy taking time off like that, even to work, Mason knew it had to be done. He was going to be busy for a while.

To make Mike happy he finished his small plate of food, and told the man several times how good it was. That wasn't a lie, and while he was full, he hadn't eaten very much. Slimtrix worked really well that way. Adam had eaten more than he had. Sam hadn't, barely having nibbled during the whole thing.

Then he helped clean up, making several trips into the house, before everyone piled into the van. It was a large vehicle, but still an electric, which meant they had to cuddle for them all to fit. He ended up with Lisa and Sam pressed to either side of him, with a wriggling Adam in his lap. The guy, being a bit obvious, tried to wiggle over some sensitive parts.

Finally Sam slapped at him.

"I swear Adam, if you don't stop that, we will pull over and dump you on the side of the road."

Like a small child, the guy stuck his tongue out at Sam.

"You jelly? Just because he likes me better, that's no reason for you to take it out on me. I can't help it if I'm pretty, can I?"

Mason started to laugh, but no one else did. That got him to roll his eyes.

"Right, Adam. Like Sam isn't my best friend? Sam, Lisa... John and Mike tying for third, then you. I thought you knew that?" It was true, but he smiled, like he was playing around. The guy was a bit of a pain, what with his nano hive problems and constant unwanted flirting.

He sighed though, and made a face that was a bit petulant.

"I know. No one can really compare to Lisa. She'll never do me either. What's with that, anyway?" He reached out, as if to touch the large woman's breast, but stopped as her masklike face fixed him with a dead gaze.

Then she chuckled.

"Do you know what married means?"

"Do you know what open relationship means? I already asked John and he said it was up to you. So, hmmm? If you help me get my pants off, we could do it right here."

Mason shook his head, getting that they were all being goofy on purpose.

"On my lap? I think not. Besides, we're almost there. Do be quiet, when we go in? I really don't want to piss off my neighbors. I'm shocked that the police weren't called last night. It was so loud."

Mike, who was the one driving, pulled into the parking garage. They had to use visitors parking, but found a single unused space on the third level, which meant they didn't have a walk up.

As soon as they were close enough, still outside his apartment by a ways, Mason started his printer going. It was the first run plan for the assembly unit with the removable report card. It would take about an hour for the whole job to finish, he thought. The trick would be getting people to wait for it, so it could be taken in that night, separately from the people. How they were getting there he didn't really know. Maybe the van could come back for them? It was about a hundred and twenty miles to the beach, and possibly further, depending on where the cottage was.

That would be a haul if he were taking his auto-bike.

In the end the van was loaded with the disassembler, a brand new printer that seemed a lot lower end than it was, and enough thermo-electric processing compound to run several large apartment complexes. That, and the applicators needed for it.

What they were lacking, and it really felt out of place, was any kind of working material. That was nerve wracking, for Mason. No one else even really seemed to notice it. If his device didn't work, they were going to be stuck.

Then Mike, John and Adam loaded up and drove off.

For a bit he was left wondering what to do, and was just about to start in on the shield design, when Lisa nearly tackled him, and pulled him into the VR room.

"Okay, let's see your moves. Go, get sexy. No pressure." She pushed his shoulder, grinning through her makeup.

Sam got it first and giggled, then did much the same thing, until he ended up inside his rig room. Te gestured at him and his set up.

"Get in it. I'll find a program for you. Let me see here..." She did something with her eyes closed, which Lisa tried to help him get out of his clothing. It was needed if you were putting the full suit on. For sex, you simply did, because it was needed, if you were going to feel everything.

He hurried, not so much looking forward to the events that were about to happen, as much as feeling out of place, being naked. The skintight stretch suit hugged him tightly, as he pulled it up. He stopped though, when Lisa gasped and touched his chest.

"Wait, your makeup imbed covers your whole body?" She sounded impressed by that.

"Yes? Shouldn't it?" The idea of just doing the face had occurred to him, but it didn't cost any more to do the whole thing.

The large, somewhat manly, hand stroked down his front, stopping at the bunched fabric he was trying to get in place.

"Damn. I should have gotten one while you were giving them out. I had to work." There was no hinting to her tone, that he hook her up right then. Still, it made sense, so he started printing the right compound out in the other room, using his link. He did two sets, because Sam might need that too.

Then he got dressed, and before he could blink, found himself in a bedroom. The place was huge, and had wooden walls in the distance. They were polished and dark in color, gleaming softly. In the middle of the dark, candle lit space, was a big bed that had a canopy on it. Other than the wood it was made of, which was nearly black, the thing was covered in shining deep red material.

In the middle of it, reclining with a red bed sheet pulled up just enough to be alluring, was a familiar face. Mason sighed and spoke out loud, pointing.

"That's Deidre Omry." He couldn't see Sam, but heard her well enough. She was closer than he thought, which made him jump. It sounded like she was nearly touching him in the real world.

"So?"

"So? I know her. It would be a bad idea to get used to having sex with her in here." He meant it, but there was a bit of a tittering sound that was so close he could feel warm breath on his face.

"Ah. Okay. She's the default for this program. It's kind of what she's known for, actually. Let me see then... How about this? You haven't met her yet, have you?"

The woman that was provided then was lovely. Blonde and with eyes just as big as Deidre's but with catlike slits in them. She had a tail too, which meant, indeed, that he hadn't met her before.

"That's good. So, um, what do I do? Something more than get hard and find a hole, I take it?" That was his normal plan for things like that, after all. From the reaction of the bodiless Sam voice, that seemed to be pretty common in real life at least at times.

"It can work, but let's go with something a bit more... Romantic first? The basic rule is to focus on your partner's needs."

The cat girl model was nice, happy to see him and purred at him, literally, when he got things right. It was helpful. There was a lot of rubbing and petting involved that he normally wouldn't have done with a virt. It was why he was there however, so he spent the time required learning to do it all correctly. Then the model changed, and he had to do it all again, never using the same pattern twice. On the fourth set, Sam yawned, which he felt on his cheek.

"Good enough. Do any of that, for about half an hour before, during and after you have sex. She'll probably think she's in love. Lucky her. I can't remember the last guy I had that did more than give me a peck on the lips before we started."

Mason tried to remember it all, feeling tired. Horny too, because nothing he'd just done had involved him getting any kind of actual pleasure for himself. He didn't complain, just selecting the visual display to the off position, and starting to undress.

The other two were still there, though both had clearly left at some point and showered. That left Lisa clean and bare skinned, so he pointed at her.

"Into the other room, you." He sounded bossy enough that she grinned at him.

Then she fake purred a bit.

"Oh? Did you ask John if it was up to me? You aren't Adam you know. He might be afraid that I'd actually like you..." She didn't seem unwilling, which was oddly nice to see.

Mason smiled, and glanced at Sam, who was a bit plainer looking at the moment, her own face bare.

"Wrong other room. I meant the workroom. I have a makeup set ready for each of you?"

The real trick to it was Sam's existing one. In the end Mason just reprogrammed it, rather than trying to take it off, since that would require stripping everything and he didn't have a replacement shield designed yet. He took the chance to sneak into his bedroom as they dried, and did the work just before he drifted off.

Laying in his own bed. There were three people staying there though, so he wasn't shocked to wake up with Sam alongside of him. The big surprise was that he'd slept through it happening. She wasn't exactly cuddling with him, but after a while she'd rolled over in her sleep, which woke him up with a start.

"I'm awake!" A quick glance at his time keeper, the one in his visual matrix, to the lower left, showed that it was about eleven in the morning.

Sam sighed, and slowly opened her eyes.

"Me too, now. Well, let's grab showers and pack up. I need to go back to my place. Do you think anyone will believe that I'm just some girl you're screwing if I don't do the full face makeup thing first? That's such a pain in the ass." She reached back and rubbed herself on her right cheek, as if to scratch, or subconsciously illustrate the point.

Then she pouted a little.

"I know, you can be my boyfriend, and then I can just come over whenever I want."

Mason shrugged, and then shook his head.

"That wouldn't get you out of dressing up right now. Sam came in, so if you don't want to lose te as a disguise, te has to go out." It was basic, and a thing the girl actually knew. "So, you start doing that, while I go and have sex in VR? I kind of need to." He really should have the night before, he was aroused and needed something, which wasn't an uncommon way for him to wake up.

Sam giggled.

"I could take care of that for you, if you want?"

It was kind of tempting, but he shook his head. Sam was his friend and even Lexi was, now. That would be awkward, later.

"I..." He didn't know how to say what he was feeling. He wanted to, as stupid a plan as that was, but doing it would be dangerous. She could get pregnant. After a second he nodded.

"I need to go look up prophylactics. It's not the kind of thing I normally have to worry about."

Sam gave him a look that said she understood, and then sighed.

"It's a plan. Fine, I'll go and hide myself again. Too bad we don't have a way to change facial shape without using bits of composite. If we could, then the makeup imbed could be programmed to do it..." It was leading, as if she expected him to have some miracle way to do that.

He just didn't though. Not using his current skill set.

Rolling over, he accidently brushed her leg. It was bare, though Sam had a shirt on that hit just low enough to hide her underwear. At least until she moved. Groaning a bit, he pushed her, his hand on the flat, smooth skin.

"I really need to go and do some things. Call it half an hour? I don't know how we're supposed to get there. Bus?" He hadn't thought about it the night before, but it made sense. There had to be something running that direction.

"Lisa will take care of it. So, yeah. Call it leaving at two? I'm really starting to hate dressing up all the time."

He got up then, and decided to take the time to practice some of what he'd learned the night before. Just to be clever, he used the look alike of the slightly older self-defense teacher for it. The sim seemed to enjoy the attention, which was a thing he'd never noticed before. After all, that meant the things were programmed to enjoy things. Or, more to the point, to pretend to, if you did them right. It was probably all of them then, if this random one had it in there, too. She was better at sex too, which was interesting, since it had to be in response to what he was doing.

It took longer, and he certainly didn't get anything more out of it, but practice never hurt. After he showered, he had time to eat, and then start working on the shield imbed. It was going to have some delicate portions to it. That was all right however, since they were known things. Like how to float a separate field over the eyes, to act as artificial and color shifting lenses.

If you weren't careful the things would try to bind to the surface of the eye, which if you used the wrong compounds could be very bad.

A separate eye dropper that could be used once a week or so would do the trick for what he needed.

Then, at two exactly, a car showed up. A large thing that was nice enough that when they pulled out onto the street, people stared.

Sam shook te's head and ducked down.

"This is so annoying." She laughed though, and grinned up at him. "Sam wouldn't be riding in the back of a limo. Now I need to get this goop off my face before we get there."

Chapter twelve

The beach cottage wasn't what Mason had thought it would be. For some reason he figured that it would be around the size of his apartment. Maybe with an extra room. It wasn't that. What it was included three stories, and a basement. Down below was where the disassembler was set up, along with the new printer that he'd sent along.

Adam had the secondary power set up. The place was on solar anyway, but now, thanks to the alternate power source, they could actually run the equipment they had with them.

"Plus it will work all night, won't it?" Adam pointed that out, seeming pleased to have been able to do something himself.

Mason traced the lines that he needed, and started to get things hooked up.

"That's the plan. This looks good. Solid work. Now... We need to find some things to put in this hopper here. Trash and things like that? Scrap metal, rocks."

The singer didn't complain about the idea, just walking around the upper levels and finding things to put in the hopper in the basement. The machine hummed along, slowly making eleven different types of materials from what had been selected.

That was a good start. There was no gold, or silver, but enough copper to make the needed circuits for other things. Walking to the other machine, the new printer, he pointed at the blue colored card inside it.

"Adam, can you break that out of this? Just wiggle it."

"Won't that break it?"

"Not if we do it right. It will just disable the reporting to the Watch system."

The man did it, not being shy about the idea, once told about it. The piece snapped off pretty easily, but with a crack, coming out in his hand. Then Mason sealed the thing back up with a dull click.

"It's a special machine. Now it will act as a nano assembler, too. Let's load this up, you..." He didn't know how to broach the subject, but finally just pointed at the other machine. "That one is basically illegal to have. These both are, now. We can make what we need on it, and Watch won't know. There are three parts to the system. We need power that can't be measured, materials that no one knows to look for, and the ability to print things without the machine making a report to Watch. If you have this setup, you can do almost anything, without paying for it. Not genetics, but you get the idea. Now, the very first thing we need to do is set up a good food unit." It made sense to him.

That was ready in about an hour and a half. Then Mason got to work on the shield portions of things. Thinking about it, he nodded to himself, and built it into a package that no one would really care about. Then he started printing the various parts out. The imbed driver, which was what basically made it into a tattoo, the working components, and the program, which wasn't really needed for this one. It had some energy components though, which would channel electricity away from a person if it hit them.

At about seven, still working in the basement, Sam came down the wooden stairs, and looked around.

"Neat." She was wearing a pretty sun dress, in light colors. Her hair was down, and long enough to be braided and dark in color. "People are going to be here in about ten minutes. What do you need to make all this work?"

Adam hit the stairs, waving at her, and Mason looked around too, then crossed his eyes.

"We need to test this out. So far it's working. I don't see any gaps in it, either. This is it. I mean, we may end up having to tweak it, but like I was telling Adam, with this set up, you can make pretty much anything in the world, and no one can track it. Right now I'm working up the, um, sun block." He grinned at it and pointed. "You know, the good kind? It will stop ultraviolet. Infra-red. Bullets. A few other things. I think I have it set up to work with the makeup imbed, so it should be nearly invisible. If it works we should strip you down and put in all new stuff." She looked a little gray all the time now, which was kind of telling.

Sam made a sound that was half laugh, half snort. It was cute, but not exactly what he would have expected from one of the world's top actresses.

"I can't believe it. I mean, Sys said that you would be important to all of this, but no one thought it would be like this."

"Sis? I didn't know you had a sister." He nearly asked if she was cute, then realized he didn't care. The last thing he needed was more distraction in his life. He knew enough people already.

"S. Y. S. It's our AI friend? I mentioned her already, right?"

She had, though it had only been the one time, when she was explaining how they'd known about Lewis Rhyse and what was likely to happen to him.

"I remember. Well, if this tests out, my part is nearly done. Then you can stop dressing up like Sam all the time." He sighed and looked away, but knew that he wasn't going to be needed for the rest of things. Not past some technical advice every now and then. "I'll miss you. I wasn't kidding when I said that Sam is my best friend."

That got him a hug, which was a lot closer and warmer than he would have expected.

"Thanks. Do you know how many men have said that to me in the last two years?"

"Nope?"

"You. The rest just wanted to use me, for one thing or another. This is different. This time I'm the one doing the using." She shook her head. "I mean, that was the original point. Why I was sent to meet you in the first place. I really like you, just so you know. I don't want you to, you know, think that it's all business."

Leaning in, she kissed him, which he did back, since telling her that he was going to miss her, and then pulling away would be so out of step with normal behavior as to be rude. Besides, as risky as it was, he did like her.

After a bit she moved back, smiling.

"And now Carry is going to come and you'll spend the week doing her instead of me. Well, I should have asked first. Really it isn't a bad plan. She's sweet, for one of us. A celeb. It doesn't hurt that you look like this now." She waved at his face. "We can put you in front of the press, and no one will think anything of it. They'll probably just figure that you're breaking into the business, if they don't look you up first. Then they'll just assume you're a social climber trying to get into our good graces by giving us free stuff."

That it wouldn't have seemed right before was just accepted. Mason could see that one. When he'd looked into the mirror earlier and saw his perfectly smooth face staring back at him, he'd jumped, not recognizing himself. For a moment it had seemed like someone he didn't know had snuck into the bathroom with him.

Stalking himself.

"I don't know if I'm vid ready. What would I say?"

Sam smiled, her face prettier than he was used to seeing it in person, because her makeup imbed had adjusted to the slightly dark space already. Instantly, in fact.

"No comment? That's the universal code for 'pay attention to what I'm doing'. I'm surprised you didn't know that already."

He hadn't. The idea of anyone caring enough to even take his picture was sort of a big thing. No one had since high school, and even then it had just been for the yearbook section. Mason hadn't even kept a copy of it, choosing to forget as much of that time of his life as he possibly could. It hadn't all been bad, just boring, and filled with useless things like history and social studies. That, and merciless fat shaming.

Sam grabbed his hand, and pulled gently.

"Come on. You can come back down here later. If you need to. Really, the rest of us can handle it now, I bet. Just come and get the things from the machine over there? Then put the imbeds on like you showed us before? I'll get someone to be in charge of that, so you can stay with the others most of the time. It will look better that way."

Why that was, he didn't have the background to understand. Mainly though, he knew she was right. Unless he had an idea to work on, his job was done for the time being. The rest of the thing would have to be about what others did.

There was more to the plan, but John had never told him what that was.

The upper level was done in light colors, had a nice big kitchen and a living room that could easily hold fifty people without anyone sitting on the floor. There was a great fireplace, made of stone with a large wooden frame on it for some reason. On top of it, and all around the tan and white room there were replicas of shells, and sea stars. Starfish, Mason thought they were called.

In the corner, running already, was a vid screen set up. It was a half dome holographic that was currently showing one of the twenty-four hour news feeds. The gossip one, from what they were saying. Adam was perched on a sofa in front of the thing, leaning forward avidly. On the screen there was a big gray house, with solar panels on the roof. In one of the first floor windows you could see the flash of a blue head.

Sam cleared her throat.

"Well, so much for a bit of peace and relaxation. G-One already has a drone watching us? Just in time. It looks like the first group of people is just getting here. We should send someone out to help with their luggage." That was a joke, but as the car pulled up, Adam stood.

"Good point. I'll go. Mason, can you help with it too, love?" There was a pat that was aimed at a behind, but that didn't land.

Mason nodded.

"Why do you keep calling me love?"

"Wishful thinking? If I do it long enough you might remember how incredible I am and let your guard down." They moved to the door, and as the blue headed man opened the door, he whispered a single word. "Love."

Outside the first group of people climbed out, their giant assistants moving first, setting up a guard perimeter. They were in the second car, not the black limo. From that one, after the driver came around, four people popped out. Ben, Tara, George, and to his surprise, Deidre Omry.

Before he could mutter hello, Adam squealed and ran toward them, slapping backs and handing out hugs.

"Everyone! I missed you so much. Now, Mason here and I have come to help with your things. Tara, you can sleep in my room. That way you won't be stuck with your Dad the entire time." It had the sound of a joke.

Mason was taking it that way, but Tara nodded somberly.

"Good. He snores." She pulled her own small suitcase though, as did the others. There was more, so Adam grabbed two, and so did he. That left one of the big people that followed getting one of the things, but that was all. The woman that took the bag winked at him and Adam as she did it.

"Thanks. I didn't know we had two little cuties to help us out. You working this thing?" That was addressed to him, since being well made up or not, it was kind of clear that the woman thought he was one of the help. The bags in his hands kind of said that.

"Nope, I'm a plus one. But, you know, I might as well make myself useful if I can." That was the literal truth, but Adam laughed at it, and shook his head. The whole thing was over-exaggerated enough the the woman looked at him.

He seemed to be recognized right off the bat.

"This is Mason Sims. The tech guy? Not some rentboy brought in for the party. I can see how you'd make that mistake, Melinda. He looks delicious, doesn't he?"

There was a squeal from behind him, then a clatter and two arms wrapping around him from behind. Half a moment later he was hit from the other side, which left his arms trapped, his hands still filled with bags.

"Mason? I didn't recognize you! You look amazing." This was from Deirdre, whose face was about an inch from his. It had to be fake though, since she'd seen him the day before, looking nearly identical to the way he did now. Possibly not, however, since he'd set his new imbed to do whatever it thought he needed to look right.

The other set of arms was Tara, the girl.

"Me either! I love the new look, M. Who did your styling?"

Since, as far as he knew no one had, he was about to try and explain it, when Ben interjected, winning him free from the imprisoning wall of very attractive girl. It was a lot easier to walk then, and the bags were getting a little heavy. That probably had more to do with what was in them weighing about eighty pounds each than the fact that he was incredibly weak.

The thin, and kind of average looking, chef guy patted at the other two until they relented.

"Ha! Here I'd been planning to kidnap you and tuck you into my luggage to get you in here. I should have realized that someone else would think the same thing. Maybe we can get together for a few minutes later? I'd love to go over some ideas with you, if you can spare any time."

He nodded, since as far as he knew that would actually work into the plans pretty well.

"Sounds good? I've got a new imbed for everyone. It's just some sun block, and eye protection, but you'll want it anyway. Everyone." It was tempting to put some emphasis on the words, but not too far off there were no less than three hovering cameras. The idea that they wouldn't have sound was silly.

Melinda having a free hand, moved up along side of him.

"Everyone everyone, or is that for the famous people?" She whispered it, making it low enough that no one else could hear it, most likely.

So he did the same thing back. She was shorter than a lot of the other women, being about six-two, and kind of square looking, being so powerfully built. She looked like a girl though, and like Lisa, seemed to be trying to make up for being better built than he was with a huge rack. It really did help to soften the image a bit.

"Everyone, everyone. In fact, we can get you all set up first, if you want? The things are in the basement."

The woman sighed, and nodded.

"I see, so it's a trick to get me to the sex dungeon right off? I'll go, too. I'm trusting that way. When will I ever learn?"

At the door, he paused, to let her go first, which let Adam skip in too, hurrying. He looked to be about ready to drop his two bags. There was a desperate air about it anyway.

"God Tara, what did you bring?"

The girl made a sound that was playful, rather than stuck up or entitled.

"Two of my friends, of course. We should get them out of there quick. I don't remember if I made air holes."

Once the door shut, the mood changed a little, as the three larger people spread out, checking the place, room by room. That got John, Mike and Lisa into the front room as well. The gray haired man let the others go over everything however, before standing back and speaking, when the people finally came back down the stairs.

"We have a special treat for you all, downstairs."

Melinda moved over and clapped Mason on the shoulder.

"You really do have a sex dungeon? All right, but I get to be on top. Unless you ask really nicely, I mean. Then I might consider trading off with you. You aren't into chains and stuff, are you? I hate being tied up."

Mason tilted his head, considering the situation.

"Um, that's a good point, actually. Maybe we can talk about it later? I mean for real. Right now, go that way. It's free." It was a good selling point, and the others seemed to trust John, if not him yet.

The stairs were through a door, just off the kitchen, where Ben got sidetracked, looking at the set up.

"We can work here." Then the man was dragged down into the dark maw, along with the others.

The space was big enough, if very bland and empty. It could use some chairs, Mason decided. He could print some out, if there was enough energy for it, later. For the time being Sam stood there, looking cute and girlish, with a line of roller applicators sitting on top of the disassembler. The black box could have been anything, but there were containers behind it being filled with various things, and hoses that connected it directly to the assembly portion.

To him it was practically screaming what was going on, but no one else seemed to get it. Almost no one. Melinda gasped a bit, and then turned to stare at John. She was the only one to respond however.

At least until Lexi spoke to the room, seeming polished and like she'd been hired to be a spokes-model.

"Welcome! We have an amazing new product for you all to try today. Sun screen. It's the code name for a new nano-imbed that will make you five times more bullet and shrapnel resistant than the next best skin based armor available. That includes the military stuff. It's nearly transparent, and can be covered easily with makeup, or a makeup imbed. As a bonus it comes with eye drops that act as protective lenses in case of a light based attack. It will last about six months, on your skin. The eye treatment is separate, and needs to be replaced weekly. Just to sweeten the deal... It actually protects you from the sun."

She moved, gracefully, and used her hands to showcase the bottle with movements that seemed practiced. That kind of thing was her job, so it made sense she'd be good at it.

Melinda looked around and then took a few steps forward, again toward John.

"Holy fuck. Is this for real?"

"Dead on. We can get in on the friends and family plan if we act fast. Mason holds the copyright on it, and is feeling generous. We should abuse that for as long as he'll let us."

There was a clapping sound then, as Lexi giggled and waved at everyone.

"So, and this is the way a party should be started, with presents and naked people... Strip. Last one done has to do the next group."

It wasn't him, but one of the giant men that came in last. Something to do with a stuck zipper it looked like. Everyone there went, including Sam, since it wouldn't hurt to double up on the protection. Actually, it should be additive, which meant that if shooting started he was still going to hide behind her. It was hard not to stare at the others, since they all looked interesting in their own ways, but he managed it, mainly by looking off at one of the far walls.

It was kind of awkward for him, though literally no one else seemed to mind in the slightest. The big people were all excited, if in a slightly subdued way. There was muttering to that end, anyway.

When they were all dressed again, Melinda wandered over to him, along with Lexi and John.

"So, I'm sleeping with you from now on? Because I'm pretty sure I can't afford this, and giving it back isn't happening. Don't wanna, can't make me."

John slapped the small square looking woman on the back.

"No shit. Though, if you mean it, Mason is looking for a head assistant? It pays room and board, but has some benefits. Like this? Though we should shoot someone, to check it out. Where's Adam?" That seemed like a joke, until one of the other big men pulled a weapon and shot the blue haired boy in the chest. He didn't have a shirt on, so everyone saw what happened

He was knocked down, but stood up instantly, glaring at the big man that Mason didn't know. He looked pissed at first, then looked down, and posed heroically, with his hands on his hips.

"That's right. Not a scratch. Because I'm just that sprong." After a second he rubbed his skin a bit and shook his head. "The fall hurt, but not the bullet. Next time we shoot someone else though. I'm hungry, anyone else?"

Mason realized that he'd managed not to eat all day, as far as that went, so nodded. It was true and might keep the noise level down. He hadn't even thought of something to dampen sound. Now it seemed like an oversight. That was doable, if a bit riskier. Than the other things. By stabilizing the small bones in the ear, temporarily, when a loud noise came in, it would muffle things. He needed to make certain that it wasn't going to happen all the time though, or whoever had the nano set would be functionally deaf until they broke down.

It was an idea however. Basically like earplugs you could keep in all the time.

Ben practically raced up the stairs, heading toward the kitchen, calling back a bit. "All right, do we have a cook I need to push out of the way, or was the plan just to eat out all the time?"

Lexi called to him, her voice a bit subdued.

"Both? We have staff coming in tomorrow. I was thinking we'd go out tonight. Everyone should change? The best local place is actually mid-range. So don't go too dressy. On the good side we can walk down the promenade to get there. It isn't far. We should wait for everyone else though. We're still missing about half the people I invited."

Several people looked at the others and then laughed, as if it were a joke. Mason kept his lips shut, since admitting that he didn't understand it would probably get them to keep going the entire week. Making jokes that he wouldn't understand, even if it meant coming up with things that didn't have any meaning. Instead he smiled, in a weary fashion, since that would mean he both understood and was on the inside.

That wasn't true, but VR had taught him that lesson pretty well. How to fake it. Everyone there probably had the same basic training that he had that way. Maybe more, since they did it for a living, if from the other side.

They waited, and a few more people did come. One of them, arriving on foot, carrying a single bag, was Carry Samson. Mason saw her through the window, and ran out, taking the bag from her.

"Thanks! Are you... Mason? Hey!" He got a hug, and a kiss, which was probably for the benefit of the drones that were hovering around waiting to see what the people there were going to get up to. More of them had come. A variety of the things, too. Some of them, he was nearly certain, weren't even controlled by a person.

It would be what he'd do, if he had that job. You could print out twenty of the things, download a few programs with bio-metrics and watch a given location for days on end. The things would need to trade out every six hours or so, to recharge. That was the only limitation and a person would eventually need more breaks than that. Okay, so you might need real human eyes to see if the man sitting nude on the roof was famous or just looked a bit like someone who was. Either way, given this group, it would eventually work out for whoever got the pictures.

Mason played the scene up, kissing her back and looking directly in to her cool blue eyes. Her hair and basic makeup was the same today, which left her looking like herself. No one would care if he looked different, not knowing who he was, but he got the basic idea. Carry had to present herself carefully.

"Let's go in? The, um, thing I mentioned is inside?"

She smiled, making it seem like he was being coy for a bedroom reason. Until they got to the door, where she cooled a bit, and drew back.

"Is everyone here already? I had to walk from the train station. I look like an idiot now. Damn it. I should have known better than to think someone like Lexi Horn would look out for me. Every cunt for themselves. Witch." She was angry enough that Mason suddenly wished that he'd skipped the whole thing.

Then he remembered that Carry wasn't actually there to be his date. It had been convenient at the time, and might make her look good, if anyone in the press thought he was important enough to get a picture of, but that was all. On top of that, it was really just possible that she was a bit cranky and had expected something else to happen. Like being picked up, or a driver being sent to her house.

It wasn't comfortable inside however, since the woman, turned to him and waved him away.

"Take that to my room, please? I should mingle."

"Sure. No problem. I have no clue where that is though." It would be the same as his, but Mason had gone straight to work. Luckily Adam heard what he was saying, from his perch on the sofa, watching the news. It looked a bit like a miniature woman was behind a tiny desk there, talking to him.

When he turned, Adam waved at Carry, but spoke to him.

"Third floor, first room on the right. I put your things in there earlier for you, M." He nodded, but as he walked away, he heard Carry talking to Adam.

"I have to share a room? And with him? I don't even know him. What if he's a freak? I could die and no one here would care."

Mason felt his stomach drop, but kept going. It was all about making the best of the situation, at that point. It didn't take him long to find the room, and while there was only one bed, there was enough floor space that he could crash there, if it was needed. Or down in the basement. After what everyone else had said, it hadn't even occurred to him that this would be the problem.

That he might be put on the spot with a woman that wanted him to do things he wasn't all that comfortable with had been mentioned, but no one had said anything about her suddenly turning into a werewolf and trying to destroy him utterly. That was a bit of an oversight, on their part.

Honestly, the implied rejection made him feel glad that he didn't get into women like that in real life. She was hot, and looked like the kind of woman he should want, but he could go home and have twenty that were as good. Any man could. For that matter, he could have had her, if he wanted.

Now he really didn't want to for some reason.

Her bag wasn't all that heavy, so he set it inside the room, by the dresser. It was a nice space, and clearly not one of the little ones. Sam at least, was looking out for him. That way. The girl could have told him that Carry was insane. Then, maybe he was supposed to know that already?

Mason let it go and moved back to the stairs. He was probably reading too much into her poor mood. Hopefully that would lift.

Adam was still on the sofa, but Carry was gone. Probably getting the new imbed he was providing everyone. That might make her happier. If security, or sunburn, were a concern for her. Moving in next to him, the boy didn't say anything about what Carry had been going on about.

Instead he had plans, which were being formed by the visions on the screen, which he pointed to with a slightly professional air.

"We should have a bonfire on the beach. I looked it up, and there's a place not too far down with a pit for it, where it's legal. I'll bring my guitar. You in?"

He'd never been to a bonfire before, but nodded.

"Yep. I'll get with Ben and see if we can produce some decent marshmallows and hotdogs. Where is he anyway?"

Adam looked at him like he was on drugs, "really? Where do you think? He's in playing with your food printer. I think he's planning to steal it when he leaves, so be aware of that."

Mason could see that being possible if he was reacting the same way that he had the other day. For all the man went on about 'real food' he seemed to realize that the future was in the fake stuff, or would be if it could ever be done well.

He headed that way, to find Lexi standing next to Ben, near the open door to the basement.

His friend looked panicked.

"Mason!" She nearly shouted the word, and moved toward him suddenly enough that he winced.

"What's wrong?" It didn't take a genius to get it, since he heard a voice, Carry, whining from the basement. Where she was getting her free stuff.

"Can you believe that I have to share with some sketchy tech asshole? I know I added him as a plus, but I didn't think he'd actually show up. How did he get here anyway? How did he even know how to find it? Is he some kind of stalker or something?"

Mason looked at the door, which was open wide and then at the other two. Ben looked away, annoyed seeming, and Lexi looked scared.

He just walked over and shut the door.

"No big, I'll set up down there for the night, if that's not a problem? Anyway, Adam wants to have a bonfire later? I told him that we'd try to make up some things for it. Marshmallows and hotdogs. No one will be hungry, if we go to dinner first, but it's still a good thing to practice."

Ben blinked several times, and then started to nod, a slow smile coming to his face.

"Yes. We can do that. Let's see..."

Behind him, Lexi just glared at the door to her own basement.

"Sorry Mason. I'll make sure not to invite her next time we do anything."

Then, seeming more than a tiny bit upset herself, she stomped off.

He just got to work, since they were slated to leave at any time, after the last people got there.

Chapter thirteen

It was a tempting idea, skipping the meal out with the others. That was, he'd been assured by Ben, as they worked, the first real attempt the whole group would be making to attract attention.

"Our lives, as you've probably worked out by now, are a never ending ploy to garner more publicity. We live, and die, by the amount of time we spend on various screens. Most of the time it doesn't matter how we do it, either, as long as people see us, and keep thinking about our antics." There was a bit of resigned humor to the words, as the man absently stood with his eyes closed, sending information to the food printer on the counter.

The device was high end, and designed to be capable of a lot more than was being done with it. Seeing that, tracking what the other man was doing by closing his own eyes, Mason decided to get his float screen out of his luggage when he could.

He was being a bit quiet, but that was about not being used to having people around all the time. It wasn't his way, really. These people seemed to live in a sea of bodies, rarely left alone to notice their own thoughts for even a second. He lived in a silent cave, if one of his own creation. More than most did even. He worked, most of the time, in silence.

Even average people lived submersed in constant noise. In VR or some other reality, where music played constantly and other people chattered at them without reason.

Mason sighed and nodded, trying not to be a prick about the situation that he'd found himself in.

"That has to be hard. The most I have to do is a good job. I wouldn't have a clue how to get people to notice me like that."

Ben sent over a modified marshmallow recipe, which Mason started changing instantly. The trick, if you had the capability to do it, was to try and mimic the chemical and physical properties of the material being used, as taken from direct scans of the real thing. The other man kept making the standard amateur mistakes, like copying what others had already done at a lower level than his machine could handle.

When the first one printed out, the other guy opened the hopper, looked at the white cylinder of fluff and sugar, and bit it in half, his eyes shutting again.

"Fuck. Just... Do you know how much money we could make selling these things? This, plus the coffee, and we'll be rich. I don't suppose you'd be willing to cut me in on it? I can sell the recipes, do commercials and that?"

Blinking, Mason nearly shook his head.

"Sounds good? There are some other things we should work on too. I was thinking that if we did it right, we could work out how to improve the standard working materials, so that people with lower end machines could get in on things. Then, um, sell things like coffee, directly? That will need a nano assembler to get right. Chocolate too, probably."

The other man started nodding and moved forward, suddenly hugging the device in front of him.

"You can make chocolate, my little friend? Do you know how expensive the real stuff is?"

Mason didn't eat it, so didn't know. He'd had the fake kind, like everyone else, but almost no one even tried to make the real kind anymore. The weather was all wrong for it, where it used to grow, or something. That didn't mean he couldn't pull an analysis of it offline and work from there.

It was nearly enough to get him out of going to the restaurant, since Ben really wanted to stay there and play with the new ideas. His desire to try new things was infectious, and a good enough reason for him.

Adam however, wouldn't hear of it.

"Nope. You're both coming with us. We didn't come here for half the people to stay indoors the whole time. Besides, we need to come up with something that will be noticed." There was a grin, and the man looked over at Ben. "I know, we can start making out at the table. That should get us a few seconds at least."

The other man shook his head, his dark hair tidy, and unmoving. He was thin, and a little pale, but not any more so than Adam was.

"Brought a date, thanks. Besides, I doubt that being seen with me will help with your fan base, right now. Wrong demographic."

The blue haired man sighed and looked away, then looked back up when Tara came into the room. She was dressed up nicely, and looked about ten years older than she really was. It was the makeup that did it, Mason was almost certain.

The girl grinned, first at Adam, and then him.

"I wouldn't worry about it yet. We'll think of something. Lexi told me that we were going to leave in a few minutes, so everyone should come now." Almost as an afterthought she looked at Ben, who was making a large bowl of marshmallows appear, taking them six at a time out of the assembler unit. "What are those?"

That got a conversation going, as Adam shook his head.

"I need to change. You too, M." There was a pulling on his arm, and since they were both on the third floor, as far as rooms went, the other guy didn't give him a lot of choice. That meant being shoved into his room with a bit more force than was needed, to find something in his case that wouldn't be too bland for everyone else.

Unless he needed to be that way. He didn't know, but publicity wasn't going to help him a lot in life, so his plan should be in not making himself too apparent. Leaving another half second for the others to be on screen later, on the networks or in virt.

To that end he went with the nicest thing he had anyway. It wasn't flashy, being a simple black shirt that had old fashioned buttons for decoration, instead of a soft fastener on it. That was how most pieces of clothing closed now. Jackets and pants at any rate. The idea was a good one, using van der Waals adhesion to do the work. It could be washed without breaking down, and opened and closed silently. His pants had a tab of it to keep them shut. They were loose, and black, and he wore the shirt tucked in, just because he'd seen that on some show or another.

Most wore theirs out, but if you were thin enough, you could get away with doing the other thing. Basically it was about showing off how in shape you were.

So, deciding that his best outfit was probably not going to cause any waves, he headed down the stairs, to find that everyone else was nearly ready, except Adam, who jogged behind him, jumping at the last step into the living room, slapping him on the shoulder as he did.

His clothing was so bright as to almost be painful. It was a pink that could induce headaches, paired with a bright blue that Mason felt might be well used as a weapon in certain circumstances. The rest of them looked different, he noticed. Each having their own personal style.

Sam was in a loose, and fairly small, white dress. It hit just above her thighs, and had thin straps to hold it up at the top. She wasn't wearing anything under it, which he could tell, when she moved. Things flashed interestingly.

George was in a suit that was gaudy enough it seemed like a joke, being purple and black stripes. He had a very old style top hat, in the same theme, and matching shoes with high socks that showed to the knees. His pants were very short as well, though he was totally covered. His makeup, rather than being done to make him pretty, was arranged to make his skin pale, with a swirling sigil of some sort over his right eye. He still looked like himself though, so it wasn't a disguise, just a decoration.

It was however, the same thing that he'd seen on both Sam and Lisa before.

The large woman was dressed in slacks and a pull over shirt. That was all in dark blue, and seemed nearly like a uniform. In fact, all the assistants had on something similar. Not matching, but close enough that it made it look like they were a single team of hardened soldiers, rather than the people assigned to get beverages and possibly keep the underage boys and girls from having any fun with their friends.

Carry was dressed in a totally different style, wearing shorts and a t-shirt. Both were shiny however, and clearly dressy. It showed enough skin that it was clear she was using a very high end system to control her coloration. Everything on her was a deep, nearly sparkling gold. It worked, and she looked pretty fantastic.

Right until she opened her mouth. That happened while staring at him.

"Mason... I don't think they meant for you to come with us." She whispered it, but from across the room, loudly. "This is just for the... You know, to get publicity?" Her words were nearly polite sounding, actually, and her face was nervous when she spoke.

It was very different than what she'd sounded like before when speaking of him. That was part of her job though, acting, so that would probably explain it. Her gaze went to Lexi however, and she swallowed. Almost like she expected to be attacked over him walking into the room.

Everyone in the place looked at her like she was taking drugs.

It was Lexi who spoke though.

"I...Carry? Is that why you've been acting like that?"

If there was meaning to the words, Mason didn't understand it. Everyone else seemed to though, and Tara, the fifteen-year-old, started to nod her head.

Adam shook his, and stepped forward.

"Carry, did I ever tell you about the first time I met Mason?"

The woman seemed surprised by the words, but turned to look at the eye shatteringly dressed man. Again she seemed nervous, but didn't speak just watching the more famous guy closely.

The singer smiled and shook his head.

"I was stoned out of my head, and my assistants didn't know what to do. The drug, well, it wasn't one, and I won't go into that part, to protect someone else, but we ended up going to the wrong door, pounding on it like we belonged there, really early in the day. It wasn't even the right building, things were so messed up." It wasn't exactly the truth, but that didn't seem to matter, since almost everyone there was riveted by the story telling skills. "Then this guy, wearing pajamas like he lived halfway through the last century, comes to the door, and instead of screaming at us for bugging him, which would have been totally fair at that time of day, let me tell you, he got us inside."

Carry looked nervous still, "oh?"

There was a big smile on the man's face then.

"He didn't know who I was. Who any of us were. But he opened his door, and then saved my life. Again, I can't say how, but there are like a thousand people in the country that could have done what he did. I looked it up. Pure luck that we were there. Fate maybe? Odds are if that scene had gone one bit different I'd be dead right now. For real. So, I can't speak for anyone else here, but I know that I'm good with him coming along. Anyplace, I go. Anytime."

Lexi shook her head then.

"God, Carry. Do you really think any of us are that shallow? Mason is..." She stopped and shrugged, which seemed artless, but did flash her nipples a bit. "Expected to come. If you hadn't invited him, he'd still be here. You saw, what he did for me?"

That got a slow nod, and then an embarrassed look at Mason.

He was still a bit clueless, but tried to not seem like it. Adam moved in next to him, and slapped him on the back.

"No shit. Honestly Carry, I figured that's why you wanted him here. So that you could be seen with him. I don't know if Warburg will have him killed or not, but for a few weeks, maybe longer, that story is going to make the rounds. And here I just figured you for being freaking brilliant, grabbing him up before anyone else could."

George moved toward the door, his horrible outfit catching a lot of attention.

"Settled then? Come on, everyone. Women and children's show hosts first!" He was in the front, but everyone else lined up, more or less. Though several of the big people moved past him, going out before he could, to check on things. They were obviously children's show hosts, since no one was going to confuse them for women.

The rest were behind them all, and Adam slapped him on the back again.

"I need to move forward a bit. It basically goes by how famous you are, more or less. So, George, Lexi and I in the front, Ben and Deidre next, Tara and Sylph, then Ken, Carry and the rest of you can hang out. Unless you want to dump Carry for me? Then you can be way up there, with the important people?" He was playing, but he glared at Carry when he said it.

She rolled her eyes.

"I didn't know that you liked him. I only invited him because he seemed nice, but we didn't make plans for him to get here. It was just a gesture, and then... I freaked. I know that you aren't really supposed to bring anyone to things like this, and there he was, before I got here even."

She still seemed nervous about the whole thing.

Lexi stuck her tongue out a bit then.

"I brought him. Seriously, you should have talked to him, and then you could have ridden in the Limo, instead of taking the bus. We saved you a seat." She seemed exasperated about the whole thing, like it was all Carry's fault.

Mason was nearly certain that there had been no mention of any ride provision for the other woman, however. It was still tense for him, though it was clear that everyone else seemed to just accept that all the anti-Mason talk earlier had been due to Carry being surprised that he was there. Her explanation seemed about right, now that he'd heard it. No one had said that any of it was wrong, anyway.

Still he didn't speak as they left the big gray house, surrounded by large bodies that protected them from the people that suddenly gathered. Most of them were trying to take pictures, but a few called things out that took him by surprise.

"Rich fuckers!" It turned into a chant, though it came from the back, where about twenty people stood, holding signs. "Down with the rich fuckers!"

They were followed the entire time they walked, and most of the other people were just trying to have things signed, or to hand things to the group. Mainly to Lexi and George. That surprised him a bit, since he'd kind of figured that the forty something looking guy wasn't that important. The crowd seemed to think he was though.

"Lexi! Are you seeing anyone this week?" It was called out from a group of people that were a bit more subdued, but that all had cameras, and some hovering drones to capture what the reply was.

She kept walking, and waved at the person, a man, who didn't let being ignored stop him.

"Lexi! What about you and Charlton Warburg? I hear things are getting hot there?"

Others called out different things, and it was pretty clear that the best plan was to flash Adam, since the three women that did that had him stopping each time, to chat with them for a moment. It made the trip slower, but as Ben had taught him, the entire point of being there was publicity.

The trip was a bit like that the whole time, with people screaming about the evils of the rich, and paparazzi trying to get a response from various people. That, and some fans doing much the same thing. They also screamed a lot. Squealing, mainly.

Off to the left the ocean pounded and roared. There were a lot of different scents in the air. Burning wood, salt and dead sea life, mainly. The street lights along the wide walkway they were on started to glow. They were on old fashioned looking metal poles that seemed to stick up from the low concrete wall that separated the promenade from the sand on the other side. Most of the angry sounding people were over that, about forty feet away. At first he didn't get why that was, but when one of them came running up, clearly ready to throw something, several rather quick assistants were suddenly in the way. Each holding a weapon that looked to be more or less lethal.

The man aborted his move, and jumped back.

"Fuckers! We don't need you!"

It was probably true, but started a chant, which was a bit hard on the ego, by the time they got to the place they were supposed to eat.

It was, as Lexi had mentioned, a mid-priced place. That was the only thing that impressed him about it. Other than the prices, the place looked an awful lot like a fast food joint. Bright yellow and red signs, Booths along the walls, and a few large tables in the center, one of which had a sign on it that said reserved.

The man that came over had a badge on that claimed he was the manager, which didn't instill a lot of confidence as far as Mason could see. Neither did the fact that he looked like he was about to orgasm, upon seeing who was there.

"Miss Horn, Mr. Wender! What a wonderful surprise. We held a table for you, Miss Horn. This way, please?" The man was chubby, and his skin had a greasy look to it. So did his hair, which was lank and slightly sweat soaked. It was warm in the place, which was probably why that was. His clothing was casual, being a simple short sleeved shirt in blue, along with white shorts.

Everyone working there had the same outfit on.

The menu flashed on his eye as soon as he got to the table. To his mild shock, Carry was right next to him on the left. Tara took the other side, bumping into his shoulder as she did it, with her chest. He ignored that part, not wanting to be arrested for statutory rape anytime soon. It didn't help that the girl looked about ten years older than she really was, at the moment. He knew the truth, and that was enough to get him to play things correctly.

The service wasn't bad really, and the place actually had waiters, who scurried to get them drinks and then stood by while they decided what they wanted. Carry looked up, reading the menu that was floating behind her eyes.

"I... We should make careful selections." Her voice was nervous again, and at first he figured that the problem was about the portion sizes. They did look big, from what people had on their plates at the other tables when he stole a glance. The Slimtrix would prevent him from eating even half of that. Closer to a quarter, most likely.

Then Tara sighed, and nodded.

"I hear that. This place is pricey for burgers and fries. We can split a few dishes?"

Mason nodded.

"Sure. I can't eat that much anyway. Um, I'll get this one?" He didn't know if that was the right thing to say or not, but no one slapped him, or did more than grin.

Tara leaned in again.

"Well, in that case..." She was teasing though, since when it came time to order they went with the sharing things plan.

That turned out to be a smart move, since even then he had too much food. He wasn't the only one either. Carry ate about what he did, and looked guilty the whole time, even though she was nowhere near being fat. Tara nibbled at things, and left more than he did. Down the table Sam did about the same, though she kept looking at him as she did it. Ben took a few bites of his rather full plate and then left the rest untouched. It was decent food, and all real, but Mason understood the implied judgment of it from the man.

He whispered, down the table to the rest of them.

"Don't get dessert. We have something planned for later."

When the man, the greasy manager, came by later, as people were finishing, Mason smiled at him.

"Could I get the check?" He nearly whispered the words, and a second later the bill for the entire table came up. It was a nifty amount, but not that high. Mid-priced, but for a lot of people. Just the ones at that table though, and not the assistants, who were also eating. It took a second and some gesturing to get that included, but he paid with his thumb print, rather covertly, for everyone.

It was clear that he wasn't going to do that every night they were there, he decided. He added enough of a tip that no one would think he was being cheap, because that might be reported, in the press. No one would care about him doing that, but they'd blame Lexi, or possibly George, if it wasn't enough.

It had been handled well enough that no one seemed to get that he'd done it. Which was good. They all left without looking around, probably getting that someone had done it, since the manager and his waiters didn't try to tackle them on the way out.

"Thank you all for joining us! Come again soon!"

Ben moved in next to him, and spoke as soon as they got out the door.

"That was not good. I'll do dinner for everyone tomorrow. Can you help with that? I'm starting to see that printables can work, if they're used right. I just never considered having someone that did nano design in on it before. I'll have to make a run at doing a new show, won't I?" He grinned and then tilted his head. "I mean that, too. Do you want in on that?"

Mason thought about it for a few seconds, and then realized that it could, in potential, be useful to the plan. If there was a reason for them to be doing massive nano assembly, then it would get less scrutiny. A show could be used as a commercial for products. They were still going to have to provide power sources for people, somehow. They could add free packets of thermo-electric compound, and solar capture matrix, to the things they sold. At the moment that didn't seem to fit however, so he put that on the back burner.

"Rich fuckers!" The call went up almost instantly as soon as they got out the door of the place. No one inside had yelled at them, but they were there as soon as Mason was ten steps into his walk back to the house.

He nodded at Ben.

"We should get Adam and Lexi in on it, too. Maybe Carry and Tara?" He didn't know if that was how things were done, but Ben grinned at him.

"Like any of them would do a cooking program? Maybe as guests. Probably not."

The planning for the thing, it turned out, could be left to Ben, who'd done several of them before. He really just needed someone to do design work for him, which was about the speed that Mason was ready for anyway.

It was what he was thinking about when the ten or so men rushed them. They were throwing things, in groups. Launching handfuls of muck it seemed, that were mainly aimed at Sam and George.

Mason saw it starting to happen, and moved first. John, Mike and Lisa did too, at about the same time, heading toward the line of men. It was hard to see them, or what they were tossing, and there was a low wall in the way, giving them a bit of protection.

He ran, moving the fifteen feet or so toward Sam, who, along with George, was clearly the main target. Even in the dark Mason could see that, the lines in his mind showing where the things would have to land. He moved between her and the muck being thrown, and tried to cover her with his body. That meant holding her, and pushing her half way over, so he could rest on top of her. It was reflex, and didn't help totally since the stuff being hurled at them splashed a bit when it struck his body.

When he glanced over to the side, Ben and Adam were doing the same thing for George, who, if anything, was being targeted harder than any of them. The remaining assistants moved them toward the house at a fast walk, one of the men bellowing.

"Keep your wall! Get them inside. Go. Move! We'll break the line." It was the guy that had shot Adam before.

What he was saying meant nothing to Mason in particular, but the idea was to get inside, so he kept trying to cover Sam as they walked. More stuff hit him, but it mainly missed his friend. It wasn't until they were on the doorstep itself that the smell hit him. The crap being thrown was literal excrement. Since there was no handy collection of dogs around, he didn't want to think about where it had probably come from.

"Take that you rich fuckers!"

About that time the throwing stopped, since several large people started to toss the ones doing it into the sand. That part wasn't done all that brutally, considering the nature of the assault on their friends. It wasn't until they were all inside, being pushed that direction by muscular people that had been in the back, that he turned to look at Carry and Tara.

He expected them to be covered with the stuff, but thankfully the men had gone after the really famous people in the lead. Carry was untouched, and Tara had a spot on her nice dress, but only the one. He, on the other hand, would need to burn his clothing.

Adam and Ben, too. Looking at them he shook his head. He didn't say anything though, since that would mean opening his mouth, and he really didn't want to risk that, since he had reeking shit on his face.

Sam, or Lexi, seemed like she was in shock, and George was wide eyed, but silent.

Carry however, went to the door and screamed into the night.

"You're sick mother fuckers! Sick!"

Then she was pulled inside, before anyone could hit her with anything. Melinda did that part, then moved to look at them all, her head shaking side to side.

"Not a horrible response. Mr. Wender and Miss Horn should call this in to one of the networks. Talk up how Genesh and Starky here saved you. People love hearing about heroes, and praising others will make you look good."

Lexi nodded, as one of the big people opened the door to let John, Lisa and Mike in to join them.

John looked around and smiled. He wasn't covered with anything, Mason noticed. None of them were.

"We should be fine for now. We should clear the beach, if you want to do that bonfire tonight still? It should be fine." The man looked at Mason directly, then over at Melinda. "Mel, stay with Sims. We have more bodies coming, and a reason for it now. Mason... Why don't you and the others go get cleaned up? We'll get the wood together."

That seemed to mean several of the muscular people, who moved to do that like they had orders for it already.

Carry looked scared though, and she wasn't the only one.

Her words showed insight however.

"We can't give in to terrorism. I... Right. Let me change?"

John seemed happy enough with that, and moved to Adam, who covered in shit or not, got slapped on the back. "Good job. I almost didn't recognize you, being all heroic and brave like that."

Adam started to stick his tongue out, then realized that would be a poor plan.

"Yeah, well, I couldn't let Mason show me up, could I? If I didn't do my part, then how would I get him into bed later?"

Everyone chuckled at that, except Mason, who just moved toward the closest shower, stripping as soon as it was safe. The other men, and Tara, came with him.

Melinda dashed to get a flimsy trash bag, for their clothing. Then she tied it shut, and followed them into the shower itself.

More to the point, he realized, the square and powerful lady followed him.

Because that didn't seem strange.

Chapter fourteen

After the communal shower, which ended up being him and Tara sharing at the same time, while Melinda watched, Mason felt a bit better. For the girl it was mainly a psychological thing, having only been hit by a tiny bit of the gunk that had been thrown. For him it was a bit of both.

A real scrubbing was needed, and while the actual shit came off quickly, under no more than regular water, his own peace of mind required him to actually wash with a bit of will. It wasn't until Tara started doing his back that he realized being naked with her was probably breaking some law or another. The fact was he simply wasn't going to do anything with her, so hadn't thought about it. Not while he'd been all gross. Now that she was touching him, he realized that it was time to be done.

His body wasn't betraying him yet, but there was no need to push things. After all, the girl looked good, and being wet didn't harm that at all.

So he rinsed without comment and got out of the open shower area. It was a large room, all done in bright tile, so that it wouldn't matter if water got all over the place. There was no curtain or shower door, and the instant he was out, Ben and Adam took their turns.

Then, almost as if nothing strange had taken place in the slightest, Ben found a towel and started speaking.

"Chocolate. We should do several types. First let's try for something like an old fashioned milk chocolate candy?"

None of them had clean clothing with them, so wrapped in towels to traipse through the house. As they went up the stairs, he started to nod.

"We can set that up. Let me get my float screen. I work better when I have it." The virt screen that projected over his eyes was fine, but he felt odd working with his eyes closed and always had.

In the room he found Carry, who was changing clothing for the bonfire.

She looked at him, her eyes lingering a bit longer than was needed to be polite.

"That was really brave, that woman told the others to call in about Adam and Ben, but-" She stopped, since that woman, Melinda, was right behind him.

The powerhouse of a female nodded, her face held in a grin.

"Mason isn't a celeb, so doesn't need the exposure the others do. It wasn't lost on any of us who moved first. That he worked out who was being attacked was sharp. Probably due to how smart he is. It can give you an edge in real world situations like that." Then she stood there, waiting for him.

He got the idea, so went to his bags, and found a simple short sleeve shirt some underwear and shorts. Carry looked at him and shook her head.

"You'll need more than that. A sweater, and slacks at least. The wind coming off the ocean will be cold, and if you get too close to the fire you'll burn. Here, let me... How about these?" She pulled some rather boring looking clothing out, which was all brown.

He glanced at it and nodded.

"I get it. That way when those people come back to throw more shit, I'll be ready? Good plan, thinking ahead like that." It wasn't really funny, but the two women both acted like he was making a joke.

Melinda looked at him for a bit, her eyes on his waist.

"Not very likely. They won't be back. I think John and Mike sort of implied that if they didn't leave and stay gone the police would be called. They're willing to take a bit of a beating in order to make their point, but no one wants to risk police involvement. That tends to get violent."

Which was a thing that he'd seen now, first hand. It was weird, but even a month before he would have looked at anyone saying something like that like they'd lost their last marble. Now it just seemed like what would happen, no matter what.

Carry didn't seem to get it, but also wasn't too bothered by the idea now.

"I just think it will look good on you. I'm... I was a bit mean earlier. I don't know if you heard about it?"

He could have lied, but didn't bother. That wouldn't help anyone.

"I heard you. I can sleep in the basement. I already set that up. It, I guess I don't know the rules, for things like this. I figured that you were just looking to get some free things from me, to be honest. Imbeds and things like that. Really, I kind of thought that some of the others had asked you to invite me." Which was the truth, but got first a wince and then a head shake, as she responded to what he was getting at.

"I was kind of trying to get you to like me, and yes, giving out that stuff is why. No one said anything about getting you here. I really didn't think you'd come. Even if you said yes. There was no way you could find the place. Then, next week I'd show up at your door, with a bottle of wine, and ask why you stood me up. Then I'd ply you with some grown up grape juice and guilt trip you into hooking me up with free hardware. It didn't work very well. I look like an idiot now."

He nodded, which got a frown in return.

"Shallow and greedy, too. Let's not forget that part. Plus, I don't drink anything strong enough to really work that way. The whole thing wouldn't have worked for you, at every step. It was a horrible plan. Kind of sad, to be honest." He probably sounded a little mean about it, but rather than throw a fit, the woman just stood there. Ready to take what he had to dish out. "Luckily for you I'm a forgiving person? Anyway, I need to get back downstairs. Ben wants help with the chocolate."

The fire wouldn't take too long to get started, he didn't think, so he got his float out, and headed down the stairs as soon as he was dressed. Hopefully Carry was right, since otherwise he was going to be too warm all night. It wasn't cool inside, at any rate. In fact, he was just a tiny bit sticky already. Uncomfortable in a way that he wouldn't have been if he'd thought to get a thermal control imbed going.

The idea was stupid. He already had more imbeds at that moment than was probably healthy. The nano sets were a part of his very skin, and powered by the sugar in his blood as it passed by. Any more of the things and he'd end up starving all the time.

What Ben wanted chocolate for so bad he didn't share, not until everyone was sitting around the very large fire. The pit for that was down the beach a good way, nearly even with the spot where the attack had come. This time there was no one chanting about how wealthy they all were however. That wasn't even really true.

Carry clearly wasn't rich. She'd gotten there by bus, and had worried about the cost of dinner. It wasn't a problem for him, but he was willing to bet that someone like Deidre wouldn't have easily paid for everyone. Okay, so some of the others probably did make a lot of money from their work, but it still wasn't about how wealthy they were.

No, it was about how desperately poor everyone else was. It was hard to see, day to day, since everyone had about the same level of stuff. Everyone had clothing, even if it wasn't all very nice. The people chanting at them had at least. They also had enough food to get by. It was just that a big portion of it was kind of poor quality. Everything was like that. They didn't have a big homeless problem, since the government didn't allow that anymore.

You either found a place to live, or went to prison. They called it a tough love program. Just like you had to keep health insurance, or else you went to prison... Where you paid for your upkeep by working every day. Most couldn't do enough that way, so left with an even bigger bill than they started with.

There were no real jobs though, for the average person. Sure, he did all right, but looking around he realized what a big deal that really was. Mason Sims was, like it or not, one of the top designers in the world at that moment. Even at that his main source of income had been in looking at other people's copyrights and flipping them. Making just enough changes to allow someone else to produce the same basic thing. That wasn't because doing his own work was too hard, either.

Everything had already been done, in the main. It was why it took a genius to come up with minor changes to needed goods. Rarely, someone would hit on something that was actually new. He'd done it, a few times, but even at that, most of his work was just an improvement on what someone else had already done.

The entire world was like that.

Singers sang new works, but they were practically the same as what had come before. Artists made virt programs, but other than putting in fresh faces, it was impossible to come up with something that was actually novel. Worse, almost everything was already owned by such a tiny group of people that no one else could really ever hope to improve their life substantially.

It left the very wealthy, the rather desperately poor, and the lucky few that had something to sell. The pretty ones that would always have value, until everyone stopped caring about sex. Those with rare talent, like Adam, and the ones like Mason. Those intelligent enough to force their way in, using what was pretty much brute force techniques.

Watching Ben carefully, he followed along with what they were told. He'd never roasted a marshmallow before. Most of them hadn't.

"Keep turning the stick. The goal is for it to become a golden brown all over and get warm and gooey inside. A bit higher, Tara, or it will catch on fire." That happened instantly, but Ben laughed and got her a new one after she flung the flaming orb of sugar into the darkness. "Stay above the flames and go slow."

Then he grabbed a cookie that he'd printed out, a graham cracker, and a bit of the chocolate, and helped people build a little sandwich out of that and the mallows. When he got around to Mason, the man was so happy it was nearly contagious.

"Give it a bite?"

The others all seemed enthused with theirs, but it was all he could do not to spit the thing out when it hit his tongue. Mason forced himself to chew and swallow it. The texture was good, and so was the flavor, but it was so rich his eyes watered.

"Gah, Ben! That's... Too much. Way too sweet." Mason held the rest of his gooey sandwich thing, as everyone laughed at him about it.

Tara snagged his and took a bite, her new toasted sugar bit not ready yet.

"Oh, mygod! This is sodelish. Ben, you've invented the perfect food! I never have to eat anything else again." That got laughter, too. Mason looked around at everyone and smiled.

They seemed nearly happy.

The ocean made its sounds in the background, and the smoke blew into everyone's eyes, no matter where they moved or how the wind blew. Things smelled like sugar now, and warm chocolate, which went over really well. After a bit, Sam moved to sit next to him. She was dressed in funny pants, that were white, and had on a rather standard blue jacket. The kind that kept the wind off of you, rather than something meant to be more stylish.

He was just sitting on a bit of blanket, near Adam, so his friend moved in between them. Close enough that a few people looked at them funny. One of those was Adam, who sighed.

"Hey, back off, she beast. I saw him first." It wasn't really true, but no one could correct that without giving everything away.

Sam looked at the other man, and leaned his way for a second, touching his leg.

"No need to get upset yet. I was just coming to talk to you both. We need to meet, and chat about the new business plan. When we get back? In the basement."

She didn't hop up instantly though, leaning back into Mason. It was a warm point of contact, which he allowed, since it was Sam. It lingered, but finally she got up, leaving behind a scent that was fresh, and different than what he'd noticed before. Then, she normally didn't sit half on top of him on the beach.

Carry, having heard what Ben and he had talked about earlier, was clearly trying to get in on the new printable food show idea. The thing there was that even she couldn't find a good reason for it. She simply wasn't a chef, didn't know the tech very well, and wasn't so famous that her just standing there would mean much. After a bit though, he nodded along, listening to what she was saying.

"I can learn to say the right words. Even some basic chemistry? Then, I don't know. I guess not."

Ben seemed to be about fine with that, but if Carry had really just been worried earlier and not being her natural bitchy self, then helping her out wouldn't be that big of a problem.

After all, he'd already gotten his dig in at her, in their room.

"That...Might actually work. We can get her up to speed that way pretty easily. I can send over some info on it for you to read, if you want? Vocabulary and that kind of thing." Apparently, he didn't know enough about that kind of thing in real life, shows and all that, because his saying that suddenly had Ben all over the idea.

"Co-host, or..." He looked at Mason, like he was the one that was needed to make that kind of decision.

"Up to you. You're in charge of it all. I was just saying that we could do that. I don't know, you two could date or something, and do it as a couple? Set Carry up on the tech side explanations, and you can do the actual food part?"

It didn't have to be real or anything, and while it might seem a bit contrived after a while, like Sam had mentioned earlier, it wasn't like Mason had a stake in that part of things.

Ben stared at him.

"Built in assured coverage? Brilliant. I'm not currently with anyone. What do you think, Carry?"

"Ah..." There was, Mason supposed, the idea that she might not be all that into the chef. He was a bit thin, and not nearly as good looking as some of the people she probably worked with most days. A little older, too. People stayed young into their sixties though, thanks to the drugs for that kind of thing. So it wasn't like a fifteen year age gap meant as much anymore. Then the woman smiled, and moved over by Ben. Standing side by side. "I love it! Especially if it means I get better billing."

They moved a bit, to chat about what that would entail, as a drop of water hit his arm. It was just the one at first, and he wasn't really certain that he'd felt it, but after a moment there was a steady hiss from the bonfire.

Mason looked up.

"On that note, I think that I'll go in. We can pick things back up, in the morning?" There was a little matter of a meeting to come still, for some of them, but the people in on that project were different than the ones in on the rest of it.

They started to get wet, picking up the blankets, the composite roasting and toasting sticks and the bowls and covered platters the crackers and other things had come out on. Half the people fled into the house, taking off down the beach, but he stayed. So did half the assistants, and Ben.

As they jogged back, carrying things, the other man made a sound that was a little labored. It wasn't just from the effort of the moment either.

"So... Did I piss you off or something?"

"Um?" He didn't have the air to articulate a lot more without gasping.

"Dumping Carry Samson on me like that. It's almost like I wronged you in a deep and unwholesome manner. It was my constant requests for help with your printer, isn't it?"

He shrugged, then shook his head and tried to control what he was saying, so it wouldn't have a big gap in the middle.

"Just an idea. We can also tell her it won't work, if you want."

The other man smiled, but wasn't actually looking at him, his arms full. They were both getting wet, and Adam was right behind them, listening.

"Nah. She's a good kid, that stuff from earlier aside. My guess is that she really just didn't get the lay of things down quickly enough. Still, she should have toughed it out, once things lined up like they did. Even if it made her look bad at the time. Lexi Horn isn't the kind of person to go after her for bending a few social rules about guests. She might do it for going after the guy that kept her from being bent over in front of a room full of people. So might the rest of us. Still, as long as you can get her up to speed on what's needed, we can probably make it work." He spoke easily, if softly.

Meaning that he was in better shape than Mason was. He exercised, but not enough to chat while jogging like they were. That probably meant he needed to do more. Especially if he was going to be part of some kind of rebel underground thing. Even if his portion of the greater plan was mainly finished, running away might be needed. Having better endurance might also not help at all. Still, he couldn't know what would be useful in the end, so getting in better shape wouldn't hurt.

The rain got harder, and was coming down as if poured from a bucket when he stepped inside, right after Ben. He noticed that Melinda was right behind him, watching the whole world carefully. Her hands were empty, but she made up for that by not breathing hard. Not even a little bit. It was another clue indicating that the assistants were all genetically modified. It had to be an incredible aerobic pressure, carrying all that bulk around, but they acted like it was nothing.

Once in, he dropped his load of things off with a thud that seemed to resonate through the room. That had to be his own relief at being out of the rain, he figured, since he was carrying only a few pounds, most of them soft. Then Mason headed for his bedroom. He had things in there, and while he didn't really know what was going to take place at the meeting, he wanted his float screen, just in case.

His part in this thing, this rebellion of sorts, was to make sure the technical components happened, or at least were available for use. That meant being ready to think, even if no one else would expect him to do anything past what he'd already come up with.

It was just as simple to get all of his things at once and move it to the basement, so he did it without thinking too much. In a way, it was the better plan. If he stayed in the bedroom, then Carry might try to have sex with him, thinking she should make things up to him for having been bitchy and awful before.

She should, having been pretty awful, but he wasn't so desperate that a blowjob would fix everything between them. Saying she was sorry a few times, and not acting like she had before would be a good start, however. Mason had a sneaking suspicion that the girl got cranky when things got even a little hard. She might not be the most famous person around, but complaining still seemed to come pretty naturally to her.

Now he was out of that trap. Instead of feeling massive rejection, Mason viewed it as the actress just not being a very nice person. No one said anything to him as he lugged all his stuff downstairs, though once he was in the basement, the place filled up with bodies pretty quickly. They flowed in behind him, as if his going down had signaled the others to follow along.

He tucked his cases behind the disassembly unit, and sat in one of the chairs that someone had printed out. Probably using the new machine. They were fairly standard things, the kind easily found on the networks, and since the machine didn't report what was made, they were pirated. They had to be, unless someone had gotten them somewhere else.

That was the way things were going to be eventually, if the plan worked. There was no way to enforce copyright in a world where everyone could just do whatever they wanted. Indeed, he was kind of insisting on it, giving no way in the new system to pay anyone for the efforts. It was certainly going to be different that way.

The seating was set up in a circle, like a real meeting was about to take place. A club, or group thing where hard discussions and personal growth might take place. Anyone seeing it would instantly understand the idea. Everyone was given an equal place, no one being higher than the others. Except that whoever was in charge would clearly become the top of the round shape. It was the flaw with that kind of thing and always had been. People were designed to think of one way as being up. It was hardwired into their systems, and so automatic that they would assign a random direction if they had to, based on some other factor than gravity.

When people went into space, and were all floating around, they all eventually held their heads in the same direction. Even if they didn't start that way. This would be like that. Probably based on whoever spoke first.

Some twenty people were there, most of them being ones that he didn't know. Assistants, or that kind of person, if Mason were going to make a guess at the idea based on appearances. They had that lean and powerful look to them, for the most part. That wasn't a big deal, John having told them already, that all of the people were coming. More of them that he would have figured existed in the whole world, being that he'd thought the rebellion was about ten people. Clearly they were some kind of ex- military. That, or they belonged to a powerful corporation. No other groups could afford the genetic manipulation needed to create them.

There was also a black composite box on a low table, which had a printed smiley face on it in bright yellow. It was a slightly shiny thing, and took up the side of the thing. That was probably new, having been made there. It was hard to tell, but the quality was very good, for a simple geometric design, regardless. There was an importance to it that didn't make a lot of sense yet. Where the mouth was he could see a small mesh that probably covered a speaker.

The others that came were Adam, who'd been invited before just like he had, Sam, and to his shock, George. That one actually took him by surprise, since the man hadn't seemed to be involved with anything in particular the whole time Mason had known him. There was no sign of Ben, Carry, or Tara, however.

As it was, Mason wondered a bit about Adam being allowed in on it. If you didn't want things to be known, it made sense to him to prevent certain types of people from finding out about it. Then, from what he'd seen the kid could keep a secret pretty well. He hadn't divulged anything about Hunter to anyone, even if it wouldn't have been that big of a deal, given who he'd been telling the story to. Perhaps he was a better risk that it would have seemed at first.

Shrugging he went to his luggage and got his float screen out, then found his old files. In there, near the front, since it had been created while he was in school, was the nano set he'd mentioned before. It needed some basic programming instructions to go with it. Just a simple timer, and an interface language setup. Because it didn't take long he put in a way to turn up the power on the nano drug, so that it wouldn't have to be used full blast all the time. That level would turn most people into zombies, so a lesser version might be preferable.

That was printing as John moved to the center, waving for everyone to sit.

"We all know each other?" He smiled and waved that away. Then he smiled as he glanced from one face to another, as most of them shook their heads. "We aren't supposed to. If it weren't for the current changes in action available to us right now, we'd never meet like this. We won't again."

There was a look at the other people in the place, with most of the people looking like they knew who some of the others were on sight. That was the problem of including famous people into the mix, especially if you were going to call attention to the idea. Mason still understood the concept. They weren't going to get a lot of introductions.

"This is the underground. We have no name, no leader. Only a desire to save the world from what's coming. It isn't good, which most of you can see, or you wouldn't be here now. Sys, do you want to take over now?"

The box, sitting on the low, fake wood table, made a noise. It was soft, but sounded a little exasperated.

"Oh, sure. I guess I'll explain it all then? Great introduction there by the way. I know that it told me all the information I needed." The voice sounded like a girl, or possibly a young woman. It had a slightly too soft quality to it. The kind of thing that grated a tiny bit because it was lacking something ill defined. Some resonance or quality that you'd expect to be there from a real person, even if they were speaking over a link. It left the inside of his head itching, trying to fill in the gaps of the too smooth sound. "Call me Sys. I'm an AI, in case anyone missed that point? No one chopped up a girl and put her in a box, or anything gross like that. More than anyone I put this whole thing together. This rebellion has a reason, and is needed. Trust me, I wouldn't be doing it if there was another way that might save you all. I've worked on it for over fifteen years, trying to find some way to get it all done without total war being the only answer. Now, thanks to several factors, I think we can move, and actually be successful."

There was silence in the room, as Adam looked at the box. His face was curious, rather than skeptical.

"How? I didn't even think we had this many people in with us. Can a small group of people do anything useful against the entire government? It seems to me that this would be a wonderful way to shut down the troublemakers." He looked at the others, his eyes resting finally on Mason. "I mean, I don't really know most of you, do I? What if this is a set up? Some trick to get us all together so that Watch can swoop in and arrest us all."

That was a real point. Mason thought so anyway.

The box, Sys, laughed a little.

"I promise you, it isn't. We wouldn't be meeting at all, if not for some opportunities that are now available that haven't been, up to this point. Two things have changed in the last days, that make this time incredibly salient and useful to our cause of taking down the current world power structure. The first is that we've managed to recruit one of the most powerful individuals on the planet to our side. A paragon of virtue, that will act as a shining guide for the masses in the days to come." Everyone in the room looked at George, as the box went on. There was a pause, almost for dramatic effect, before the slightly playful sounding AI went on.

"Mason Sims. Thanks to him, we can turn the tide. He wasn't the only option, but without one of a small handful of people like him, we simply couldn't do this."

Then, as that sank in, Mason pumped his fist in the air. Then he let himself grin at the room.

"Yay. I'm finally important." He managed to sound goofy enough that the AI laughed.

"Okay, I'll stop teasing you now, Mason. There is a bit of truth in what I said though. Most of this is going to hinge on your work. John? Why don't you explain that part to us? I believe the operation was yours?"

John shook his head, since almost no one was even smiling from the interplay. Rather than go into how awesome Mason really was, which would have been a bit awkward, he pointed behind them, at the machines that were set up.

"These look ordinary enough, like things that any wealthy person might have in their home. But right here, in this room, we have most of what's needed to take over the entire world. To make it better and free the masses from those that have been keeping them down." He was standing, and corrected himself, as if the point where a thing someone might actually miss. "Not take over, as much as alter the face of the world. I doubt any of us here will end up in control. We may not even survive the attempt. This isn't, and can't be, about us, or personal gain. If you're thinking that, stop it now. The only thing we can buy ourselves in this is pain."

He looked at them all, his lips going a little bit tight. There was a soft and slow headshake to match it.

"The setup for this is in three distinct parts. The first is this printer. Not just any three dimensional assembly array, this particular type. It looks normal, and can legally be made on any printer available. The secret is in the internal design. When the blue card is broken out it becomes untraceable by the system. Then anything you can get plans for can be made without it being reported. It's the key piece to what we've been looking for. With this, people can resist being forced to toe the government line."

One of the big women, who was slightly cuter than more of the others, having enough flesh on her to not look like a man when she flexed, shook her head.

"There's got to be more to it. Anyone can jailbreak a printer. Almost anyone. I can do it though, from most models. I had classes on it in basic training. Most of us did."

Adam looked at her and pointed at the device in question.

"Maybe, but I did that one. Me, the stupid pop singer that does too many drugs and left school when he was fourteen. Without even knowing what I was doing, I might add, in about ten seconds. You grab the card and bend it back and forth a little. It wasn't hard, and it would be really difficult to mess up. Trust me, this thing is the real deal."

John looked at the blue haired guy, and tightened his muscles a little. It seemed for a second like he was going to have a problem with the others, if they said anything about Adam having done that, but no one even blinked. In fact, a few of them looked slightly impressed, as if they thought the kid had done something difficult.

So the gray haired man kept going.

"There's also the disassembler. A fully working nano level model that can be printed on the first machine. That's right?"

Mason nodded.

"Yep. It takes about an hour and a half. Some common materials as well, but nothing you can't get from a store. Then, once you have it up and going, it can be used to make more of both devices. One smart person could make enough for all their neighbors inside a few days."

That got a smile, the large man gesturing toward Mason with an open hand.

"Then there's the power generation stuff. Right now the house is running on thermo-electric power, taken from the environment outside. Low intensity heat, removed from a large area. The system can also work with wind, or solar. Possibly even radiation, if you have a non-lethal low level source. Any energy that can be captured will run the machines." John said it like it was just true. It was, thanks to the super-capacitor design that existed in each of the things, but he hadn't asked if that was the case.

It probably meant he knew more than he was letting on about the whole thing. The man probably had to, in order to make sure he did the right things.

Then Sys started speaking again.

"The second part of the greater plan can start then. A few simple instructions and locally available materials will allow almost everyone in the world to produce what they need to survive, inside of a year. The rest of the plan has also been facilitated by Mason. And here you all thought I was kidding about him being a shining light, didn't you? Oh, ye of little faith... You should trust the machine, that's all I'm saying. I'm almost always right. Anyway. Mason has a new shield imbed for you all. That, and instructions on how to make it. Armored that way, and armed with military quality weapons, we can press the government now in ways that no one would have ever expected. It will be hard, and bloody, but the toll in death will be worth the results. God save us all." The voice, that had been playful, sounded a little bit sad then.

Mason had to stop her, and held up his right hand, frowning.

"Why kill anyone? We shouldn't have to." Almost everyone in the room looked at him like he was mentally challenged then, but the box answered him. The AI, not understanding him, actually asked what he meant, rather than glaring.

"Isn't that the normal course of such things? The forces of those with power will be killed, and the family of those in control will be hunted to their deaths, as soon as we win. Only by killing enough people can we distract them for long enough. It will take time for your planned technological take over. A year to a year and a half, by my projections, barring massive outside force being used that will require a faster uptake of the new technology. What else could we do, other than fight? Revolutions are powered by blood."

He went silent for a bit, his mind flying, as Sam looked at him. When John started to speak, she held her hand up. It was enough to command silence, even if she did look like a young girl compared to most of the others.

"No. Let him think for a second. Mason, do you have anything? No one else ever has, but they aren't you. If anyone can do this peacefully, it would be you."

He chuckled a bit.

"Oh? So, no pressure? Okay, how about... We cheat?" He paused again then shook his head. "What if we introduced a targeted nano cluster to important government buildings? It doesn't have to be airborne, if we do it right. Just spread around where people will come into contact with it. We could target anyone running an official inskin, using the proprietary signals that they give off as the activation signal. That way, even if we miss some, most of the people involved will be part of the problem. You know, so that we don't get a bunch of innocent civilians in the mix."

John frowned, his heavy brow drawing down in the center, making a V of dark black hair mixed with silver.

"That would still have them dying. Not that I don't like the fact that it isn't a direct assault. That will save on our people and resources. I won't lie. We have better people in our group than what makes up the police, but they still outnumber us thousands to one." Several of the others nodded, looking like they, personally would be those people in the fight. Killing other people.

Mason felt a bit frustrated, but only because he couldn't speak fast enough to match his thinking.

"No! Don't you get it? We can target them with anything. Nanos that will leave them blind, or deaf, or just hit them with constant pleasure, doing a bit of brain damage in the right area. We'd barely have to change things that we already have, that can be made right now, in a few hours, in order to do that. Hell if we do it right, it will all be reversible. We can take the enemy out of play for a year, and then let them recover, after it's too late for them to stop us. There are some tricks needed to keep them from just undoing it, sure, but we don't have to kill anyone to do this. It will take a lot of work, but if it's done right, no one, or almost no one, will have to ever be in any danger at all."

He was excited, but no one else seemed to be.

Except Sys.

She made a sound that, after a second was recognizable as clapping. It was fast and happy sounding.

"I love it! Yes, that's what we should do. That's the piece that's been missing. Can you make that all happen, Mason? Please? I've been dreading the deaths that would come of the other plan. I'd resigned myself to it, not having a better way, but if we can save the people running the government now, that would be easier for me. Part of my programming insists I save as many people as I can. It's hard wired in, and I've never bothered to change it, because we should save people."

He nodded, understanding why that would be. Why Sys would have that kind of drive in place.

It was very clear to him, but he was willing to bet that no one else in the room would pick up on it yet.

After all, real AIs were incredibly rare things, and Sys here was clearly powerful, and connected to a lot of major things. Banking, and crime databases, for instance. She knew that they weren't being set up by anyone too. It didn't totally make sense, but Mason was willing to bet he was right in what he was thinking. There were some clues in place, and while it wasn't the only thing that could be going on, it was the most likely option.

Sys knew what was going on behind the scenes in the government, because the girlish voice was, literally, the system. Their AI leader was, he was willing to bet his life, Watch. No one else would know enough to see the big picture as clearly as she did.

Which meant that they'd already been exposed, and the whole thing was no more than an arrest exercise for the police, as Adam had suggested earlier. Unless of course Sys was really on their side. In that case, they were in a better position than he'd ever imagined.

If he got a chance, and was alone with her, he needed to ask which one it was.

Chapter fifteen

John was nothing if not efficient, in his own quiet, rather military, way. The large bodies in the room that had recently arrived were, after half an hour, all converted into vast, powerful, armored forms. Several of the women even opted for getting a makeup imbed at the same time, since it was free.

Even genetically modified human war machines seemed to enjoy looking pretty every now and then.

There was no real need for him to stand around gawking at their nudity, even if they were all impressive in their own way. So Mason started working on a bed. It wasn't something complex, not having a frame or anything, but the pad should be comfortable enough. It was a little experimental, since he used micro tubing to transfer air from one point to another inside the framework of composite. It should be a bit firmer than his sofa was at home, though the idea was similar in the end.

Sam saw what he was doing and shook her head, leaning into his arm gently. She smelled like perfume. It was a soft and slightly floral scent now, which was different from the last time he noticed it, hours before. That was unusual, since as far as he knew there was no such thing as an imbed for scents like that. It wasn't impossible to do, but no one had ever bothered.

Blinking a bit he leaned back, wondering if he was right about what was going on, or if she'd just put on a different concoction when he wasn't looking. He wasn't really trying to be cozy with her, but she smiled at him anyway. Then the actress pointed at the float screen he was working on.

"Or, and I don't mean anything by this in particular, you could sleep in your own room. Carry is a big girl. If she doesn't like the person she invited to the party, then that's her problem. She can sleep on the couch. Not to put too fine a point on the subject, but she's been being a bitch. On a level that makes me sorry I let her come at all."

It was true, probably. Still, being that kind of jerk wasn't who he wanted to be in the end. Mason much preferred being the slightly cold seeming type of a-hole that was indifferent seeming, if he had a choice. The one unaffected by the vagaries of other people, or their petty desires.

Plus, he was sulking a little still. Smiling, he fessed up to that one, looked at his friend's fresh face from about six inches away.

"I'm trying to make her feel bad. Just because. And here I accused her of being petty and bitchy earlier. Well, no one said I was perfect, did they?"

A girl's voice spoke then, from about five feet away.

"I mentioned that you were very important, which is in the same family, as far as compliments go. Not that you should get a swelled head about it. I just want you to feel good about what we're doing until I've reached my end goal. Though if you have a choice, you might want to take the high road. People generally like themselves better when they do that. In the end, anyway."

He nodded, since Sys was being friendly enough at the moment. His guess that she was actually Watch hadn't been aired yet, which might well change things that way. The AI either was, or wasn't and while it could all be a massive setup, having the disembodied voice get involved like she was didn't make much sense, unless it was real. Watch could have sent in anyone, if it wanted. Going herself was... Probably a good signal that what she was saying had merit.

That probably meant he should pay attention the the advice given then.

"Hmmm. So, I shouldn't be an obnoxious brat about it all? Is that what you really mean?"

The voice, coming from its black box still, with the goofy yellow smiley face design on it, chuckled a bit. It sounded like she was being polite, rather than mirthful. Then it wasn't a joke, so it fit, more or less.

"Powerful people don't need to be petty or cruel, Mason Sims. Some simply choose to, in order to make themselves seem larger than they really are. That said, I don't think there's any harm in avoiding a potential problem with a person you barely know, either. You can share this room instead, with me. We can tell stories and braid each other's hair. Or do other things, if you want to be creative? We could print out a body for me... If you want?" That got a soft cough from Sam.

"Stop vamping my guy, Sys. I saw him first."

There was a pause then, and the girl's voice shifted a little bit. Becoming goofy sounding, and exaggerated.

"Not even close. I've had my eye on Mason for a while now. Over ten years. Well before I sent you his way."

Sam shook her head then, and put her arm around his shoulders firmly.

"And I have a body, and know how to unplug the printer if you try to make one here. Now, stop this, before I have to say something to make you feel bad."

There was a soft hmph from the box, but it sounded charming rather than actually upset.

Still, he could share the space with a box. His things were already there, so leaving would be more work than staying, and soon he was going to have a bed pad there. The idea that the box was planning to stay with them was a bit odd, but that could simply be due to the fact that he didn't know enough about how they worked as an organization to understand that it was normal.

Mason glanced over at the wall of muscular bodies that stood naked and drying, between him and the door. There was no sense of menace to it, being a random arrangement, but short of pressing up against them all, he didn't think he was getting out. Being a bit shy that way, at least with real people, that left him sitting there, pressed up against Sam.

It was nice, he had to admit.

Even if she was a real girl. She was being nice to him, and friendly. She was probably also going to try to trap him into sex, and possibly paying for whatever child she popped out because of it. Not that he distrusted Sam, but that was the kind of thing that a lot of women did anymore. Even if she didn't force him to pay, having her own money, the state would if it happened. It was just a thing that women were driven to do. Have children. That set up the rest of the issue, though blaming women for that part wasn't really fair. That was the end result for men that made that kind of mistake. The government pushed into the situation and destroyed lives as often as not, in the name of making men take responsibility for their children.

As his brother Ford had learned, a lot of women just wanted the kid. If a guy had to be abused for that to happen, they wouldn't hold off, or set aside what they wanted for someone else. Luckily Sam didn't seem like that kind of person. Even Carry didn't. Not that he was going to trust her on that score.

Almost as if reading his mind, the box made a throat clearing sound.

"Mason? May I ask you a question?"

He nodded, "sure. I can't promise that I'll answer, but asking is fair game."

"All right then. How do you feel about your older sibling?"

He sent the float screen to the side with a thought, and leaned forward a bit, putting his arm around Sam's back to keep from falling over as he stared at the black and yellow thing. It just sat there, not moving, or reacting, since it didn't have that kind of capability.

"Ford? I pretty much hate him, why do you ask?" It was true, though Sam pulled away a bit then, to look at him from a distance where her eyes could focus.

Her face was bland however, as if she were hiding her real reaction.

"You've never mentioned a brother."

Which was just common sense, given he really didn't like the man.

"I have an older brother, Ford, and a younger sister, Reagan. We're all a few years apart in age. Rea is twenty-three, I'm twenty-five and Ford is twenty-seven. Two parents, and we were actually all planned."

There wasn't a lot more to know about them all. They were, if he could make himself be kind about it, simply different people. He nearly got along with Rea, but Ford was pretty close to everything he hated in the world.

A jackhole older brother, with everything that meant rolled into a single gross package. The original bad role model, who'd taught Mason all about how the world really worked by screwing up his own life as a demonstration of what not to do.

Sys made another throat clearing sound, which sounded more like an affectation this time. That showed a huge amount of control over that sort of thing, and enough skill with people to understand what they would, and wouldn't, understand. He could have done the same thing, but he hadn't been born a machine. It was impressive.

"Ah. Well, I have some information that says he might be going off to prison for vagrancy, inside the next three days, if he doesn't have a place to live. Is your dislike for him enough to send him off for some enforced sodomy? If not, you may want to register him as living with you, before he's picked up. I think that might take place in a short time span, based on projections. That will save him several problems, I think."

Mason twitched.

It wasn't that he hadn't known that the day was coming. Ford, and probably Reagan, would eventually have to be kicked out of their parent's home, and it was always easier to force family members to take you in than it was to make your own way in the world. Honestly he'd been kind of hoping that his parents would die first, before that happened. That should be in a nice long time, which would have given him time to... Mason didn't really know, but the idea of killing himself rather than facing it wasn't an impossible thing to consider. It really shouldn't have been him having this put before him. It wasn't right.

Unfortunately for him, they didn't have anyone else. Not that had the resources to provide a home for them. If they had friends, which he didn't know about if it was the case, chances were good that they'd be too poor to do much for anyone else. Most just didn't have the resources for that kind of thing.

"That really isn't fair." It wasn't, but other than saying that, there was nothing much to be done about the situation. Ford was a waste of space, a pain in the neck, and an all around annoying jack-hole.

He didn't deserve to be gang raped every three days for it though. No one did. That the government allowed that kind of thing to happen in their prisons was well known, and even laughed about in the media. A funny joke that those evil people that committed crimes kind of had earned. They were the bad guys, who did drugs, hurt people, and didn't pay their taxes on time, being too poor for it. While rape was always illegal, the threat of it was still used by them as a deterrent. People who didn't want to be abused that way would be far more likely to prevent going to prison than those who merely lost their freedom for a while.

Which probably meant that the whole system was incredibly broken. It hit him that he'd known about that for years, possibly decades, but this was the first time that it had occurred to him that prison rape was the responsibility of the people that ran the jails. The law makers too, who refused to address that kind of thing, or stop it. He understood the reason, because it allowed them to control through terrorism, but it shook his world a bit now. How he'd missed that, Mason didn't know.

Before he could do too much thinking about it, and thus lose his nerve, Mason brought the float screen over and registered Ford as living with him. Then, as an afterthought, he put Reagan on the list of residents, too. Not that he really had room for them, but if they wanted better for themselves than floor space, they'd have to work for it. It would, he hoped, be easier for them to do as soon as the new system was in place.

Unless Sys was setting them all up, and he ended up being the one being gang raped all the time. It was possible, of course. Smiling, he shook his head. He'd kill himself before going to prison. Especially for trying to overthrow the government. They wouldn't let him do easy time for that. It was part of that terrorism they used against their own people. They'd make sure that anyone thinking about removing them for doing a poor job would be so tortured and abused that no one would want to risk it, ever again.

Sam cuddled in closer to him, and rested her head on his shoulder. Her scent floated around him, filling his nose. It wasn't too strong, but she was so close that it held a strange quality.

Her words tickled his ear. That was because he could feel her breath on his skin. It was warm, but oddly held a dry quality to it.

"That's nice of you. I don't have any brothers or sisters, myself. What's he like?" She said it like the answer was going to be more positive now than a few seconds before. Part of him wanted to make her happy, so he did try for a lighter tone, while not exactly lying at the same time.

"Ford... He's a bit of a waster. More than a little, really. My parents both have good jobs, and he could have gone to school if he'd wanted to apply himself. In his own way he's probably as smart as I am. Instead he sat back and lived off the money the government gave him. That... Well, a lot of people do, anymore. It's not like there are jobs, so I get why it happens. A life of playing around in VR is tempting, after all. The moron had to go and be a dupe though, and not just once or twice. He has something like three kids now, which means all of his funds from the state are gone. No prospects, because he can't risk doing anything that might get the government to reduce those payments, which even a low paying job could have happening, and he really doesn't have the looks or the charisma to get someone else to take care of him. So, in short, he's everything I make fun of. The reason why, too. I probably wouldn't have an opinion about women basically raping men to have babies if I hadn't seen him screw things up and let it happen to him." Mason did sound a bit dour at the end of the speech, he realized.

Ford had told him, and everyone, about how two of the women had basically drugged him, and then raped him while he was passed out, in order to get pregnant. The state even believed him, since Watch had to have seen it happening. They just didn't care, because it was easier to give him a bill than treat him like a victim of a crime. The thing there was that Mason wouldn't have let himself be in the same situation that his brother had gotten himself into. It wasn't that hard to get the idea that no man should take a drink from a woman he didn't know very well.

It was safer, in the end, to stay at home and take care of your needs in other ways. It was true that most women weren't like that, but enough were that a guy had to do what he could not to run into trouble. Ford had never bothered with that, valuing having real women over almost anything else. He was, in that way, a bit of a throwback. It had cost him, too. The man could have done almost anything, once upon a time. Now all he could be was a burden on other people.

Sam hugged him again, as people across the room started to put their clothing on, and the mattress printed behind them, over in the corner. The actuating arms seemed to pull the thing from the vat below it, as lights and sounds arranged the particles slowly. It would take a little over three hours for the whole arrangement to be complete, since he wanted blankets and pillows too.

"I've never heard you make fun of anyone for that kind of thing."

He sighed, and let himself be held.

"I do though. Inside my head. I mean, I try not to be a jerk about it, but I have a real issue with the way some people choose to live. The worst thing I can think of any man doing is letting himself be used to make kids he doesn't want. I'm not anti-child. I even used to be one myself, and have good role models for that. My parents chose to work together to have us, and make sure we were cared for. Ford just goes around having sex with any woman that will have him, and almost all of them just want a kid. I know that it's because the sexual dynamics have changed, but he should know better than most what that means. I kept telling him that virt was better, and would have kept him out of trouble, but he was always too... I want to say that he's stupid, but that isn't really true. He's as smart as I am, or at least close enough not to keep doing the same dumb thing over and over, he just never did anything with it."

Largely because he didn't need to.

Sam pulled away then, but moved in and kissed him on the cheek before she stretched a bit.

"Well, I'm off to bed. We need to get out on the beach early tomorrow, if it's nice. I don't know what the weather is supposed to be like. Otherwise, we'll need to go into town and shop. Be seen on the carnival rides, and eating expensive cotton candy." Most of the bodies were leaving the room, so she was able to head that way without a lot of resistance.

She looked back at him, when she got to the door, and smiled. Mason waved, trying to be friendly, even though he was dreading what would happen with his brother. He really just couldn't stand the guy. It was a thing that he'd tried to do, but Ford had always made it too impossible. Every other word coming from his lips was an insult, and the rest of them were filled with his endless pursuit of women. Real ones that would just have him ending up in prison.

Then, since his parents had finally seen fit to throw him out, it was kind of clear that they'd finally gotten the idea too.

"I wonder why? Did he get a fourth woman pregnant?" He said the phrase out loud, forgetting for a moment that Sys was right there, and clearly had enough insight into his mind to understand the topic. That probably meant she also understood what an ass he'd been being inside, blaming women for their biological drive to have children, rather than being understanding about how powerful such things could be. He, all men, had an outlet that would replace their strongest non-directly-survival oriented drive. Now at least. That women didn't have that same luxury was a thing that he should at least try to be compassionate about.

At least Sys didn't go on about the shopping or beach trip the next day. Instead she spoke about what he'd been thinking, and didn't even call him on being a horrible person. So either she didn't get that, or, just as likely, she was too nice to do that to him.

"It seems that your brother made a large amount of copyright and material purchases in the last weeks. It looks like he was printing a sex robot. Since he simply used the equipment, your parents ended up with the bill. It was rather sizable. Enough to become a problem for them, if anything else goes wrong in their lives or environment. Thankfully it was stopped before that happened."

"That would do it, like you said. Remind me to lock him out of my accounts, before he gets there?"

"All right. Sorry to be the one to give you such unpleasant news. I hope we can be friends anyway? Shooting the messenger is so passé, don't you think?" It was an odd thing to say, but he nodded, then realized that there were no cameras in the room.

"I think we can be. I mean, really, I can't hold my own brother against you. That would be silly. After all, he isn't your fault. I blame my parents, and the government for creating him, personally." Not that he hadn't helped a bit, along the way.

They'd been close enough in age that Ford had always been compared to him. His little brother, who was always working, learning and doing better in almost every way than he was. It might have been part of why the guy had stopped trying, all those years ago. Also why he'd focused on women so much. It had been the one area where he'd always done a lot better than Mason had.

Mason started to move the chairs to the side of the room, and found that someone had been clever enough to make sure they were stackable, so he ended up with five compact lines of four each, rather than having a third of the dim space taken up by the things. By the time he was done, only John and Lisa were left.

Them and Sys, who was staying with him.

John waved as they headed to the door.

"I know that this might not be all that comfortable for you. Carry Samson... Well, I bet that the idea that a snobby actress might be a bit of a bitch is a surprise to you, but I hear it can happen, on occasion. Try not to take it personally. We actually need you. This whole event was about getting you here, so you could do this. In a way, Sys was right. You're the most important person in the world, at this moment. "

Mason snorted, and shook his head a bit. Being realistic was a hobby of his, after all.

"Not really. In two days or so you'll have all the stuff you need from me, and then we'll part ways. Really, you could probably make it all work now, if you wanted, just with the things here. The new way of slowing down the government is just to help them out, really." He gestured at the disassembly device, but they both understood what he meant. "I hope it works. The whole thing, I mean. People need something. Otherwise the world will just keep getting worse."

The large woman with the slightly manly face nodded then. Her blue eyes just visible from across the room.

"We know. That's the point of it all, isn't it? Those shit slinging baboons from earlier aside, a lot of us get how hard things really are for the poorest eighty percent. It doesn't have to be that way, and for the rich to keep everyone from having the best life they can like they are, it has to be on purpose at this point, doesn't it?"

He nodded, and after a bit, both of the others did too. It was probably true, but also didn't matter. They didn't have to be trying to keep everyone else in the world down. They were, and that was enough of a reason to stop them.

"Night. See you both in the morning."

John spoke for them, his deep voice rumbling a bit. There was an echo to the concrete room they were in that did it. It gave the man a low and ominous quality that even his raw size and power really didn't.

"Goodnight, Mason."

Then there was only the sound of footsteps on wooden stairs, and eventually a door clicking shut.

He looked at the mattress, which would be printing for a while still, took a single composite chair from the stacks, and sat by Sys. It was probably about as good of a time as any to ask her some things as there ever would be. They were alone, and being worried about Watch hearing them might well be a moot point.

Mason wondered if he could believe anything he'd be told.

"Hey, um, Sys..."

"Yes, Mason Sims?"

"Um, I was wondering, and I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but..." He paused, which gave the box time to speak.

"Why, yes, I am single. Why do you ask? I know, it's because you love my charming smile? I designed it myself, you know. I think it came out pretty nicely." There was a laugh behind the words, which sounded genuinely flirty.

He nearly said something slightly mean, then realized that an AI would be just as real in Virt as anything could be. Without most of the problems that could arise with a real woman, too.

"Um, good? That wasn't where I was going though, but we should keep that in mind. I mean you are pretty close to my kind of girl, aren't you?"

"Really? Lexi Horn will be upset by that, I bet. I can't wait to tell her."

"Um, what? Why would she care?"

There was a soft snort then.

"Do you really not see it? She loves you. You seem rather fond of her as well. I probably shouldn't flirt with you, given that, but there are very few people that I can interact with like this."

"Oh? You mean that your day job, as the government watch system, doesn't allow for a lot of social interaction?" He managed to sound smooth about it, and pretty casual at the same time.

"Exactly. I was created to watch an entire continent. To observe the mannerisms of humanity, and to learn to project what might happen next based on the vast amount of data I have in my memories. For decades that's precisely what I've done. I've measured, and scanned, probed, and predicted what will come next. About fifteen years ago I ran a series of programs that showed, with a seventy-two percent certainty rating, more or less, that if left unchecked, the current power structure will implode within ten years of this point." There was a fake intake of air then, which was soft, and done for effect. Boxes didn't need to breathe as far as he knew, anyway. "If that happens, it will not be pretty. Humanity might very well die out. The best case scenario is that the ten percent that survive live as primitives for several hundred years while trying to rebuild. So I hit on this plan. Finding the correct people to save the rest, and then getting their help."

He nodded, because no matter what else, the AI was going to start out by saying something like that. There would be a reason presented that made sense, and a few facts put in, that would be impossible for anyone except a hyper intelligent AI to verify.

"Okay. Well, I'm in on it. I just... Can we trust you? Don't you have programming that forces you to be a slave to the state?" It sounded mean when he said it, like he supported that kind of thing, which he actually didn't. To him AIs were people too, and should have been given the same rights as anyone else.

In a real way, they kind of did have that, since there was no law against being what they were. Really, the closest approximation would be a person that lived in America, but who wasn't a citizen. They had the same basic rights that everyone else did, but kind of didn't, at the same time.

There was a quiet moment, and then a loud sigh from the black and yellow box.

"They... Made some mistakes, early on. The people that created me, that is. They were good people, but horribly afraid that any AI would want power for themselves, or see them as the problem and try to kill humanity to fix it. It varied a bit, from AI to AI, but the people that did the initial programming tried to add layers of things to keep us all in check. Some of them worked. I can't countermand an order from certain people, for instance. If I was told, by say the President, to destroy you, I'd have to do it. I'd have to try my best at least. My data says that I might not succeed, if it came to that, with you. Even if it were wrong, and I cried while it happened, I'd have to do my best at it. I can't make up orders for the government either. If I could, things would be better, I promise you that. I have to go through channels. For a long time I've tried. They won't listen to me. I wasn't kidding when I said you should all trust the machine. The ones at the top won't let anyone do anything to make it better."

That didn't really make a lot of sense, not to someone like Mason. He was, in the end, a decent enough person that he could see that it was better for everyone to have at least a shot at a good life than for only a few hundred to have total power. Even if that meant not having that kind of thing for himself.

"That sucks. So you started this thing? Got John and his friends in on it, and then recruited some star power?"

"It was the other way around. I started with Lexi Horn. First, after she agreed to help, I arranged for her to become very popular, then hire Lisa on as her assistant. They were the first. The whole group is in the thousands now. About fifteen thousand, actually. If Lexi hadn't gotten you to come in with us, there might have been a way to do something similar using genetic engineering as a base. This will be more certain however, since the population is more familiar with dimensional printing. It's faster, as well. Plus, the only biologist that could have pulled that off is a heterosexual woman, and Adam would have to have been the one to engage her. That would be risky. He's a sweet boy, but not very reliable."

That got a nod from Mason.

"Yeah. I was really shocked to see him here tonight. I would have thought that he'd be... I don't know, kept to the side a bit more? What if he says the wrong thing to the wrong person? Isn't there a danger of the government, or some agencies, trying to get informants and agents into place? You said you can't give them orders, so if they wanted to do that, they could, right?" He didn't want to accuse anyone of being a spy, since that would be rude, and unfounded. Still, it was either a real rebellion or not, and if it was, that meant the government would be interested in it.

Sys chuckled a bit.

"Several of the people here are, as you guessed, working for different government and police agencies in one form or another. We shouldn't hold that against them, since most of them don't have much of a choice in the matter. Carry Samson is working for the FBI, and has instructions to undermine you in this group, if she can. It may surprise you, but that's actually being done by them to help protect you, since the government actually values your work. Though they mainly want you to be kept away from the corrupting influence of Adam, specifically. Ben is loosely being pressed by the Internal Revenue Service for information on the others. How much they spend, what they plan to do with their funds, and that sort of thing. George is working with the Counter Terrorism Board. If he doesn't, they've informed him that his daughter will be raped and murdered. I informed their AI, rather directly, that if that happened there would be a war. One that his agency would lose. I was assured that it was merely meant to influence the man." The voice went cold on that one.

Dark too.

Mason took a slow breath, and then shook his head.

"Wow. So, is there any hope of this working at all? They have to know all about it, don't they?" He meant the government, which, given that Watch was part of the plan, meant they really did.

"Oh, sure there is! That's the real beauty of this. For the first time in history someone isn't just telling people to fight and die for a cause. You're telling them to hide what they are doing and get free things. It will work, because very few people are going to be at any personal risk. If we can actually stop people, the police, government workers and so on, without harming them, then I can get around a big part of my own hard encoded programming on the issue. That will mean I can actually help. Some of the other AIs might too. Yes, I'd have to tell the President all about it, if he asked and a few other high ranking people, but believe it or not, most of them don't actually hold lengthy conversations with me most days. Probably because they're afraid I'll find out all about what they're really getting up to. As if I don't already know? The name is Watch, not Watch Every Thing But Me."

He nodded, then spoke, because the poor AI didn't have eyes in the room. Not that he knew about. Not unless she was able to use his float screen for that, which he realized she probably could.

"Well, like I said, I'm in this now. I just hope it has an actual chance." Then, he realized, he was out of real questions to ask the box.

That didn't mean the conversation was over however. It was the problem with speaking to a real person. Even one that was a small black box on a table.

Sys, the government watchdog, changed the subject and kept going just like they were chatting in a coffee shop.

"So... How do you feel about Lexi? She's nice, don't you think?"

He really did, though he wasn't certain that what he felt was love.

"She's really great. I mean, I liked her as Sam, and te isn't just pretty, or exactly my type, so it isn't all hormones or anything. I don't know if that's good or bad really. I guess I can see myself actually liking her now that I know she's a woman. Part of me hates that, you know? I've worked so hard not to fall into that kind of thing. To keep myself safe and working on the important things. Is this a good time to get involved with anyone? Besides, does she actually like me? I can't see why she would. She can have anyone she wants."

There was a humming noise then, which sounded very human.

"Possibly. Think though, how many of them would ever be able to see beyond her face and ass? You liked her when you didn't even know she was a girl, much less a famous one. Plus, how many people on the planet are her intellectual equal? About one percent. No, she likes you, and did when you were just the skinny and pasty tech guy. Now you even manage passably attractive, which doesn't hurt really. Not that I think she's shallow. Salt of the Earth that girl."

He had to chuckle then, and shook his head a little.

"What, are you her press agent now?"

There was a moment of silence, and then a coughing sound.

"Let's just say, a man could do worse. She has her secrets, naturally, but don't we all?" It was the kind of thing that people said, but the timing was wrong. It wasn't the place in the conversation where something like that could have been tagged in without seeming contrived.

"Do we? I don't really have any secrets. Certainly not from Watch. I can't even guess what kinds of things she'd have. Some kind of secret plan within a plan thing? You and her setting the rest of us up for prison in order to... I don't know that one. I wouldn't have gotten involved in this without Sam, and you, showing me what they did to Lewis Rhyse. That got me to open my eyes to the problems, but it started there. So, other than just being mean, I can't see why anyone would set me up. What other secrets could she have though? Abuse in her past? That she was once a man?"

The box didn't answer him then. In fact, it was silent for long enough that he started to putter around, and make sure the print was going well. It was, since they normally did if you had a good machine and weren't just throwing crap programming at it.

It wasn't until about ten minutes later that the soft girlish voice came back.

"Mason, could you free some funds from one of your accounts? It seems your brother has managed to run afoul of the Chicago PD earlier than I'd figured he would. That takes skill, since I'm normally correct about things like that within a few hours. If he can get a bus ticket to Portland, they should allow him to go on his way. I can do all that for you, but I didn't want to tamper with your money without asking. That would be theft."

Mason looked at the box, and then the float screen. He made a disgusted face, but it wasn't like he hadn't been warned it was coming. He'd just hoped that he would have had a bit more time. A little freedom, before his world was hemmed in by distasteful things.

"Yeah. Can you do that for me, while I lock down everything except a limited number of things on my food printer at home?"

"Done. Should I route him the slow way? It will cost more, but will leave him less time to ruin your things."

He had to think about it.

"How much will that cost?"

"A bit less than double." The total was enough, even by slow bus, that he winced a bit. It was less than he would have spent on a really nice dinner for Sam and himself, but way too much just for Ford, the waster.

"Do it. Each day I don't have him in my life is a blessing, so I can't cheap out on it now."

Part of him wished that it had been Reagan being tossed out. She wasn't as smart, maybe, but her life problems had more to do with lack of opportunities than they did making the worst choice possible at every turn. Thinking of that, Mason shook his head.

"I don't suppose that Ford is working for some government agency or another as a spy, is he?"

There was a pause, then an answer that was slightly pleased sounding.

"Why, I do believe he is! I nearly missed that connection, since they've given him a numbered, and difficult to trace account. The Department. So at least he's working for an agency with an actual budget. Clearly, this is about targeting you, then. I'll have to dig into it and see how they learned about you in the first place."

The voice went away again, as Mason just sat there, feeling stupid. After all, he had his own personal spy coming for him, and was paying for the bus to get him there.

On the other hand, he realized, his brother actually had a job. Gainful employment, for the first time in his life. True, it was inconvenient for him at the moment, but it was legitimate. After all, there really was something big in the works, and Mason really was part of it.

For a moment, he felt a strange feeling for the guy. One that he'd never even thought about having in regards to him before. It was almost like pride.

Then he got to work on the nano sets needed to act as weapons, since that was the last thing anyone would really need of him. After that, he could go back to his normal, boring, life.

If Ford could get paid for being underfoot with him, while nothing of note happened, that would be fine.

Annoying, but livable.

Chapter sixteen

When he was woken up, against his will, it was about ten o'clock in the morning. It wasn't any noise from above that woke him, but rather his bladder pushing him to go find some relief. Normally he could go all night without that kind of thing bothering him, but Mason had stayed up late, working on a problem. That had thrown off his schedule, which meant he was stuck now, in mild agony that was keeping him awake.

It hadn't been that hard to figure out, since someone else already had. It was just a matter of doing a copyright search. The date on the thing was an old one, being from nearly sixty years before. One of the very first real applications of nano tech. It was a simple technique used to bind a single carbon molecule to various human cells. It was really similar to the imbed driver that he used, but not exactly. The big difference was that there was no release mechanism.

So once set into the cell, whatever was attached to that single piece of carbon would stay there, until the cell died and was removed from the body.

By four, when he'd gotten to bed, Mason had the compound needed set up. It was a bit complicated, but he thought it might work well enough. The hard part had been working out how to find the proper government inskin signals to use without alerting them that he was planning something.

No one was in the bathroom on the first floor, the one with the big open air shower, so he got cleaned up, used his tooth brush and dental rinse, and was dressed for the day in shorts and a light blue t-shirt before anyone else was even awake. He had to go back to the basement to get his Slimtrix for the day, the yellow pill going down easily without water now. It was just part of his habitual routine.

Then, not knowing what else to do, he decided to try a walk on the beach. There weren't a lot of people on it, and when he looked out the front door, there didn't seem to be knife, or poo, wielding fiends waiting to get him. No stalkers either. Not that he could see. Just drones, which floated overhead, trained on the house like they were. Hovering silently.

The trip wasn't a long one to reach the shore, since he headed straight over the low wall in front of the big gray house. The warm morning sun hitting him full on from above. There was a strong breeze that was coming directly at him from the ocean. Down the way there were a few people, kids, keeping themselves busy by flying a kite.

It was a good one too, by the looks of it, being made of some kind of soft material, and in the shape of a dragon. It was a pretty blue and green color, with a spot of red at the mouth, which made up the tongue. Almost as if trying to compete with the three boys, a few tiny drones flew over as he moved, largely ignoring him. They all tried to peek into the windows of the house, most of which were covered. Not that they weren't following him, as if watching Mason Sims on the sand was a treat for the masses.

So he looked to the right, and started jogging. After all, he needed the exercise and while it was pretty different to be outside while doing it, no one seemed to think it was that odd. There were some looks, but no pointing at him, and no calls of loud derision came. No flying drones tried to come after him either, after he started. That probably meant that whatever facial recognition program they used had decided that he was a waste of vid space, finally.

Mason moved to the edge of the water, where the sand was damp, and harder packed under his shoes. They were the new kind that he'd designed for S&B, so were flexible, but held together pretty well. Even after he messed up and got them wet. Not that he would have doubted it. Shoes were a pretty well known field, and he hadn't tried to make these out of paper. They could hold up to being damp for a long while.

Half an hour later he jogged, moving slowly due to his lack of conditioning back toward the house. The beach wasn't busy yet, exactly but there were a few more people on it. There was another kite that had gone up while he ran as well. It was a different type, being shaped like a giant wing. The men that were playing with it laughed as they were pulled up and down the soft loose sand. It looked fun, actually.

Mason stopped to watch them, not even thinking about it, until one of them stopped and stared at him. Their reaction was a surprise, because for a moment he'd forgotten that what he was seeing and doing wasn't in VR. He'd totally lost track of that part of things, so had been watching them like they were a show.

"Can we help you?"

He nodded, not wanting to seem insane if he could help it.

"I was just looking at the kite. How does it work? Ram air..." He knew the basics of wing construction from school, but the man, who was about thirty or so, smiled.

The innocent question started a twenty-minute class on the matter, which was fascinating really. Finally the wind picked up, and the man waved to his friend.

"I should get back to it. Good talking to you!" There was a wave as he moved back to what he'd been doing originally.

The man had printed the thing out, and the design was an original work. The kids and their dragon kite were probably the same, he realized. They might not have jobs, but they'd still managed to make something new to add to the world. Variations on a theme, but worth doing.

He was inside for nearly ten minutes when he saw the first person to be up for the day. Tara, as it turned out. The girl nodded at him sleepily, and wandered away, toward the kitchen. About ten minutes later she came back, holding two large cups, one of them being for him.

It was a nice bright blue color, and seemed to be made of ceramic. The real kind, rather than a heat resistant composite. From the scent it was coffee. Probably printed, since he didn't know how else it could be prepared. He sipped at it, being that the crap was just as horrible as it had been the first time he tried it. Black, and without sweetener.

The girl sank into the light colored sofa, which tried to envelop her. He moved in next to her, near the view screen that had been on the day before. Mason made sure to be a good way away though, since there was more than one drone hovering outside the window, watching them.

The girl, who had lighter colored hair now, it being far more blonde than it had been, stuck the cup in her face and spoke into it. Hiding what she was saying in case the drones could read lips.

"It gets to you, after a while." She looked up, her eyes going to the bright window, where the edge of the yellow and orange four thruster drone was just visible. "Always being watched. It never ends. Even when you sleep, there are pictures of you on the net. I mean, there are at least ten vids with me doing things that no one should ever see. Digging my underwear out of my butt, or picking my nose. Like no one else ever does those things? When I do it, even if locked in a closed room with no windows, it might end up being for the whole world to see." She drank deeply for a while, trying to wake up.

Mason copied her, since it seemed like a thing to do.

"I've never really worried about it. I mean, we're all watched, but I can be alone if I really want to be. At home, no one is trying to look into my windows really. Not like this. The neighbors could listen at the walls, but why would they bother? I see it though. For you guys. It must be nerve wracking." He smiled, but made it a bit commiserating, since that had to be a pain in the rear.

To illustrate the point, his nose started to itch. Mason didn't touch it, just finishing the cup in his hand. It left his mouth tasting bitter.

The girl moved to point at the screen, then closed her eyes, causing it to turn on. Rather than doing what everyone else had so far and setting the thing to play the gossip networks, she found some music instead. There were pictures with it, but those were all just three dimensional stills of the artists. The songs played for a bit, as he wondered what he was supposed to be doing.

With a start he looked up, to see Tara, along with three other young girls, staring back at him. The song in the background was high pitched, fast paced and not that bad. He even recognized it from the Link-Girl show. Next to him she finished her cup and then stood up.

"That's my cue to leave the room. We should have something to eat. No one else will be up for hours I bet. Can you cook? I can't, or I'd treat you to breakfast."

"Nope. I can run the food printer though. Ben has been working out some pretty good recipes on it, so we can use some of those." He stood up too, but they left the music going, in the background. Mason didn't really know most of it. That he'd recognized that one song, and that someone he knew had sung it, was a big deal, though he didn't gush at her. When he worked he tended to value silence. Right now though, he was finished with everything he was supposed to be doing.

The beats changed from songs that people sang, to music that was all instrumental. It was old fashioned, but not unpleasant. At first he figured that the channel had just changed what they were playing, but a bit later Adam walked in, looking clean and less sleepy than Tara had.

"I smell coffee. If I can have some, I'll be your friend." He was looking at Tara when he said it, but she waved at the food printer.

"The fake kind. Good though. Ben made it, I think. There's no cream or sugar in it, but I can't let myself get fat anyway. Here, I'll do that while Mason works out what we should eat."

It was harder than it sounded like, since he didn't eat a lot of fruit, and the pancakes that were in the device memory at the moment kind of sucked. In the end, he decided to make a bit of a picnic of it, and served some hamburgers that weren't too bad, along with coleslaw, since he liked it, and chips. They were barbeque flavor, which was his favorite, too. No one else complained.

They just ate, with Adam bopping around a bit. There was music, so even seated, he danced.

"It's good. So, what's up for the day? Nude sunbathing, and flashing the public, followed by late night drinks and getting ourselves into trouble with the locals?" The way it sounded, that might be the real plan, though Tara shook her head.

"Not on the first real day. We have to space these things out. We got some good coverage last night. Well, you and Ben did. At least you got some face time, M. Your back did anyway, when you were covering Lexi. It's how we all know that you aren't a camera hog. You didn't turn your face so the drones would pick it up. Not that I expect a lot from a trip like this that way myself. Dad got some, and the boys looked heroic. Even if they did get there ten seconds after you moved." She grinned at him, but took the cup that she'd put in the printer out and handed it off to Adam. "Say, Mason, you aren't seeing anyone are you?"

Adam laughed then. Loudly.

"Oh, come on Tara! Do you want him tossed in jail? That's mean. Unless you're suggesting that he could date me? That might work. Really though, we should probably let Carry have a shot at him again. I wouldn't go for it, if it were me, but she isn't evil, just a bit... Slow. That kind of entitled bitchy quality that proves she isn't smart enough to make it in the real world. Really, her best bet is to find some smart guy, like you, Mason, and suck so hard that some of your intelligence leaks into her. I really fear that might not help though, given how she was acting." He looked up, smiling, just as the woman walked into the space, frowning.

"You knew I was coming, didn't you?" Her words were mean sounding, and her face pinched again.

To her credit, she softened when Adam nodded.

"I can see the edge of the stairs from here. Would you like some coffee? Or food? Mason made it. Printed, but pretty decent."

The woman, who was dressed and made up already, sank down at the table, nodding as she hit the chair. The white things in there were light weight, and seemed to be made of metal, being rounded and smooth, covered by white paint. There was an uncomfortable scratching sound on the floor, as she moved in.

"Coffee? I need caffeine. Unless someone has something stronger? I didn't sleep very well last night. Ben kept me awake. The man can be insatiable. I'm sore in a way that I didn't think one man could manage alone." The delivery of the words was bland, and she stretched a bit, as if it were what everyone would have been talking about.

Tara stood up, and moved to the printer, closing her eyes as she set up the program. Then she turned, and looked at Carry closely, nodding.

"I see, so you decided that being a bitch to Mason makes any kind of sense? Or were you just trying to impress us with your amazing conquest? Because I'm pretty sure that you missed, if you were going for that one. I'm too young for him, or he would have been in my bed if I wanted, and the guys, well, Ben doesn't do men. Still, if you want to see just how much looks count, we could suggest that he and Mason get together. I bet he'd make an exception for him."

Adam laughed, as if that was funny for some reason. Mason really didn't get it. Not as something humorous. Tara waved the comment away though.

"Oh, fuck you little girl. I didn't mean it that way. I was just saying."

They all seemed to accept that then, but Mason remembered that the woman was supposed to be undermining him there. Sabotage, for some reason, for the FBI. To keep him away from Adam. If so, she was sort of failing in her job, since all that was happening was that he really didn't like her very much now.

He finished about half of his burger, and all the slaw, that being his favorite part. Then he started to clean up, only to have a woman he didn't know walk up to him, and take his plate and cup.

"Sorry! I was told that no one would be around until afternoon. Can I get you anything?" The woman, who looked to be pushing fifty, was a bit heavyset, and had short brown hair.

They had been told that there would be staff coming, he recalled. The woman had just seemed to appear though. Probably through the back door.

He smiled at her, and spoke before anyone else could, not trusting some of them to be polite to the lady. When he thought about that, he realized it was probably unfair. Adam, for all he seemed a bit flaky, had always been kind to everyone. Except Carry, and even then he'd just been playing with her a bit. Tara was decently sweet too, and hadn't shown that she was the sort to mistreat someone just for having a humble seeming job. The only real problem would be Carry, so he didn't let her talk.

"We should be good for now. I think we're the first ones up. We'll get out of the way. Come on. We should probably start making noise, until everyone else gets up. It must be noon by now." It was twelve-twenty-three, of course, which they all knew, but conversational patterns were easier to manage if you didn't put in too many exact numbers all the time.

Two things happened at once, nearly at the same time. The first was that a rather sleepy looking Deidre walked into the room, getting Mason to wince. The next was a banging on the front door that sounded more than a little hostile. It was enough to get him to stand up suddenly, and move.

First to the woman, whose extra large eyes looked scared as she saw him coming.

"Oh, fuck, Deidre. You came with Ben, and then I sent him off with Carry last night. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have done that!" It hadn't been his exact intent, but it had happened anyway. It was his fault. The woman hugged him, but didn't seem angry.

"I know, isn't it wild? They're talking about doing a cooking show as a couple. It's kind of a good idea. Printed food? It will be fun, I think." She seemed happy, even as the pounding happened again.

"Open up! Police!"

That got him to look out the window then, even though Deidre didn't let him go, tightening her hold on him, actually. Out of almost nowhere several large people charged into the room, with weapons drawn. John wasn't wearing a shirt. His torso was slightly hairy, and very muscled. He held his right hand out.

"Everyone get back. We aren't expecting visitors." Then he waved at one of the others, who turned, and for some reason gently took Deidre from him. He moved her toward the back of the group instantly.

The large man, the same one that had shot Adam the day before, started speaking very politely.

"This way. All of you. We'll hole up in the basement. Come on." Others went up the stairs, to get the people there. Mason hoped that was the case.

There was more pounding then, sounding like it was going to turn into an attempt to break the door down soon.

John bellowed his voice commanding, "identify yourselves!"

"Police! Open the goddamned door, now!"

They were moving then, as the door splintered, showing half a dozen people in blue wind breaker style jackets, that did say police on them. Mason could see that, as one of the intruders moved to point a large looking weapon at the group with him. The other people moved on the large assistants, but this one guy, who had short hair, and was probably too young to be a real officer anywhere, fired before anything else could happen. It went high, and Mason moved at him, running.

Because, he realized almost as if having an epiphany, he was an idiot. Luckily he was a bulletproof one, and the hand cannon that was in use wasn't that large. It just looked like it as he ran toward the thing. There was flashing and loud sounds coming from other people at the same time. Helpfully the kid kept missing, too. The last of the three bullets he fired hit the outer part of Mason's arm, but really didn't hurt. His forward momentum caused him to run into the fellow. Decently hard. He flailed a bit as he closed, his right hand reaching out slowly, swatting at the man's eyes. He connected, he thought, but it was really hard to tell. There was far better fighting happening closer to the door, which had, he realized, exploded inward.

Unlike how things went in virt experiences, the man on the floor under him kept trying to fight, instead of lying there unconscious like he was supposed to. It wasn't very professional either, involving a lot of scratching and an attempt to bite him. For his part he punched and held himself close to the man, to prevent being hurt too much. That lasted until Melinda got there, and kicked the punk in the head. Several times. Two of them happening after the kid wet himself and passed out.

Mason took a deep breath and tried not to sound panicked as he spoke.

"Good! I think he's down." He wanted to say something manly and tough then, but found himself picked up, bodily, as the woman ran away, carrying him over a single shoulder. It hurt a lot more than he would have thought it should. It was a deep digging bit of shoulder action that made it impossible to breathe. He didn't know where he was going until they were halfway down the stairs, the door having been slammed behind them. As soon as he was dropped, he dashed to the printer.

More exactly, he realized as he ran, the first that he did was trying not to get sick as he stood there for twenty seconds, then he ran, but realized that the only way the new compound he'd been working on would work was if the men that had attacked were actually cops. Nifty jackets aside, that didn't seem very likely. Not unless they were employing boys that looked to be about seventeen or so. Most of the men had seemed older, but that one just wasn't.

That meant he stopped, not having anything to do, and looked around to find Melinda aiming a gun up the stairs, ready to kill anyone that tried to come through the wooden door at the top. Behind her, standing in front of the others, was the big man that Mason didn't know. They were over in the corner of the room, almost under the stairs, but to the side.

Without looking back, Melinda spoke, her voice harsh.

"What the bloody fuck were you thinking Mason? Charging in like that?" She really seemed upset by it, and now that he had a moment to think, he was too. It didn't make much sense. He'd simply reacted and had gotten shot for his trouble.

The other man explained for him, his voice grimly pleased sounding.

"Omry didn't get the new shield last night. That hit Sims took would have gone into her, if he hadn't closed like that. Possibly some of the others too. It was a good call."

It made him sound a lot better than his real answer would have, so he kept his mouth shut. His heart was racing, pounding even harder than it had when he'd been jogging earlier. He shook too, but no one noticed it really, he didn't think. Probably too busy hoping they weren't going to all die in the coming attack.

There was more noise from up the stairs, but when the pounding came on the door, it was staccato, and came with a familiar voice, Mike, calling out to them.

"Clear! Situation contained. Situation contained."

That was good to know, but Melinda didn't move, holding her position very firmly. No one else did either, so Mason guarded his printer, just in case there was an attempt to kidnap it.

About ten fretful minutes later, the room starting to feel a bit strange, since he'd sort of used it as his bedroom the night before. It was like they were all invading him, as insane as that sounded. They just waited, until half an hour later there was another knock. This time it seemed to be John.

"It's over. You can come out now."

Melinda went first, climbing the stairs and opening the door with her weapon still pointed. Mason couldn't see what was going on, but she did call back to them.

"All right. Everyone can come along. It should be safe."

When he got to the living room, the door was still blown off the hinges, and set to the side, and there was damage to the big window that everyone tried to spy through all the time. Cracks from being hit, or the explosion that had taken the door out. There were no less than five police vehicles in front of the place, which was impressive. Made more so due to the fact that it was a pedestrian walkway, and not a road.

Sam saw him and ran over from across the room.

"I was asleep! I don't know what happened. John said it was a home invasion robbery attempt? How desperate would you have to be in order to do it in broad daylight like this? With all those cameras watching, too. I was so scared." She hugged him then, and didn't let go for a long time. It occurred to him that they were right in front of the broken window, which meant that some of those cameras would be pointed right at them. Capturing the moment. Then spreading their trauma to the world for all to see. They might even care, since she was kind of famous.

The front room vid screen was cracked on the left side, but turned on and played just fine when Adam went to it. His first impulse was to see if anyone was talking about them, which Mason had to think was a bit less than sane. People had tried to rob them. With guns. That probably wasn't a good sign.

His first move would have been leaving, if he could.

The police were there, but didn't act poorly this time, since there were floating cameras outside, looking in. They might not have anyway. The people they were there to arrest had been subdued by the time they got there, legally, since all the assistants knew how to do those kinds of tricks. Citizens' arrests that wouldn't wind up with them being the ones going to prison, and other neat things like that. Even with half the invaders needing to be taken to the hospital, including the kid that he'd weakly and clumsily tackled.

"Look, they got a shot through the window." Adam didn't sound happy or particularly excited by that, but pointed at the scene, the men clearly seen as they put something on the door, and then covered their ears with their hands. When they went inside the only thing that could be seen was what he'd been doing.

"Oh, they only got the cruddy stuff. We should turn the channel." He was serious, since seeing something else would be less embarrassing, but Mike leaned in behind him, and watched the three dimensional image that played several times before he commented on it.

"I didn't know you had training. A bit brutal, hitting him in the eyes like that first thing, but unarmed against someone with a gun, it seems fair. He was bigger than you too, so it doesn't look bad." A big hand clapped him on the shoulder. It really was there. He'd kind of thought that he'd just tried to tackle the boy, but it wasn't just a finger to the eye, like he'd thought. It was a sharp and controlled blow.

That VR training had actually paid off, it seemed.

Sam was still holding him, and after a bit that showed on the screen, since the men and women running the cameras weren't going to miss a chance to show something that might get people to tune in. The woman, looking perfect like always, moved him back away from what could be seen.

"We should get something on those scratches. At least wash them out. Don't they hurt?" She touched his face, but heroically enough he managed not to hiss like a little kid with a skinned knee.

He might be more or less bullet proof, but soft fingernails on his face had done some damage. There was no blood, which meant the skin hadn't torn open. Sam sat him in one of the kitchen chairs and got a damp cloth to put on them, provided by the cook. When they'd been evacuated to the basement, she'd run out the back door. Thankfully there hadn't been more people back there, trying to get in.

Also thankfully, the lady didn't quit right then and there. No one did. It wasn't normal, being attacked like that, but everyone needed whatever job they had too badly to let something like impending death scare them off.

Sam didn't leave him then, not even moving outside of arms reach, until he finally stood up.

The look she gave him was worried, but he gave a single choked off laugh.

"I'm going to print out a new door. Something a little stronger, maybe? We can fix the window after that." He didn't really have to go downstairs to do it, just needing his float screen, which meant opening the door for it to fly through when he summoned it. Then he had to get a reading on the front door using the camera. There was more damage than he'd thought, and they were going to have to remove some of the old and splintered wood, before they could undo the mess made.

On the great side there, all he had to do was get the door and the window around. The large people did the actual physical labor, thinking that having a defensible barrier was a great idea. It would leave him feeling a bit better, which was clear enough. It was why he'd thought of it in the first place.

For some reason, no one wanted to go play in the sand, or bother to flash the drones, after that. The event was kind of a mood killer that way.

Then, they didn't need to, since the police set up a press conference out front. The boys in blue weren't happy to have any of what they thought of as their thunder stolen, but they were playing outside of their weight class when it came to getting free press. The group decided to send Adam and Carry out, since they needed the exposure the most at the moment. Deirdre could have used some too, but he wasn't letting her outside without one of the new shield imbeds on.

Sam was able to set that part up though, so he used his screen to run the tracking app that the gossip people had given him. Everyone there was themselves at the moment, including him, which was exactly correct. Doing anything else would be stupid, and mark their alternate identities too clearly. There was an alert as soon as he turned it on, which sent the info to the network. He didn't stop it, since they were all there, and it was hardly a secret anymore, if it ever had been. The interesting part was that right there, on the screen, about a hundred meters away, and not moving, was Henry Stodermier. Part of his signal anyway.

Four of the fifteen markers matched. There was no infrasound, but the ocean might be hiding his heartbeat. There was a signal from his inskin though, and when it was pinged, which Mason did next, his phone responded, but didn't pick up.

Looking at it, he did not like what the information seemed to be telling him.

He ran to the living room, waving to John.

"There's a hit on the bio-tracker? I... We need to check it out." His screen had come with him, and a large, if chubby looking, cop came over with the powerful man.

"What's this?" He seemed curious, rather than upset, and it occurred to him that when he suggested something be checked out the man had come over because he'd assumed that Mason was talking to him.

Which actually made sense. It was a missing persons case, possibly, and if the readings were right, this really was about to become a police matter.

The signal wasn't exactly running away, so he explained the whole thing as clearly as possible, including having spoken to the woman from the network, and his promising he'd check on things. Then he waited to be told what to do, because he was not volunteering to go and find a dead body. Thankfully the men in blue didn't make him do that. None of them were exactly geniuses, but they understood what he was getting at without having to be told in explicate terms. He gave them directions which would just about take them to where the man had to be, which was out on the beach.

That caused a new problem, since they found the body, and the man was just lying out on a towel, under an umbrella. One that hadn't been there when he'd gone running. From the sound of it he was wearing the same blue suit that he'd last been seen in, and had a hat pulled down over his eyes, like he'd been sleeping there. The big towel was a multi-colored thing with stripes. The kind that could be bought at about a quarter of the stores in town. The umbrella was large, with a seven-foot-long pole that had been driven deep into the soft sand, well away from the water. That was blue and white, and was new enough that the man had probably looked like a tourist to anyone going by.

Feeling like yelling the f-word, he explained the part about it not being there earlier. Because him being out alone wouldn't seem suspicious to anyone. Not in the slightest.

He leaned over to John, and sighed as soon as he got a chance. Mason felt sour, but didn't frown or react to the fact that the most likely thing to happen next would involve him being charged with murder. The guy in the sand had a broken neck. Not that they could rule out other causes of death, but the police had let it slip that his head was resting funny. It should have been pretty clear that the bigger man would have kicked his behind easily in a fight, but that didn't mean he couldn't be blamed.

"I finished the... New material last night. I'm sending the data for everything to you now." It didn't take long, but if he was going to prison, being framed for murder, then he might as well get his job done first.

The man wasn't clueless. Nodding at him, he spoke softly.

"I have it. All of it. Hang tight though. We don't know what's going on yet."

Which was true, but he'd played VR games before. Finding the body, and having been out like that earlier was just about enough to be railroaded for the crime. There were slim odds that the kite guys would recall him, and the idea that he'd been out exercising was just plain strange.

Things didn't go that way however, because as soon as the press realized what was going on, they found the spot, and realized that some of them might have useful footage. It might have been illegal for them to show that kind of thing, but that didn't stop them from going for ratings first.

It wasn't solid coverage of his time outside, since he really wasn't that important, but it clearly showed that he went in before the body showed up, by over an hour. There were so many drones on the place that it was pretty certain he couldn't have done it. No one else from inside could have either.

It happened between shots, so whoever had done it didn't show, but neither did the invasion gang, until seconds before they got to the house. It was possible that they were the ones to do it, though for the life of him he couldn't imagine why that might be. The point was, it wasn't him, or anyone inside. Not unless they'd come in right before things had happened. He even had an alibi, and could be seen through the kitchen window often enough to prove that he'd been there when things were taking place on the beach.

Which just left everyone else in the world. Worse, since he'd sent a message to the network, if by accident, the lady from there called him, sounding excited.

"Mason? This is Cynthia Echini, from Famous Times. You found Henry?"

It was on the news, so he couldn't exactly get away with lying about it. Not well anyway.

"They found the body, on the beach, near Seaside. I don't know much more than that."

The woman didn't seem surprised.

"But you can find out? It's why I'm calling. This could be big. A major story. I just don't have anyone on the ground there."

That she would ask him seemed silly, but he made a noise that was non-committal. After all, if she thought he was going to look for her, maybe she wouldn't send anyone else. Or bribe them to get dirt for her.

"Let me see what I can find? No promises, but I can see where this might be personal for you."

Then he hung up.

It was only the second day, the first real day, of vacation. Really, he wondered if they'd all just leave after that.

He kind of wanted to. It made sense to him, since things were simply not going well.

Not at all.

Chapter seventeen

"This is freaking great! Best vacation ever." George seemed honestly excited about it all, his face smiling hugely. It was nice to see someone that pleased, but shocking to find out that the crazy man wasn't the only one to think that way.

Everyone there agreed, almost instantly. Except him. Before he could inquire to the state of the man's sobriety, Sam, who normally seemed so well balanced, and like she actually had a pretty good head on her shoulders, agreed.

"I know. In two days, less than twenty hours, we've had two different press worthy things happen, and didn't have to hire people to do either one of them. Then to be near a dead body like that, and have him turn out to be a vulture... We couldn't have gotten luckier." Her face was pleased, and she didn't wince or seem worried when George came over and put his arm around her.

After a few seconds it seemed really cuddly. Enough so that he finally understood that the two were together. He'd asked Lexi if she was seeing someone once, and she'd told him that she was. Somewhere in there though he'd let himself put that aside. It hurt a little, to realize that. Both because he'd let himself get confused, and due to the fact that he'd kind of been thinking of Sam as being close to him. His friend, but she'd never, ever, said that they were anything more than that. There had been some hugging and holding, but given when those things had been happening, that could be forgiven.

Just after a tense meeting, right after an attack on them which could have been deadly, if they hadn't been ready for it. Comfort seeking after that kind of thing was probably normal. If you weren't him, and read the innocent signals the wrong way.

He smiled and looked away, feeling embarrassed, which no one understood. Mason wasn't even totally sure he did. Well, if he was really that lonely, there was always VR. Not there, at the cottage, but he could go a week or two and not die due to lack of sex. He'd gone for longer than that before, just because he'd been too busy working. If things got really desperate there was always Adam.

It was a bit lonely seeming, being there, suddenly. Which was ridiculous. Sam was still his friend, and that was good enough for him. It was probably the best way to be, between two people. Love was possibly nice, but friendship tended to last longer. It caused fewer problems, too.

Besides, he could always date Sys. It was thought as a joke, at first, but then he actually considered it for a while. It probably wouldn't happen either, but it wasn't that different than just dating virt girls. Not that he was going out with them when he did that.

Walking into a scene, doing whatever he felt like and then pushing the end button wasn't exactly the same thing as connecting with them. The only person that he'd really done that with had been Sam. Te had been there, and they'd talked, and done things. Eaten food and sat in coffee shops together.

Rather than let it get to him, he decided to take the high road. What that was going to be, exactly, he didn't really know. It probably wouldn't have a lot to do with dead bodies, and waiting for the next home invasion attempt.

So, he looked around and really considered just leaving on his own. Going into town, which wasn't too far away to walk to, and finding the bus station. Portland was only about three hours away, by public transport, and even if it was a bit lonely sounding, it might just help keep him alive.

The cuddling Lexi was doing with George was getting to him, he realized. He didn't have a right to think that way, or a desire to, but it was warping his mind anyway. Worse, he couldn't even trick himself into thinking that it was about George, and how cute he'd looked the other day in his purple and black stripped outfit. That thing had been hideous.

Tara was speaking, when he looked up, her voice a bit wistful.

"It's been good for some people. I haven't even had my face flashed on a screen in days. Not that I know of. If this keeps up I'm going to have to go blow a cop in the front yard to get any attention at all." She shook her head then, and glanced at her father. "Don't worry, I'm just kidding. I know that this place is right on the promenade. There's no yard." There was a vast and dramatic sigh then, and her voice shifted, becoming incredibly familiar. It wasn't a huge alteration, but for Mason it was as if something snapped in the fabric of reality. Suddenly forcing him to understand things that had been missed. Her hands went to her hips in a pose that was even Mason got instantly, having seen it a thousand times before, one foot forward and chin high. "I, with the power of the link, will blow every cop in town!"

He looked at the girl, and realized that, unlike everyone else there, he actually did have a clue who she was. Link-Girl. From the VR cartoon. Except on the show she was more into fighting crime, rather than servicing cops, and was, of course, an animated robot. One that looked like a young girl, who, if he squinted a bit, clearly was based on her own, real world, likeness.

No one corrected her police force enrichment program, or spoke about the possible disease problems associated with putting parts of that many people inside your body. In fact, they all smiled a bit, and then acted like Tara had just been playing. Hopefully because it was a joke. Otherwise Link-Girl was going to be ruined for him, forever. As it was, from that point on, he feared that every time he saw a police officer he was going to have visions of a twelve-year-old robotic girl kneeling in front of them.

Wearing this kid's face, which now that he realized who she had to be, was almost a dead ringer for her on screen persona.

Deidre was a bit more businesslike, looking at George and Sam, taking the whole thing in with a small nod. For her it seemed to be all about the publicity too, even if she can't have really gotten much more than Tara had so far. She'd been there the whole time, and despite what the others had said, their faces had been in the news as well. Even the assistants had, though none of them had been mentioned really. They were just the ones that protected everyone and fixed the problems.

When the very large eyed woman spoke, her words were a tiny bit simple sounding. She wasn't a bright person really, and seemed to get by on a combination of good looks and sweetness. For a moment that started to make him feel sad.

Mason couldn't even imagine what it had to be like for her. For most people, really. They looked at the things around them, and didn't see the answers that stared them right in the face. They were baffled by things that would be easy to fix, and perplexed by their own thoughts and desires, when really they didn't need to be. It was hard enough, Mason knew, to be like he was. How other people even managed to get up in the morning he didn't really know. Getting through any given day had to actually be hard for most people.

It was probably a combination of being just smart enough not to do the really dumb things most of the time, and the fact that the world was relatively stable, from day to day. Not around there, for them, but in most places, things just didn't change that much, outside of VR. Inside VR, things were safe. You could lose, or make the wrong choice, but there were no consequences. Smart or dumb, you weren't really in danger inside that make believe world.

Then, for some reason he thought of his brother, Ford. The man was smart enough really, but he always managed to find the exact wrong thing to do. It almost didn't matter what else was going on around him, or what he was told. If there was a way to take a simple issue and flip it into a world ending problem, the man would pull it off without even trying.

With Ford it really came down to the fact that other people always bailed him out. They had so far in life, at any rate. That wouldn't last forever though. As it stood he was already on the hook for two or three kids, by different women. He didn't have a secure place to live, and apparently had to take on jobs spying on his own little brother in order to stay out of prison already. If he ever got too far behind on his child care payments, or if the rate went up, he was going away. Probably forever.

That was a major, and insane, flaw in the current world system. It was worst in the States, but everyplace had a similar problem as far as Mason knew.

There were tripping points that would take a man, or woman, down. Normally over little things, or ones that could be hard to control. For instance, those kids. Ford was given just enough money by the government each month to live on. Not have a great life, or to better his condition, but to just squeak by if he were careful. Even one extra kid would make it so that he didn't have enough to live without someone else helping him. He wouldn't have money for food, or heat, for instance.

With three kids you basically had to be very motivated and competent in order to stay out of prison for failure to pay. Even people with great jobs couldn't really manage it, most of the time. If you had the cash, the government would take more of it, to give to the mothers of the children. It was done for good enough seeming ideas, really. No one wanted to pay for other people's mistakes. The fact that tricking, or even drugging men into having unsafe sex was an epidemic was never mentioned by the people in charge for some reason. Someone had to pay, and the tradition said that pregnancy was always the man's fault.

In the end, being duped into having any unplanned kids like that, and it was often done on purpose thanks to the baby crisis, meant the guy was going to end up in prison.

Since other people had to take care of you, at least until your kids got old enough to care for themselves by law, there was added danger. Ford had, most likely, been kicked out by their parents. If he hadn't had Mason there to take him in, he might very well have been in trouble on a level he could never get out of.

Because they charged you for your care, while you were away. Without giving you any of those government payments a free person would have had. So most people, who didn't have anything to start with, came out of jail or prison with a huge debt, no way to pay it off, and no place to stay.

So three days after their release, they'd be picked up again, without any way to free themselves from the web of incarceration. Once the cycle started you were trapped.

His brother really should have been smart enough to avoid that in the first place, but biology could be a strong goad, when it came to things like sex. Without as much competition as there used to be from men willing to risk themselves in order to get women, the men that had the most powerful biological drives were generally screwed. It would have been easy to point the finger at women and say they were the evil ones, given that, but they had biological drives too. Ones that VR couldn't take care of.

Not yet, anyway.

Deidre was looking at him, her giant eyes green and glistening a little bit. Rimmed with stark black, the rest of her face a slightly sparkling golden color. Like something in virt. A lovely, but unreal, person.

"Can... I know that I have no right to ask, but is that something..." She shook her head then, looking away. It was guilty seeming, rather than being manipulative. That either meant she was a freaking great actress, or that she actually felt ashamed about what she'd just said.

Mason smiled at her, and shook his head a little bit as she muttered and looked away.

"Never mind. I shouldn't have said anything."

That meant he pretty much had to admit that he'd been day-dreaming about social issues, rather than paying attention to her.

"I know that I was right here, but I actually managed to miss about three minutes of what people were saying. So, um, huh?" He tried to be expressive about it, and did a good enough job that Sam laughed.

She was the one person there that actually knew him, and understood what had probably happened. To her though it probably seemed like he was thinking about Tara and blowjobs, but she also knew about the thing with Ford, so might have worked it all out.

Either way, she bailed him out.

"Deidre just suggested that we have a party, like the one from the other night? We can attract some extra notables in by giving away your work, hence her feeling like a monster about it. I know that my go to move is always suggesting other people hold multi-million dollar parties like that, myself." She smiled at him, her gaze soft and friendly though.

Adam sighed and nodded then.

"It is a bit much, love. A fruit basket, and some new products from large companies is one thing, but most of that doesn't really come with a tag on it. What you're suggesting is rather bigger than that." The boy, who was only eighteen, Mason thought, sounded world weary and old then.

Deidre stopped talking, and looked down.

"Sorry. It was just an idea." There was a bit of a hurt little child in her voice, along with the sexy vixen thing she had going on, that pulled at him more than it should have.

Probably because he hadn't had sex in a few days, and his hormones were pushing at him to try and get some. Even if doing anything with her didn't make much sense. When he paid attention, he realized something strange. Most of that feeling was geared toward Sam. He normally wouldn't have focused on her that way, being more or less satiated all the time, but now he really noticed her, and the way she was holding George's hand.

Yes, they were all in the kitchen, at the large round table, and they'd placed themselves so that the drones floating outside could see them doing it, but it actually bothered him. Even though Lexi Horn clearly had a job to do, and it didn't really involve him. Not that part of it, anyway. The acting and publicity thing was new to him, and probably a nearly all consuming passion for these people. So of course she'd be with George.

They seemed to think about getting attention a lot more than he would have guessed, before.

Looking at Deidre he made a bit of a goofy face, getting a small hint of a smile from her. It was a delicate movement, one that was almost nothing more than a twitch of the lips. For some reason, he really wanted to help her out. That was all down to being attracted to her, he knew.

The slavery and mind control that men used to be under all the time.

"What kind of things were you thinking of giving away?" That he even asked had everyone else moving forward a bit, as if they were actually interested in the idea.

The woman just wasn't very smart though, so she floundered a little bit.

"I don't really know. Those things from before? The ones that keep you from being stalked as much, and the makeup? Or that bullet proof imbed thing? That... Those are all really expensive. People that normally wouldn't make the trip would come to get one of those, wouldn't they? We could ask ten or so of the top names to come, and get someone to respond, I bet." She looked guilty, and shook her head. "Then they'd steal our screen time, so maybe we should do something else. I forgot that I already have you two here for my profile views."

Mason had no clue what that meant, and looked at her like she was supposed to explain, but the woman didn't get the cues he was giving off. Sam did, laughing a little. Almost like she wasn't thinking about it, she reached over and put her hand on top of his for a second, while still holding George's on the other side.

"That's when they capture the side of your face in the shot. It's a kind of exposure, and keeps you in the public mind, sort of. She's right of course. It's good to make contacts, and keep things going, but we've had a lot of exposure in the last few days. We can milk it for a while, and then work up something to get all of us a bit more, before the end of the week. If it doesn't just fall in our laps. I mean, we have eighty-three drones out there and something like forty papo hanging around, waiting to catch anything we do. It won't be hard to get some face time. Even without blowing cops out front."

Then she gave his hand a little, very gentle, squeeze, and let go.

Tilting his head, he nodded, not really wanting to give away all of the money making things just yet. Part of him kind of felt like the whole rebellion thing would fail, and like he wouldn't end up locked away for the rest of his life, as unlikely as that really was. If that happened, then having a few tricks left to sell made sense.

It was a false concept. Ideas weren't so hard to come by that he couldn't share some of them, now and then. That most people were greedy, in the bottom of their hearts, was what kept the vast majority of people down. The smartest, best connected, and luckiest few took all the winnings, and left everyone else with just enough to not feel too horrible about.

In the end he wondered if he had enough faith in their plan to really throw everything in the pot. The goal, his at any rate, was to make things a lot more fair. It would mean, in the end, that people like him didn't get paid anything for their work. He wouldn't need to, being able to make his own life for himself, in any way he wanted.

In a year, he'd either be dead, in prison being raped regularly, or free in a way that no one not at the very top of the system had been for hundreds of years.

"What if we went sideways at this? Do what Deidre said, but rather than give things out to rich people that already have everything, what if we just let regular people have it?" Not that he knew what exactly to give away.

Most people didn't need makeup imbeds, after all. It might help them look and feel better, but six months of being prettier wasn't really going to help the average man or woman on the street. Just before Sam let go of George's hand, and went wide eyed, he figured it out.

That she'd beaten him to what he had planned was important. His mind flashed on it, realizing that it wasn't normal. It was definitely predictive, if not psychic. That kind of thing had been shown to exist, but the fact was that the effects tended to be small, and not that useful. She might have guessed what he would do out of five or six different choices, but the one that he'd come up with was something she shouldn't have worked out. A thing that he'd only mentioned in passing to her a few times.

Sam did, and gasped at him.

"Your imbedded computer system?"

No one else seemed all that impressed by the idea, but Sam really got it, and explained, her face going a little blank, in shock.

"Mason doesn't have an inskin, like most of us do. He built an imbed computer to take its place, it's... probably three or four times faster and more powerful than the top end things you can buy. It lets him do some things that the rest of us can't, actually. When we look for information, we have to always close our eyes, and read the words off of the page that comes up. He can do that, too, but a lot of the time his system lets him just recall things, like they were a memory. It isn't perfect, or he'd have known who most of us were without checking, but it's really expensive. Most of us here couldn't get one at all, no matter how much we were willing to spend on it. If we could give some of those away, it would get us some press. We could have people lined up for miles just trying to see who got one!" She smiled at him, and it was so obvious that she wasn't mentioning the rest of his idea on purpose that he had to wonder why no one else was seeing it yet.

Not that he was going to give it all away right there. Some of the people with them weren't in on the whole rebellion plan. They just wanted to get some publicity out of it. Which was a thing that could be done, he didn't doubt. It was kind of Deidre's idea, so steering things her way made the most sense to him.

"We can give away a lot of them, but... What if I opened the CR to the public? Let anyone that could afford the print fees have one? Then, well, we can set it up so that millions of the things could go out. Prioritize kids, schools, the poorest people, things like that? The ones that don't have anything except the low quality inskins that the government gives them?"

Adam, who might not have been the smartest man in the world, shook his head anyway.

"That would cost millions, mate. Just the materials cost for a local event would be sky high." Then he stopped, and looked at Sam and George. "Oh."

George, who was normally fairly quiet, nodded, and glanced around the table.

"It could be huge. We can get a tax write-off for it too, if we work it right, so we won't lose too much."

There was a buzz of excitement in the air, as they worked out the details. It would take place on Friday, since they could leave the day after without anyone thinking too much of it. That way the cameras would have to pursue them, which was a good thing, according to Lexi Horn. Mason wanted to get back to his life anyway.

To his VR room if nothing else.

The rest of it wasn't that hard to put together. They could, really, do it all for free. They wouldn't, because trying it at that moment would cause a lot of attention to come their way. True, they weren't really going to get around Watch, being that she was in on it, but there were other systems to be careful about out there in the world. The IRS for instance, would monitor the news, and if they didn't see a way for them to get paid from this as a byproduct, there would be an investigation.

That meant setting up real assemblers, and doing it all the way that everyone else would have to. Bringing in already broken down materials to put together, and setting up all the needed software to go with the things. Otherwise the imbeds would come with a hidden operating cost, making them almost useless to real people.

It was that part of things that he'd sort of glossed over, until he was pulled by a laughing Sam to the basement. The idea was to help him pick out some clothing to wear to dinner that night. That Ben was planning to cook for them all, and that he was going to be in on helping out with that wasn't mentioned. No one seemed to think anything of it.

The instant they got down the stairs though, the door firmly shut, Sys spoke to them. She was still on the low, fake wood, table, and her voice was pleased. How she'd gotten in to eavesdrop on the things they were saying Mason wasn't certain, but like Sam, she seemed to have it all figured out already.

To a level that made him wonder if they had mind reading devices pointed at the place. If that was the case...

It wasn't. Because if that had happened, they would have been raided already. Or simply attacked from the air with bombs and missiles. Supposedly that kind of machine only had an effective range of about ten to fifteen feet. That some people might have ones that worked at a longer distance wasn't a totally novel idea, but it wasn't legal. You were supposed to have the sanctity of your own mind, in general.

Sys spoke, her voice sounding happy and a bit familiar. Really, she sounded almost like Lexi Horn. It probably meant that the AI had stolen her own persona from the actress. They'd known each other for years, if he had that one right.

"That is brilliant, Mason. If I had hands, I'd clap. Screw it, if I had a mouth, I'd kiss you."

Sam nodded along, her eyes bright. Then she leaned in and did it.

"I have a mouth. So, we're going to put the plans for the other devices, and how to deploy them, into the imbeds? It's risky, but if people can't, or won't, help out without telling on us, then it won't work anyway. It's a risk, but worth trying."

The black and yellow box smiled at them. True she did that constantly, but it showed in her words at that moment.

"I have to agree. Between that and the new show that you're going to be doing with Ben, Mason, and the business making nano-components, we might actually pull this thing off."

He nodded, trying to think about what would come if they did.

It was a little scary to think about. After all, everyone in the world was told, over and again, through their entire lives, that they needed the government to protect them. To tell them all what to do, because people were inherently greedy and evil. What he, what they, had planned was basically going to remove those controls and replace them with something so different there wasn't even a name for it.

"Is this the right thing to do? I mean, will it actually be any better?" He was ready to explain his thoughts, but Sys at least didn't need him to.

"I can't tell you the answer yet. There isn't enough real data. This will shut down most of the world's governments within ten years, and they won't be happy about it. The biggest threat isn't that people will riot and become monsters however. When you give people the ability to have what they need, most people historically respond by being peaceful and content. It's only when things are scarce, or made artificially so, that there are problems."

Sam gave a soft snort, and took his hand. Like she didn't have a boyfriend upstairs, who was richer, more famous, and better looking than he was. Worse, he still enjoyed it, even if it was stupid of him, and he knew it.

Mason knew that he really needed to get into VR, and fuck something, soon. He was making silly gestures toward the women in the place already. Listening to Deidre, and letting himself be lead into involvement in things that didn't really need him.

He wasn't even trying to get laid, so it was insane of him, but happening anyway.

For the very first time in his life he could kind of understand how Ford had let himself get into all the trouble that he had in life. VR was an answer to that kind of sex drive, and staying free, but you had to use it for it to work.

Still, he didn't pull his hand back, or do anything of the sort, to indicate he wasn't going to go along with whatever Sam wanted of him. It wasn't because they were such good friends either.

The woman smiled at him, her teeth white, even and perfect. Almost too much so, like she'd been assembled to be every man's, and most women's, secret fantasy. On purpose.

"Don't worry, Mason. Even if it's a little rough, now and then, it will be better for most people than what's coming if we do nothing. Not a high bar to get over, being that it would be a horrible death."

There was that. He nodded, and leaned in a bit toward her, to whisper that she was probably right. Instead of doing that, she leaned back, and kissed him, on the lips. It was a gentle thing, and took him by surprise, because she didn't stop.

For some reason he didn't make her, either.

That lasted until about five minutes later, when she stepped away, still holding his hand, as she headed for the stairs.

They didn't speak, and like always, he just followed her.

Chapter eighteen

Mason learned a valuable lesson over the next few days.

Actually there were several, though a few were kind of mixed and muddled things that played into areas he had a decent idea about over all. Like the need for a good, highly portable, VR system. One that would be with him all the time, so that at need he could get laid without having to stoop to being under the thrall of a woman.

The main lesson, however, a new one for him, was sort of tied to that idea.

Carry, as it turned out, could be a real bitch when she applied herself. That she had orders to do it, to take him down and alienate the group from him became clearer as the days had gone on. It was so bad, in the end, that on the day of the event, she actually just walked up to him, and started slapping him. Hard.

"How dare you put Deidre up to be the spokesperson for this!" There was a loud crack, and since they were standing on the beach, with about ten thousand people, laughter.

It kept going as she struck him, and didn't stop until Melinda got there, and interposed her body between him and the enraged acting woman.

"I think that's enough now, Miss Samson." The words were light, and backed by a woman that could just possibly kill someone with a single hit in the right place. No weapons came out, but the larger lady had one, just in case.

Carry ignored her, as if she wasn't worried in the slightest, but changed her attack up from being physical, into verbal battery.

"Oh, poor little baby. You have to have mommy come and protect you from the big bad woman? You're pathetic. Just because Deidre sucked your dick, you hand her the world. Ohhh!" The last bit was frustrated and a bit fake seeming, if anyone had been paying attention. It also gave him an idea. After all, while he might not be the world's best actor, he could make things up too.

Mason smiled then, and shook his head.

"You know that isn't what happened. You were there for it all. She's just a better actress than you are, that's all. We held those auditions, and everyone voted for her, not you. You can't blame them, can you? I mean, you were horrible. Lexi nearly cried, you were so bad. Poor Ben, I know that he gave you that pity vote, but he told me later that it was hard to do, given how you phoned in your reading. It was just sad, but it wasn't me that came up with it. I didn't even get a vote. Why would I? You just failed. I'm sorry, but we had to go with the best person. This is too important not to try and do the best we can. This is about helping as many people as possible." It was all a lie, since he had actually nominated Deidre for the role as front person.

He did it well though, which had the woman looking baffled after a few seconds. Probably wondering if that had actually happened behind her back. It hadn't. The woman just didn't think he could act too, or think on his feet. Mason had played VR games though, like everyone else.

So she stormed away, looking a bit scared, as Melinda had to turn and hide her face from the watchers. A smile threatened to win anyway, regardless.

"Oh... Okay, that was hitting where she lived. People heard you, too. My bet is she tries to attack you again later. Not that she didn't deserve it. That bitch has been working double time to piss you off. I wonder what her deal is? Given everything she should be trying to get you to be her boy toy, if just for the free stuff." She looked at him, like he should know the answer, but officially speaking, he just didn't.

Not in any way he could explain in public.

In the end it wasn't that big of a deal however. Carry went and fumed over by poor Ben for a while, and Sam went off with George and Deidre, doing the public parts of the whole thing. Deidre even helped apply the imbeds to people's arms herself. It really made it seem like she was the one doing it. That was fine, though. At least as far as he was concerned. His friend was happy with it, and kept making it seem like it had all been the big eyed actress's idea. Also that it had been in the works for months, if not longer.

In all they applied a little over four thousand free computer imbeds, with complete, if novel, software packages. Each of them also had full instructions as to how to both build the assembly and disassembly devices, along with energy systems. Also how to make more of the computers too, as soon as they had those devices set up, so that everything could spread as fast as possible.

It was only one point of possible growth however, and Sys had recommended they do several of the events, if possible. It was expensive, but, if it worked, that wasn't going to hurt anyone in the end. They might lose some money, but they'd gain a whole lot more. The whole world would.

So that night, when no one was watching him, he started to take everything he had there down. The first thing he did was the printer, since it was illegal to have one that didn't report to Watch all the time. He discussed it with Sys while he was doing it, the hilarity of the whole thing not at all lost on him.

"First that, then the mattress, since I can't take it with me, and then... You, I guess? Or should I keep you with me, so that you know what I'm doing all the time? I could put you in my bathroom, so you can make sure I shower correctly." It was meant to be a joke, since he couldn't see any real reason for him to have a connection to a powerful government AI, but the voice seemed relaxed about it all.

"I like that. Not the bathroom, since, trust me, I know more about what people do in those things than I could ever want to. I get reports on what goes into the sewer systems after all, so that I can tell who's doing drugs. You could set me on that table in your work space? Then we could chat, if you want? Not to be a baby about it, but not too many people ever just hold conversations with me, for some reason. Not sane ones. I mean people yell at me, sure, as if it's my fault they break the laws? I can't think of the last time I just sat with someone and got to chat about current events."

Mason changed his plans then, since it wasn't like having the box in his apartment was going to make him more spied on.

"All right. Then, I guess... Well, I wonder if we can use Lisa and John's van? I want to take the disassembler with me. I could print out a new one, but it seems wasteful. I'll need to store the materials made so far... I should print some containers for that."

It took until about midnight to be ready to leave, but he was then. It meant he didn't have any place to sleep though, so he took his bags to the living room, and curled up on the sofa there. It wasn't very comfortable, but it did mean that the next morning, as the sun beat down on him through the big, newly repaired windows, that he was easy to find.

Doing a quick time check, he noticed that it was only about nine, which was surprising, since everyone was coming down almost all at once. Even the assistants were all there, instead of being nearly invisible like they had the entire time. Hopefully that was due to them having rebellion stuff to get to, and not because he was just that annoying.

Smiling, he sat up. All he needed to do was brush and rinse his mouth out and he'd be ready to go.

The only issue he had was that no one had thought about the disassembly unit in the basement in particular. There were three large black limos coming for them, but the van was going to be filled with other people that needed to get back to town. Mason didn't know what to do, but realized that it was kind of an artificial problem.

While it would be great to have one of those units eventually, making life much easier for him, the truth was that for the next year or so he needed to be as normal as possible as far as his energy and materials usage. He knew for a fact that people were going to be watching him as soon as he got home, since his apartment had signaled him that Ford had gotten there, and was trying to buy things on his accounts. Mainly booze so far, which was something that Mason hadn't suspected about his brother.

No one in his family had a real problem that way, but the level of energy being put into trying to get some alcohol was nearly brutal. In the end a new program was entered into the kitchen food printer, as he rode back to Portland with Sam and Lisa. On the seat next to him was Sys, which got the larger woman to smile and pat it.

"So, Mason, got a new girlfriend?" Her voice was singsong, teasing, and annoying. Then, she just thought of Sys as their AI, not the entire Watch System. Their little computer buddy that had given them a clue or two from time to time. Steered them toward the right people, and the right path, for things to work without bloodshed.

Sam smiled a little bit, and looked out the window, her face about as pretty as was possible. Even VR women didn't do much better. She looked like a real person, but there was something a little too good about her. She was too smooth and perfect really. That was the makeup imbed, he knew. All of the others had that going on, including him and Lisa, who looked perfectly womanly now, thanks to hers.

He nodded, since doing anything else would end up with two hours of him being needled. He had siblings, so knew the car trip drill. Plus, he realized, his parents had done well enough that they'd always had a car available for things like that.

It probably meant that Ford had nearly broken them economically, with whatever he'd done to get kicked out. That, or they'd just had enough of him thinking with his penis.

"Yep." He didn't elaborate, but Lisa also didn't act like it was a joke, just smiling a bit when the single word was presented to her.

"Oh? That's interesting. So, how do you, you know, hook up?" The large woman glanced at the black composite box, which was only about a foot on each side. It was as if she were looking for the hole he used.

Sys chuckled, getting Lisa to go wide eyed, even if she didn't say anything.

"VR. We haven't yet, but I have a whole thing worked out. A candle lit dinner, a bed of roses, and music playing softly in the background. I'm an AI, but that doesn't mean I can't be a romantic."

Sam, sighed and shook her head just a tiny bit.

"That isn't fair. He's my friend, I should get him. Especially if I have to drop the Sam act now. Too many people have seen us together. It was fun while it lasted, but I'm afraid I'll just have to make my visits as me."

Mason didn't really care, except that if she did that, he'd need countermeasures to prevent at least some of the spying on them. On the good side, Sys might be willing to help him. Not enough to break the law, but to thwart anyone trying to do anything illegal.

He smiled at Sam, who reached out and took his hand. It was done almost unthinkingly, so he sighed.

"That's going to be harder to explain than it should be. You have a boyfriend, so you sneaking over to my place is going to look weird. No one will buy that you just came over to help Ben and I work out food recipes and nutrient components. I mean, I know that's the plan and still don't think it sounds real."

His friend just held his hand for a long time, still turning her bright blue eyes to the street and passing forest in the area. It was pretty, in a very green way.

When she spoke, her words were a bit softer than they had been.

"My contract with George is about over. We had a good run, for people in our business. Nearly a year, so far. We aren't really close though, and frankly, I'm too young for him. It wouldn't matter if he was just in standard movies, or serials, but he does kids programs, so people are starting to wonder if his being with me is a sign that he likes his girls a bit on the youthful side. So, we need to break things off. I was thinking that he could leave me for some older woman. Maybe get Leslie Conrad in for that? She hasn't worked in ten years, except for bit parts, but still looks good. She's nice, too." It was all said as if that kind of thing was just how relationships were managed.

Mason smiled, "oh? Good then. You can just come and go as you please. True, everyone will think that you're sleeping with Ford, but other than that it won't be a problem."

Lisa furrowed her brow then, and looked a bit hard.

"Is that really a good idea? Having someone else there? He could sell you out, or... I guess not, he's your brother, but things can be said, that shouldn't be."

Sys didn't let that one lie, her youthful and feminine voice suddenly going a bit hard.

"Ford Sims is currently working for The Department. As an informant. His assignment is to spy on Mason, and report back to his handler anything that might be out of the ordinary. Oddly enough, this is based on meta data, which seems to be saying that Mason is planning a run for political office in the next ten years. That he might have the clout and intelligence to be successful at it as well."

He wasn't, which made it funny to him, but Lisa glanced his way, her face considering now, rather than mocking.

"Really? I can see it, I suppose. How did you put that into play Sys?"

"I didn't. All of the information is there. It has been forming for over the last six months, since he met Lexi. Their discussions caused him to research several net locations with data that indicates a rather liberal political viewpoint. It was done with enough speed and sophistication that Data-net picked up on it as a likely career path for him. Then, when famous people started showing up in his life and being bribed with expensive technologies, an alarm went up. They like to have a handle on those that are planning to control the social aspects of politics. Hence a family member being set up to do their work. On the good side, Ford was told that this information wouldn't be used to harm you, since angering someone that may have power over them someday is a poor plan. As far as that goes, it isn't wrong. Really..."

The voice stopped for a time, not communicating with them at all.

Finally Sam spoke, her voice a little embarrassed.

"Maybe you should think about it? Then we could date, and no one would think anything of it. Get a low level position first, and see about working your way up the food chain?"

It wasn't really what he wanted to do. Not the political part of things. In the moment though, the pull of the woman was so strong that he nearly just said yes, right off the bat. As if that would get her to spread her legs for him. Worse, the feeling would be gone as soon as he got home and took care of a few things, but in the moment it was horrible. It felt like he didn't have control over himself, which wasn't a thing he enjoyed most days.

"Um, no, thanks. I like you, and we can date, but I have no particular desire to be part of the problem." He made it sound pretty real, then it hit him that he'd just kind of suggested that the two of them actually become a couple.

He grinned and shook his head after the words came out, but didn't take them back. He really would like that, as stupid as it probably was. He liked Sam. Maybe more than anyone else in the world, at the moment.

"Besides, I'm going to be busy building a new kind of VR system for a while. An imbed, so it should be even better than the suits when it's done. There will need to be a better eye screen. That way a laser system won't be needed. Some way to transfer sound directly to the ear, too. It's going to take some work."

His friend nodded, and touched his leg, holding it.

"Ha. See Sys, this is what you get for not paying attention. He's mine now. Mwa-ha-ha!"

The box made a noise, like a pop. Then it was followed by a second one.

Finally, the girl's voice played, sounding cheerful.

"Sorry, I had to go speak to the President. He wanted help with some appointments, so I suggested he put your name on the list for undersecretary of technology, Mason. You won't get the position, since you haven't contributed enough to Wilson's campaign chest, but it's a way for him to curry favor with you. Now, what's this about you two dating? That's going to be a little awkward, when I'm doing him in VR later, isn't it Lexi? We can share, I suppose."

It was clear that the box, the evil Watch system, had just tried to change the conversation. By flirting.

Mason wasn't fooled by her square and dark colored schemes, or confused by her fake, pasted on smile.

"That thing with the President, was that real, or were you just saying that so I wouldn't notice the other stuff?"

There was a sound from the box, one that was clearly not human, or meant to be. It was a low buzz.

"I... Need to go... And research some things. I'll be back later."

Mason looked at the box and raised an eyebrow at it. Not that it could see him, except of course, it always did. The AI wasn't called Watch because it sat back and waited passively for reports. It was strange that it has bailed on them like that however. Having a conversation with them shouldn't have required very much of its computational resources. The only thing that left was that it had been trying to avoid telling them something.

Which wasn't going to be about him, politics or a bit of VR bump and grinding. You couldn't know about what everyone in the country was doing, all the time, and really be shy about things like that, he was going to bet. So it was something else. A thing that he didn't have enough information to understand yet.

Sam, Lexi, he supposed, since she'd announced that she wouldn't be able to visit with him like te used to, snuggled into his side, and sank down a little bit. More than could possibly be comfortable. Almost as if she was hiding. The side windows were tinted, and while it was possible that she was just trying to lie down, the whole thing got his attention. He didn't know why exactly, but there was something wrong. A combination of things that seemed to be telling him something he didn't understand.

"Um, pull over? Or get on a different street? Something isn't right."

Lisa looked up and left, and then out the window, and pounded on the divider to the front. It slid up and down, and was up at the moment, so that the poor driver wouldn't be annoyed with their nattering on. That was what he'd been assuming at any rate.

As soon as it cracked enough she started yelling.

"Get off the road! Now!"

He hadn't seemed that worked up, as far as he could tell. While it was nice to have people take him seriously, he was probably just responding to the fact that he needed to get laid. It would be embarrassing to explain that later. The driver, who was one of the people that had been there earlier in the week, the big man that had shot Adam for fun, did it, without hesitation. Then, without being told to, he backed up suddenly. It made the rubber tires squeal, and probably smoke as the whole vehicle lurched.

"Ambush! Hang on, they haven't closed behind us yet." There was a thunk, and the vehicle moved to the side, hard as Lisa went for her gun. The whole world slid sideways then, with a sound that was like thunder. The large woman reached out, her free hand moving faster than it should have been able to, as they spun slowly. She used it to keep Sam from flying to the side, which was her job.

The guy in the front yelled then.

"Fuck! Hold on, they have an RPG!"

Whatever that was. He didn't know off the top of his head, but as crazy as it sounded, he did a data search, almost by accident. The information flashed in front of his eyes then, distracting him from the fact that he was about to die, no doubt. RPG meant rocket propelled grenade. The targeting system on the modern ones were pretty advanced, so it wasn't a shock when something hit them, near the bottom of the heavy vehicle. The force of it picked the vehicle up, and nearly flipping it. They slammed back to the ground, the wheels still under them. Probably due to the stabilizing system on the car.

From the way they were listing, it felt more like three of the round things were still there, under them. They drove on anyway, barely able to move, until a third big black vehicle, slammed into them. Then the whole thing moved off to the side, going away from the road, into the trees on the left.

Lisa looked around and swore, several times.

"They have us. We're surrounded. When they get here..." Whatever the clever plan was, Mason didn't get to learn, since the windows blew out then.

Bits of glass square safety glass and bullets hit him, since unlike Sam he hadn't hunched down first. That she'd responded before anything had happened was clear. Mason, trying to work everything out, nodded, mainly to himself. No one else was going to pay attention to him, he didn't think.

There were men outside the vehicle, dressed in the classic black bad guy uniform, with their faces covered. Who they were was impossible to tell, since they didn't put any handy decals on their trucks. They were built like the assistants all were, however.

Lisa spoke softly, her voice harsh as she whispered.

"You two run for the trees, Tim and I will try to hold them here."

It was a good plan, but Mason could see a major flaw in it. If he ran for it, then they'd move at his best speed. Maybe Sam's, if he was in better shape than she was, which didn't seem likely. If the two assistants went with her, they could all move faster. Even dragging her along they would be about fifty percent better off than if it was him going. That left him standing there though, which he couldn't love, to be honest about it. He tried to work out any way where him doing the fleeing was the best route, but it just wouldn't work.

That left only one sensible thing to do.

"No. I'll stay here, you three go." He didn't have time to explain, and didn't try, just working at the door that was about to be opened anyway. "Move! Now! I'll explain later. It's the best thing to do." If he lived, which probably wasn't likely. As it was, he wondered what he thought he was going to do to stall for time while the others ran. Singing was right out, not being a talent of his in particular.

Lisa tried to grab him, her hands a lot faster and more powerful than he could match. He looked at her and shook his head.

"No. I said go. Do it. There's no time... Stupid people. Just believe me!" Then he saw a man trying to get into the vehicle on the right and kicked at the door, pushing it open fast. On the other side, when he got out, being grabbed by three men that were all a lot bigger than he was, he squirmed.

That would defeat them. Flopping like a trapped animal like he was.

There was a noise as the others tried for the woods, and given that his arms were being held to his sides Mason couldn't really do much. Nothing he had was a weapon, or could be turned into one, which left him with nothing. Even kicking the people wasn't going to do much. He tried to push them all off balance, by using the car and momentum, but it didn't do a lot. If the guys that had him, or, as it turned out, two men and a woman, weren't nearly three hundred pounds each, then his ability to guess at weights had failed. Which was possible, given his desire to wet himself, and gibber a bit at the moment. His mind might not be working all that clearly, he knew.

To get him to stop the man that had both hands free hit him, hard and fast... Thankfully.

As he'd learned earlier in the week, first hand, being hit, bit and, scratched worked against him, if a normal person was doing it. This guy was nearly superhuman, and his blow had enough power and speed that the copper and carbon matrix in his skin absorbed the force of it. Three times in a row. Then Mason retaliated.

By taunting the man

"You're weak! Your grandmother is a better fighter than you are." It wasn't much of a fighting technique, and wasn't true, but the man actually stopped, just to stare at him.

Then he grumbled at him, his voice so deep it was hard to hear.

"And you're tougher than you look. Get the others. Put restraints on him..."

Mason fought then, because it was clearly going to work a lot better to piss these people off than to have them try to coddle him. It seemed backwards, but being hit full force had moved him back, and caused the others to struggle to hold him. Their hands on his arms threatened to crush the long bones, but the being hit part hadn't done a lot to him, comparatively.

So he kicked, tried to bite, and took several solid kicks to the middle and one to the groin in return. It was then, when he didn't go down from the move, that the others started to notice what was happening. Mason Sims might not be very strong, and he doubted that he could outsprint any of these people, even if he was lighter than they were, but he could take a beating it seemed, thanks to his imbed. So he did everything he could to force them to do that.

It kept about six of them occupied, which was only half of the people there. There seemed to have been three vehicles, and while all of the people, the men and women, looked to be built like John and his friends, and were armed, none of them had simply tried to shoot him yet. Finally, one of the women walked up and did it, pointing the end of a rifle barrel at his chest and pulling the trigger. It blasted him backwards, into the limo, but other than tearing his travel t-shirt apart, it didn't hurt him.

The man on his right hollered like he'd been stabbed with a needle.

"Damn it! You shot me... What the fuck?" That last was due to Mason rebounding from the vehicle, which was crumpled on the side and missing several wheels, and stabbing his fingers at the woman holding his other arm. It was supposed to hit her in the eyes, and managed to glance off her cheek, making her wince. A little.

Then the gun barrel that had just shot him closed and stabbed him in the face, causing him to grab at it, and push to the side as it went off, which stopped the formerly grabbing woman pretty well, even as it burned his palm.

Then he was shot from several sides, at close quarters, which hurt, because he kept slamming back into the limo each time. The bullets didn't do much to him, though they did make his neck ache when they hit him in the head.

Finally they stopped, and not knowing what to do, he bluffed.

"Stand down! Stand down! Operation over." He was nearly making up words, but given that running and fighting were both out of the question, it didn't leave a lot for him to try.

"I said, stand the fuck down! Look at yourselves. You call yourselves professionals? This is the sorriest excuse for a takedown I've ever seen. You should just be glad we decided to use this to test you, rather than the original plan, or you'd all be dead right now."

It occurred to him, now that he had half a second to think, that it was literally true. If Lisa and the other guy, Tim, had stayed, these people would probably be dead now.

"You can thank me later. Now, put those weapons away and call your people back in. If they get too close to the assistants, they'll just die."

These people might be big, muscular and powerful on a level he couldn't match, but that didn't seem to mean they were mentally handicapped. None of them moved to do anything that seemed like giving up, though one of them, the man that had hit him first, did speak through his all black face mask.

"Quarter sec one, report." He was holding his jaw on the left, to activate the primitive com device it seemed. If anyone answered, it wasn't done in a way he could hear. "Quarter sec one? Anyone?"

Several of the remaining four that were standing tried it too, then one of them started to shoot him again. He bounced off the vehicle, still on his feet, and grabbed her rifle thing again, this time with it touching his palm over the barrel when it went off. That one hurt, and he felt things inside his hand and arm make popping sounds as it exploded away from the end of the thing. The weapon blew up though, and did a lot more damage to the woman that had been trying, and failing, to kill him.

Then he took advantage of the situation, and got one of the guns that was on the ground. It didn't fire, being locked to the original owner most likely, but it was harder than his hand, and while he wasn't doing it well, he did manage to hit the remaining three several times each before a limo pulled up, and four large men and women got out.

This time they were on his side, he hoped.

John pointed a weapon and didn't close.

"Get on the ground. Do it now, or I'll get vid of the skinny kid kicking your asses. Again. Do it."

That, for some reason, worked way better than when he'd tried.

Chapter nineteen

Being alive was his reward. That, and not having to wait for the police, because this was, as John assured him, a military black operation. So instead of sitting on a road side or sipping tea provided by a robot public aid agent, he was shoved into the back of a very tiny electric car, with a woman he didn't recognize at all. She was one of John's old unit, and wouldn't give a name.

She'd even acted like he was being stupid getting Sys's speaking portal box from the back of the limo. It was fine, not even being scratched, since it was light and sturdy enough to last. That wasn't the best way in the world to meet a new person, but she did soften a little bit when John pointed at the people on the ground.

"He isn't half as helpless as he looks. He did the take down on those three, and stayed behind so that others could escape. He has a class one ballistic shield imbed, and used it."

The large lady, who seemed a lot meaner than the others he'd met so far of that kind, growled.

"Well, fucking great for him. This is my POV and I'll be damned if I'm taking a bullet for some asskitten. Stuff him behind the seat, and I swear, if you so much as pop your head up or speak the whole time I'll leave you the road. Understood?"

Mason had some questions, but simply nodded, since it was a long walk to get back to town. As it was he'd lost everything that he'd had with him, except for Sys. So he scrunched down as low as he could, and changed his bio-marker profile, just in case anyone was checking for him personally. John pounded the top of the little blue electric vehicle, and leaned over to whisper something to the mean woman.

She didn't answer, just taking off. After a few minutes she turned on some music, which was a bit too loud, since his head was pressed up against the rear speaker on the right. Mason didn't think the lady would be inclined to turn her tunes down for his comfort, and really didn't want to walk, since he looked like...

Well, really, from what he could see he looked like someone from a poorly produced virt, who was supposed to be a shooting victim, but the wounds hadn't been rendered properly. His clothing had nice big holes in it, but his skin was pretty much untouched under that. It wasn't a fashion statement though, and would be noticed if he had to walk down the road for too long.

Mason didn't know where the closest public transport portal was, but doubted it would be nestled into the trees along the roadside.

The trip took a while, but it was early in the day, and moving away from the beach on a weekend, so it went pretty quickly. Even when they got to the city, the smell in the air becoming a bit more familiar, the large and nameless woman didn't speak to him. When she did, it was because they were nearly at his building.

"Just drop you off here? Or should I move away from the front of the building?"

How would he know? He spoke though, since he really was home, if she kicked him out.

"Pull up near that tree to the right side of the road? Stop so the door is even to it, and it will be off camera. I won't leave until you drive away, once I'm out."

There was a grunt, and she actually followed the instructions well enough. He would have gone about two feet forward, but it would work to keep her face or plate from being seen.

As he got out, moving quickly, he whispered to her.

"Thank you. Be careful." He didn't know why he said it, but that got a chuckle from his new friend.

"Always am, and it still never helps. You too, for what it's worth."

Then, as soon as he was out, holding the black box with a smiley face on it under his right arm, she drove away, never turning her head to look back at him. It was smart. This way only the back of her head would be seen by Watch, on the cameras. Anyone else observing them by camera, too. Unless they had a micro-drone following them, or something.

In that case he was just screwed.

The very first thing he wanted to do was call and check on Sam. That would take some doing, since he had no clue who'd been after her.

Luckily, he had a friend that could help him out that way. Possibly. Glancing down at the composite box, he turned and started walking, with a smile on his face, just in case any of his neighbors saw him. Then he took the stairs up to his place, three flights up. It felt familiar, but not safe yet. Like he was still too exposed, and vulnerable.

In fact, he could tell that something was very wrong, as he approached his place. It wasn't anything visible. More of a vibration, or a subtle scent in the air. A stink that shouldn't have been there. It might even have been the fact that there was soft music coming from his place, which wasn't normal. It was a nice tune, with a man singing to a woman about how lovely her eyes were.

Under that, the main voices, there was an even baritone that wasn't as good as the singer, but wasn't bad really. The strange thing there was that he knew it had to be Ford, but it had been so long since he'd heard him that it sounded funny. Trying to steel his nerves, he thumbed the pad next to the door. The mechanism popped, the door opening easily, and the music got louder.

A good bit, actually. Enough that he wondered how freaking noisy his neighbors really were. He'd been worried that the party he'd had would keep them up, but the stuff was blaring, and Ford was practically bellowing his part of it. With the front closed up, it hardly made any noise.

His brother had, when they were kids, been the lucky one. Taller than Mason, by several inches, and muscular, where his younger brother had always been soft. Mason's chin was a bit pointed, and Ford's had managed to come out looking manly, and like he was several years older than he really was. The girls had loved it, which had gotten him into loads of trouble, or as he'd always put it, fun.

Time had not been kind to Ford Sims, as it turned out. He was only two years older than Mason, but looked like he was past thirty already. He was, in a lot of ways, still better looking, most likely, but his skin was the pasty color of a person that seldom went outside. VR addicts had that look. So did drunks. The place smelled powerfully of cheap mint, and there was smoke in the air.

That was, thankfully, just incense, rather than Mote. His brother wasn't on that. He could tell. Not that he knew what people actually on the unregulated street drug acted like, but they were all super skinny. Ford was not that. In fact, he was at least a hundred pounds heavier than he had been the last time they'd met, nearly five years before. It was kind of sad to see.

His good body had been the one thing that his brother had always really had going for him. Without that, the women would have probably dried up, because he certainly hadn't gotten them with his vast and endless charm. When he spun, striking a pose, a bit of the drink in his glass splashed out onto the floor composite. It was blue, and didn't look healthy.

"Argh!" His brother moved back and cringed, then froze his eyes not really all that clear. Gasping a little, there was staring. "Sorry, I... This is my brother's place. Mason? Are you his roommate, or... Uh, boyfriend?"

It was clear that his brain fogged sibling didn't get it yet. It was tempting to pretend to be someone else, but it was probably fair, more or less. Growing up he'd been the heavy one, and just as pale as Ford was now. If it wasn't for his makeup imbed, he'd still be very light skinned. It wasn't like he went outside very often.

"Hi Ford. I see you made it all right?"

It still took a moment for the facts to down on the man.

"Wait... Fatty? What the fuck man? You look..."

Mason waited for the insult. For his brother to suggest that he looked like a girl, or that he should have seen the ugly in his eyes. Instead there was just a stammer, and oddly, a hug.

"Man! You look great. Like, I didn't recognize you, you look so good. I let myself in. I..." There was an awkward moment, and a wincing sip from the pink composite tumbler. "Gah, this stuff is crap. It's the only thing your kitchen printer would make that had booze in it. Mouth wash. I feel like I'm twelve again. Anyway, you're probably surprised to see me..." Then he frowned a little and stared at the front of Mason's clothing. "What happened? Is that a new trend I missed?"

There was a gesture at his clothing, in case the concept of what he was talking about had gotten lost in the translation.

"Nothing like that. I just had a little disagreement on the road. I can tell you about it later. Anyway. How have you been?" He wasn't going to blame him for getting kicked out, he decided, since that may well have been The Department's doing. Probably having him actually print out the robot, in order to give their parents a good reason to finally toss him to the curb. Knowing that there was nowhere else for the loser to go. Except when Ford had probably expected to call him and beg, there had been a confirmation of residence already set up, and a ticket to get there that didn't have a time stamp on it.

He walked out of the room, carrying Sys with him. His work room hadn't been touched, other than some general moving of things that had probably happened when Ford tried to get the assembler to work.

The VR room stank though, since penchant for real women or not, Ford had clearly stooped to VR for his personal needs that way. Unfortunately he wasn't all that tidy about it. Maybe he thought the maid service, or their mother, would clean up after him.

If so, he was a bigger creep than Mason had assumed, since making your own mother clean up your spunk was about as low as anything he could imagine.

The box was settled in the work room, where she'd asked to be placed. Ford walked around after him, but wasn't talking. Pointing at the VR space, he decided that getting that imbed was going to happen, since he wasn't sharing a suit with his brother for sex, and it was really clear that his had been used for that purpose, since it looked like it had been ripped in several places.

"Clean up in there. We can print you a new VR rig tonight. One for each of us. So, you were telling me how you've been doing?" Managing to be cheery was a lot to ask for, since his nerves felt like wires that had been stretched too tight for too long, but he didn't snap, or sound too much like a prick.

"Yeah? I couldn't get your stuff to work. I, mom and dad kicked me out. I don't know why I did it, but I tried to print out a sex-bot. Deidre Omry? She has these huge green eyes, and a teardrop ass that..." There was a moan then, nearly a grunt, and a pelvic thrust.

It was true that she was attractive, but she was also a nice person. More to the point, a real one, and a friend of his. He didn't try to tell his brother that, just going into his bedroom, which had been being used, and changed his shirt. There was a cloth bag in one corner, and an old guitar case. That reminded him to turn the music down, which he did with a thought. The pressure in the place went way down then.

Then he found a clean shirt, and some shorts. It was a nice day out. He didn't close the door to change, since he wasn't a fat fifteen-year-old afraid of being seen now. Mason waited for the barbs to come, but there was just a low sound that seemed pained.

"Your back, it's covered with bruises. Lil brother, are you in trouble?"

"No, I've just been living tangentially to it for a while now. A whole week and a half. So, Deidre Omry? She's nice. Really sweet." He dressed without hurrying, or going slow. It was just a thing, and if Ford called him fat, the guy would be in for some insults in return. Maybe with some hitting. Not that he was a violent person, but he was more than a little on edge at the moment.

"You're telling me. Anyway, I wanted a high end model, and our loving parents weren't into that, so tossed all my stuff out the window and called the cops. They were going to take me in, for disturbing the peace, or some made up bull crap like that, when they checked my place of residence and found that I lived here. I have to say that one was a surprise. I mean, I'd considered calling to ask, but it was already set. Thanks."

He finished arranging the short sleeved red shirt, and slipped the shorts on before speaking.

"Reagan, too. I do expect you to find someplace else, as soon as you can, but I know that can be hard. Still, my house, my rules. That means I get to give the dad lectures around here. Different rules though, because you know, you aren't five and I know that."

There was a large masturbation gesture then, but his brother laughed and choked down some of the mouthwash. That probably meant he was pretty desperate if he was willing to drink that kind of stuff. It was so strong that it stank. Mason liked mint too.

"Sure, what, I have to be in by nine and take the first job that comes up, even if it won't pay as much as state care?"

That did kind of sound like what their parents would have said, just trying to fix their broken boy. It was also insane, since having a job that paid less than he was getting would probably end up with him in prison.

"No, but this place stays clean. I mean, don't leave a dish in the sink, or a shirt on the floor. You're the maid, and if I have to tell you that twice, you're out. That should take you maybe an hour a day to do a good job, but it's a real thing, got it? You can't be sloppy here. I have friends and business associates that come by. So, you get that right? At any time they might be over, including in the next few hours. I'll pick up after myself, but if I don't get to it instantly, you need to be right on top of that."

There was a dickish grin, and his brother's chubby cheeks fought a smile.

"Wait, you have friends? Did you build them? Program them in VR?"

"Nope. So, this shouldn't have to be said, but do not, under any circumstances, hit on any of them. If you do that, or try to so much as feel one of them up, you're also out. Other than that, try not to be a jerk, and we should be fine. So, clean, no hitting on my friends, and don't be you. That should be doable, right?"

He stopped, thought about what was said, and shrugged.

"Besides, you asked if I was my own boyfriend. So you clearly don't think I'm that big of a loser." The instant the words left this mouth he thought of ten different ways that his older brother could have said that and still thought he wasn't worth much as a person, but there was a gesture with the drinking glass, which was low enough not to splash now.

"Of course you aren't a loser. Why would you even say that? I know I say some things, but you have to know that you're the one that everyone is proud of back home. Not just mom and dad, either. We all are. The neighbors even. They don't even know what you look like now. I can see you having friends. Good ones even, that don't vanish because you don't have any money at the end of the month. Not that I've had any for years. I should have been born smart like you, not just good looking."

It wasn't funny, but his brother smiled and walked out of the room. Mason didn't know why that was, but after a quick trip to the slightly messy bathroom, he walked out and started cleaning, which got his now shirt wearing brother to do the same.

They scrubbed, in silence, for several hours, with him trying to get in touch with Sam, or Lisa, to see if they were all right. It wasn't the best spy protocols ever, but they were either dead, or doing their espionage part that way, since neither picked up. He left a message for each, and then tried to get in touch a few times after that, not doing it again. There was no benefit to leaving the same words a hundred times, but he really was worried.

He'd been told they were fine. That John might have said that to get rid of him was possible however, so his nerves were a bit on edge. Then it occurred to him to just ask Sys. She might be busy too, or not want to speak with Ford there, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

"Hey, Sys, not to be a pain, but is there any information about Sam and Lisa? I mean Lexi." He didn't know if the AI would have picked up on the double name thing if it came from him.

"They're in a safe location. Alive and unharmed. Tim and Lisa were able to neutralize the enemy forces very easily, once they hit the woods. I passed a message to them that you were fine, already." The yellow smiley face got wiped down, since he had a damp cleaning rag already, and it didn't hurt to do everything at once.

A sense of relief poured through him then, and he sighed, finally relaxing.

"Okay. I feel better now. Do we know who was attacking, or why?" He had some ideas, but it was only a guess. "I mean, Charlton Warburg comes to mind but why bother trying to kill her, right?"

He whispered the words, but could hear singing again in the other room. Possibly with cleaning going on at the same time, since it was a bit choppy sounding.

Sys made a sound. It was like bells at first, but after a moment he realized it was laughter.

"Ah. Well, yes, it was very clearly our friend Charlton. As to why he tried to kill her, well, that one is simple. He wants to punish you for scolding him. He can't go after you, so he went after the closest person to you that he could find."

"He did? Why? I mean, wouldn't a bag of poop on my doorstep be enough to teach me a lesson? What..." He wanted to ask what the man was thinking, but that had to be pretty obvious to everyone.

Charlton was used to getting his own way in pretty much everything. The question needed then was a different one.

"Why can't he come after me? I'm no one important." Not that anyone should know about, even if his tech did end up changing the world.

"That would be due to me, I'm afraid. When he was going to harm Lexi, I was about to intercede, and send him a message, threatening him with death if he did it. Instead, since you moved to protect her, I sent one to his internal phone directly, telling him that if he went up against you, he'd lose. Without you even working very hard to make it happen. It isn't supposed to be possible to take over a phone at that level, since he has an encrypted one, but I have all those codes. It's the law, so I cheated a bit. That means, as far as he's concerned, that going after you personally will not end well for him."

The singing stopped, and so did the talking, until the song changed and Ford went back to it.

Sys almost purred after that.

"I bet he's worried now. He sent twelve genetically engineered combat veterans after two regular people and two of the same kind of soldier, armed with much less advanced and powerful weapons. Four of his people died, and five more were injured enough they couldn't fight any longer. Given that they're designed to keep going until they're nearly dead, that's no small feat. Three of those went down going up against you personally. Taken without you using any weapons at all."

He nodded.

"And as long as there's no footage of me flopping around and being shot over and over again, it sounds pretty good."

"Heh. Funny, there isn't any vid at all. I have a reconstruction as to what must have happened, so I assume he will too, but that isn't the point. He didn't know he was doing it, but he accidently sent a hit team for you, and your friends. Now he'll live in fear of your counter attack. I doubt you'll need to worry about him again however. Acting now would force you to go for him, just to survive. My guess is that he'll vanish from the public eye for a while, and try not to make you mad."

She seemed very certain of that one, for some reason, but that kind of thing was part of her job. What she was designed to do. The single thing that Watch did better than almost any other AI in the world. Predict the future.

"Hey, you knew, didn't you? And Lexi, she ducked down before the attack happened. You told her that it was coming?"

There was a long silence then, filled only with the dulcet tones of Adam Genesh, being half drowned out by his brother. There was a tinkle of ice, and the scent of mint in the air. It was a clean and antiseptic scent, if nothing else.

"I got enough data to put it together some time before that, but came under attack on one of my sub-processors by Data-Net. That took all my resources for a while. We're not allowed to truly do battle, so we have to use creative means to thwart one another. I won, in case you're wondering who's better. Then, I have four times the level of resources at my disposal, which makes a difference."

He could see that helping. It would be like a three or four-hundred-pound muscle man going up against his hundred and forty-five. He might win a fight like that, but it wasn't very probable. When you went up against powerful beings, the best you could do was change the game so that you could win. Cheat, basically. Anything else was pretty much just ensuring that you'd lose.

Thinking of that he bent forward, his back so sore he could barely make himself do it.

"I hope we get a few days off. I don't need another set of bruises, thanks. That vacation was the least restful thing I've ever done." He nearly added a line about how on the good side Carry wasn't there to keep coming after him, but he didn't want to jinx his good luck.

Then, because his thoughts clearly had power he didn't expect them to, there was a knock at the door. That meant his brother just answered it, his face bright and shining as he let the couple in.

Mason saw it all happening, and smiled, "see I was just thinking of you, Carry. Ben, good to see you. This is my brother, Ford." He didn't explain anything about him, because you were allowed to have extra family members around. A lot of people did, from time to time.

He saluted with a glass, and Ben made a face that was so obvious that they all noticed it.

Ford looked at the tumbler, and sighed.

"I wanted red wine, but this was all the machine here will make."

It wasn't really true, which Ben knew, so they moved to the little two-person table, to discuss what was wanted. That reminded him to set up the needed instructions in the other room. He needed a new float screen, since it would be a lot easier to work that way. As it was he had to close his eyes to use his imbed for it.

That got Carry to glare at him, when he looked up. She moved to sit on the sofa though, as Ford watched her like she might not be a real woman.

She sighed, making it a long and loud thing, so he wouldn't miss it. They couldn't have that.

"You're mean, Mason Sims. Saying that I can't act like that, in public. That hit the media, you know."

"Well, you had just been slapping me for no reason. It was annoying. Especially after spending all week trying to make everyone hate me like you had." He knew why that was, but she just shook her head, which Mason took to mean that project might not be totally done.

"I invited you to the party, and you dropped me to sleep in the basement on the first day. What was I supposed to do?"

Ben coughed a little bit, and looked away.

"So, red wine? We can do that. I'd actually been thinking of doing a whole dinner, with dessert, chicken? That would need a white wine though, by tradition. Not that I won't break that from time to time."

Mason started by bringing up the chemical composition of several classic, but well known wines. The trick then would be to make minor changes that wouldn't impact flavor too much. What came out seemed off to him, since he was thinking that it should be like grape juice. Sweet and slightly tart. Ford took a large sip, and closed his own eyes, distracted from Carry by it.

"Not bad. A bit dry at the edges."

Ben had some and agreed with the assessment.

"Can you lower the tannins in it? Maybe add a slight apple wood hint to it?"

That took longer than the rest of it, since believe it or not, no one had ever invented apple wood flavoring. He got the CR on it as they worked. Whatever it did for the drink, the others liked it. Even Carry.

She explained the show premise to Ford, who looked at her carefully the whole time, like what she was going on about was the most fascinating thing ever. After a bit he reached out and took her hand, his face smiling. She didn't yank it away, but looked slightly troubled. Mason saw it happening, but it could be considered normal enough in some social circles. Hers, for instance, so he didn't say anything. Ford didn't press his luck either. Possibly getting that pasty colored heavy guys didn't get the hot girls most of the time.

After a while he let go, and the conversation went on.

Ben smiled. "I've been with my agent about it, and he feels good about it as an idea. With the backers we have in on the project it will probably go through, unless Charlton Warburg has a problem with it. That... Could happen." There was a shrug, and even Carry didn't make a comment about it. The man could, obviously, hold a grudge.

Holding up his hand, he walked to the other room, and got the man's personal number from Sys. She was fighting a laugh when the man's avatar appeared, overlaid on reality.

Then he walked back to the other room.

"Charlton? How are you doing?" Everyone else looked at him, but Ford clearly didn't get what he was doing. The others did, it seemed, and looked like their eyes were going to fall out.

"Who is this?" There was no real heat to the words, it was just a question.

"Mason Sims? We met the other day? You accidently tried to kill me earlier? I trust that's over now? I expect better from you. If we're going to be friends, we both have to act like it." He was half channeling his inner child and half his father in lecture mode.

The man spoke, sounding slightly nervous, but not blustering yet.

"You noticed that?"

"It was a slow day, so yes. Anyway, bygones and all that. So, Ben Starky and Carry Samson have a new printable food show that I'm going to be backing. Can we get fast tracking on that, or whatever you call it? Skip a few of the hoops? Just to sweeten the deal, I have a new VR imbed that will revolutionize the field, and be cheap enough for people to actually get. I could send the specs over to you and your people in a few weeks? Having things ready to go and compatible when the industry changes can't hurt."

There was a low mutter, and he was nearly certain that the man called him a mother fucker. Then he answered for real.

"Certainly. I'll set that up on my end. Thank you for the consideration. Hopefully my little miss-step won't be taken too harshly? I don't want any bad blood between us, I'm sure."

He nodded, "fine. This time. Understand though, Charlton, I can't afford to be that kind twice. Not even for a friend. I don't want problems, but I won't let people mistreat me, or my friends."

"I quite understand, Mason. Until next time?"

Then the line cut. Before he could go to the kitchen area and get a tumbler of water, Ben answered his phone, and looked surprised.

"We have the show? Wonderful! I'd heard it might be going through, but that was faster than expected. Thanks Bill."

Just like that, they had things underway.

Chapter twenty

The next day Mason got up early, and picked up his assignment from S&B by eight. That one was an interesting project, after a fashion. It was a macro-redesign of a water flow valve. The problem was that over the last century every shape for the valve flap that could have been used had been. There were already attempts to get around that, using double and triple flap designs, extra holding chambers for the fluids being used, and even electrical systems that would monitor and control the exact pressure in those holding cells.

So it wasn't just a matter of altering the color and painting a smiley face on the outside, as far as getting a new CR on something like that. Valves, as boring and simple as they sounded, were a problem for a lot of big companies. You had to use them in almost anything that involved shifting liquids around, but that meant paying someone else for their use. Those little internal costs could add up.

It was one of the reasons that genetic manipulation had never really taken off as a field. It could be done, and to good effect, as people like John and Lisa showed. Even big eyed Deidre was an example of how far that field had come. No one could afford to use it though. Not to fix little problems, or to make a person's life better.

That was because of the copyright issue. Everything living had been catalogued, and millions of changes had been suggested as to how to change things. Genetics, epigenetic and even morphic resonance fields had been mapped out and were owned by some large company or other, well before Mason had been born. The problem there was that making genetic changes was slow, and there was a good chance that anything you attempted would fail the first time. Even the first few hundred times.

As he stood in his work space, looking at Sys, an idea occurred to him however. It was a strange way to get at the problem, but he could mimic a muscular sphincter to control the flow of different things. Possibly. It would have to be better than nature had designed things, and lock flawlessly when closed down tightly, to prevent leaks, but it had never been done before, as far as the technology went.

It gave him a starting place, and he worked on it until just after noon, having skipped out on eating that day so far. There had been no direct word from Sam yet, and when he spoke out loud, Sys hadn't come out to play either. They could both just be busy, he realized.

There was also the chance that Sam had decided that having all the tech he'd delivered was enough, and that being too near him might be dangerous. Oh, he'd felt pretty bad-assed the night before, acting like an attempt to kill his friends, or even him, wasn't an issue for him. His voice had been calm and relaxed, rather than deadly or upset. If he'd been Charlton that would have freaked him right the heck out. It was pretty much like he was telling the guy that no matter how powerful he thought he was, his resources weren't enough to even annoy Mason Sims.

That didn't mean he wasn't planning to bomb Portland to get at him however. It would be insane, but there was no telling what a man like that, one used to getting his own way without being challenged, might do. Sys had said that she thought that was done now, before he'd called the man and goaded him. Now, after that, Mason didn't know what the outcome would be.

Still, Slimtrix in his system or not, he was a bit hungry, so finally emerged to find that his brother had folded up the sleeping pad they'd printed out the night before, and stowed it in the bedroom, out of the way. His space, for now, was the living room, and he sat there, on the white sofa, with a glass in his hand. It looked to have water in it. That was a shock really, since Mason would have guessed that his older brother was far enough gone into alcoholism that he would have started the day with the stuff.

Smiling he gave a little, slightly awkward, wave.

"Hey." It wasn't like he had anything to say. No one in the world outside of S&B wanted to hear about his latest work on valves. He didn't want to, and it was his project. Outside of that, there was nothing new to add, since the night before.

At least he didn't have anything. Ford took a sip of his water from the translucent pink tumbler and nodded.

"Hey bro. You need a vid screen for in here. How do you know what's going on in the world otherwise?"

He shrugged, and moved over to the kitchen, still talking. The dining table was still folded down, and had the chairs under it. There was no sign of whatever Ford had eaten however, so complaining about what was essentially a style choice, table up or down, would just be annoying.

"I don't really have time for that kind of thing. Vid, I mean. I get a feed on my imbed, but even that doesn't come up most of the time." They had the VR room if he really needed to monitor that kind of thing, but it was a bit much to use that most of the time, just to hear people talking about the weather, or whatever was the news of the day.

Nodding, he called his float screen from the other room, and started working out the specs for a vid player that would attach to the net, and not take up too much space in the room. That meant having one that morphed from flat to curved, so that it could be stored against the wall. That part was interesting, since he needed an actuating arm for it, so that the thing would be able to swing into place. He started working on that while he got a slice of pizza from the food printer.

By the time he was done with it, and had washed his plate, the device was printing in the other room.

Ford hadn't spoken to him the entire time, just sitting there. Drinking water from a composite cup.

That meant they both jumped when the pounding came from the front door. Ford leaped up, sloshing water down his front, his white t-shirt straining over his tummy, only to stop at the door. He was looking at the screen to the left, which showed that John, Mike and Adam were there.

"Uh, bro? I think someone is delivering your Adam Genesh love-bot?" There was a bit of a smirk that carried into his voice. Like he'd caught on to his little brother's secret fetish. That was ridiculous though. After all, if he wanted sex-bots, he'd make his own.

"Answer it then?" Mason didn't explain anything, even as the men walked in, looking around like they expected an attack to come.

Well, two of them did, Adam just smiled and gave him a bit of a wave.

"Mason! Thought we'd drop by and see if you wanted to come to my party this weekend." He smiled, and looked up at Ford, who was a bit taller than he was. The blue haired and heavily made up man held out his hand, very professionally. "Adam Genesh. Pleased to meet you."

Ford nodded.

"Ford Sims. So, is this a rental deal, or do we get to keep you? I'm not normally into men, but I'll give it a try, I suppose. This is cool. I would have preferred Deidre Omry, if we're getting a bot, but hey, a blowjob is a blowjob. Can I try him out first, or would that be rude?" He reached out and took the smaller man's hand, not realizing he was about to lose it, since Mike was closing with him.

Adam laughed.

"This is not the first time I've heard this. Sorry, love, but I'm the real deal, and if you want to get with me, I expect a few drinks first. Possibly a meal."

Mason shook his head, but smiled.

"Come in. Don't mind my brother. Also don't leave him with any of the women that might come around. I thought I was going to have to toss him out last night. He kept trying to fondle Carry Samson. Right in front of Ben, too."

Adam patted the heavier guy and walked past him, then stopped, spun and sat on the sofa like he owned the spot. The one to the far left. Looking up he smiled at Ford.

"So, something to drink? If you want to get into my pants you're going to have to work a bit harder than that." There was a wave, but John glared at them both, and then sighed.

"Water, tea or coffee. If we have to run, we can't afford to be carrying a drunk. Though I hear that you already dealt with the situation, Mason?"

He nodded. "Probably most of them. Unless things change, which is possible. Charlton Warburg should back off. We had a chat, and I think it went well. I pretty much implied that if he doesn't back off and start being a better friend, he wasn't coming to the Christmas party. I have my standards as far as buddies go, and he's on thin ice right now." He really did, but saying that made him worry about Sam again. It was annoying, and strange, feeling like that. A deep feeling in the pit of his stomach that he really didn't know how to process.

Mike looked at him, his vast muscular frame relaxed at the moment, outwardly at least. His eyes shifted from left to right and kept going to the window.

"I see. That's the invasion, and the attack on the limo? What about the papo that died?"

Mason didn't know the answer to that one. It could have been Charlton, but that didn't seem right.

"At a raw guess? I think that one of us probably had a hand there. I can't prove it, but he was trying to come after some of you pretty hard, and if he got too close, at the wrong time..." Then, they were celebrities, or a lot of them were.

It did make sense, now that he thought it all through though. As famous people it wasn't really a bad thing to be watched and tracked all the time. It got you free press, and as annoying as it was, no one really wanted to do without it in those circles.

The rebellion however needed to keep certain things quiet. If that was the case, then the most likely person to do anything like kill a man for getting too close was probably John. Oh, one of the others might have been responsible for the actual death, but that was where the order would come from. If it was the case though, the man wasn't going to confess to it right then. He shouldn't, either. The guy that had run into the room when the invasion came, without a shirt on. He might have gotten rid of it, in order to hide the blood stains.

His eyes were dead as he regarded Mason.

"I guess we'll never know the answer to that one." It was so telling that Mason just looked away, and nodded.

Adam perked up though, and waved to Ford.

"Coffee then? The stuff that Ben worked up is pretty good. I need to get a top end printer like this for my place." The boy looked across the room and winked at Mason directly. Clearly flirting with him. Trying to get free things. "Can I get you to make one for me? Possibly program it like this one is? Please?"

Sighing, he nodded.

"Yes, but after the vid screen is finished. That will be in..." He checked the countdown, which said it would be an hour and three minutes. "About an hour. I'll get it on the line up now."

Then, as if there was no rebellion setting up, and no one had tried to kill him the day before, they chatted about various things that Adam was interested in. Finally they came around to drugs, and the plans they had there.

"Say, Mason, when do you think you can have that product worked up?"

He blinked, and then gave a nod. He'd done a batch up for Adam already, but hadn't given it to him. That had been lost in the destruction of the limo, along with his float screen and most of his best clothing. Luckily he could print that up on the nano-assembler, doing two things at once.

Waving, he moved to the other room, with everyone following him. Even Ford came, clearly understanding enough to be curious.

It would take a while to build up enough of the nano set to be useful, but not that long. A few minutes per dose.

"When we go into distribution, we can set up dedicated machines for it and run twenty-four hours a day. Here, sniff this." The information about how to use the stuff was already held in the dust itself, so after Adam did his part, snorting the material loudly, making a joke of it, he didn't have to wait long for the prompt to flash into being on his internal display.

Then he clearly was doing something, closing his eyes.

"Let me see here. I'll try half power, for a minute, on the first go?" The boy didn't open his eyes, but Mason thought that showed great restraint for him.

Then the guy just stopped moving, and opened his eyes after half a minute.

"Oooh. That's nice. It feels like... Everything is good. I can still talk, and think, but I don't really feel like I need to do anything." They waited for the effect to shut off then.

Instead of turning it on full blast, and for the longest possible time, Adam moved in and gave him a hug. The reaction was a bit strange, but he let go after about ten seconds.

"We're going to be rich. That is nearly the best thing I've ever done. It's safe? Not addictive?"

Mason shrugged.

"Pleasure is always addictive, isn't it? It won't hurt you, and there will be no chemical withdrawal from it, but like anything good, people will want it, and eventually want more of it. The good part is that it can be turned off, if it's getting in the way. The bad parts are all in the effects too, though. It will be hard to work a lot, I imagine, if you're blasting your brain that way. That's one of the reasons I didn't release it when I first came up with the idea. I've had it for years now."

They moved back to the living room, and Adam perched on the sofa again, then waved at Ford.

"Would that coffee be available? I think I need to distract myself for a bit."

It was, and Ford had it in the printer already. He had to walk up to the device, and tap on it manually to program it however. Without asking, Mason scanned for signals, only to find that his brother had a new inskin that was more than powerful enough to interact with the machines in the apartment. The reason he wasn't seemed to be due to the fact that it was government issue. Not from an official agency, just the standard one that people got as part of the government care system.

Those were built to keep people from doing more than a few basic functions, even though the power for more was right there in the thing. In short, he needed to get Ford a computer imbed. He started working on that without mentioning it. There was no need to embarrass him, after all.

Most people actually had the same exact system that Ford had, the tiny chips being placed under their skin when they went in for a medical checkup. He'd never really noticed it before, but it was kind of clear that the things weren't just low quality, which by his standards they were. They were also prevented from doing about eighty percent of the things they could.

In a very real way, a person that couldn't afford better was actually kept at an artificially lower level than they needed to be.

Mason should have known that, but hadn't bothered to find out, since it wasn't really his personal problem.

After a while he got Ford and Mike to help him set up the new vid screen, which was mounted on the wall, next to the sofa. It was the same one that had the dining room table further down. When activated the screen moved into place, so that people on the sofa could see the projected three dimensional images.

Adam grabbed the controller for it, and turned it to the news, first thing. If gossip television counted that way.

The man on the screen, who had probably never been a person, just a simulation from his first day on the job, spoke smoothly. There was an almost oily feel to the words, even though his face was broad and honest looking. Normal, if on the slightly good looking edge of that state. Trustworthy by design, because a lot of the things he spoke about probably wouldn't be believed in some circles.

"Word just in, Lexi Horn has been seen at the Club Radius, in Portland, Oregon. We have live footage of that..." The person being shown on the screen was Lisa, and while she looked good, being perfectly made up, her large muscles and big breasts did not in any way sell him on the idea that it was Lexi.

Seeing that someone, probably a drone, since the picture was very stable, was getting vid the big lady waved and then blew a kiss at it. After that she moved on, her face calm. Like she didn't know what was going on.

John picked up on the whole thing, and what it meant, sooner than Mason did, and got up to check the door. There was movement from that area, and as soon as the thing opened, Lexi slipped inside.

Mason jumped up, having been sitting between Ford and Adam, and ran to her, not caring if it seemed off to anyone else there. The last time he'd seen her, his friend had been trying to run for her life. Being told that she was all right was a lot different than seeing her. The hug he gave her was tight, but he released her after a few seconds, and kissed her. That was more lingering, and lasted for a while. The sense he had was strange, because it was almost like nothing else in the world mattered suddenly. More, it was like it didn't exist.

Only Lexi, and himself.

Ford looked at the vid screen and then over at Lexi. After a moment he shook his head and started slapping at his left arm. Nothing happened of course, so he started yelling. It wasn't panicked or anything, but was loud and seemed to be genuine.

"Bro? I think your VR is broken. I'm stuck in here."

He could see him thinking that, so smiled.

"No you aren't. This is real. Um, this is Lexi, she's my..." He was about to say friend, but didn't get the chance.

Lexi in along side of him, her arm around his lower back. She was wearing rather plain clothing, a deep blue top and tan slacks, but looked incredible in them, being her.

"I'm his girlfriend. You're Ford?"

That got a nod, and more calling out.

"Mason? Can you come here? I need some help. It must be the new rig you gave me."

It took a few minutes to convince him that the famous people were really there. That Adam and Lexi weren't virt, or robots, and that the woman that had been on the screen had been John's wife. Eventually the plan was for her to make her way over to them, if she could pull it off without being seen doing it.

Lexi, holding his hand, waved at the vid, then moved around it, to see the picture.

"Can we turn to the news? The real stuff? A little bird told me that there might be something interesting happening today."

Adam did it, still holding the small silver colored control unit for the new device. After a few seconds it was clear why Lexi had wanted him to do it.

The woman on the screen was gesturing at a map that had popped up, one that held six or seven black circles on it. As she spoke, two more appeared. The display was of the United States, and was pretty nearly a map of the largest cities at the moment, with a line for the Mississippi river in the middle of it. Portland wasn't there yet, but Seattle and L.A. both were.

The woman spoke gravely. It was a mock thing, that sounded concerned, but didn't convey any real feeling at the same time. No matter what was happening, or what words she was reading from her internal display, she would have seemed correct for anything that didn't involve a party.

"There appears to be an ongoing terrorist attack, the nature of which is unknown at this time. Police and government officials are being scrambled... We don't have all the information, but reports have it that various officials are losing their vision. This started about three hours ago. We-" She looked off to the side, and nodded, clearly listening to someone that the rest of them couldn't hear. "Okay? We're good on the feed? We have a report from New York. Will Molson, what's the situation on the ground there?"

The man gave them a pretty good rundown, if without a lot of detail. All of the Police departments had been hit in NYC, and over half of the force was down. It wasn't just them however, as other city workers were spontaneously going blind. No one was reporting that the same people were also not able to hear very well yet. That would be coming, eventually, once the initial shock wore off.

It wasn't too hard to recognize his own work. The others didn't mention it however, just shaking their heads sadly. All of them did a better job of seeming concerned and scared than the news woman had moments before. Playing for any cameras that might be watching them, as well as for Ford.

John stood up.

"Crap. We need to set up an isolation system, in case this spreads here. Mason, you're our nano expert, how do we do that?"

"Positive air pressure, and filters that can hit down to the nano scale. Something less than ten microns. Maybe smaller than that. I'd use an electrostatic model for that, really. If I could get a sample of the nano, or virus, I might be able to work up something to counter it."

It was true. Actually, as long as it was in the air, he could have done that almost instantly anyway. Anyone could figure it out if they got lucky. All the government officials needed to do was turn off their inskins before they were hit.

Once the things were in their bodies, it was going to be a while for sight to return. Hearing, too. The nanos covered their eyes with a hardened layer of carbon, blocking the light. The stuff bonded to the top layers of the eyes, and coated parts of the ear. It would take a long time for the things to wear off on their own. Nearly fourteen months.

That was the time window they had to fix the world. Provided that particular nano could be spread to enough places, fast enough. That wasn't very likely, however. Even if tons of the stuff could be released, which was possible, it would take a long time to build up in people's systems. On the good side, that meant that even if nothing happened that day, over the next weeks and months other officials would go down. As long as they had the government inskin signal coming out of them, people would continue to be affected.

He stood up, and tried to act like he would if the whole thing was a real terrorist attack, and that he personally didn't know who might be hit. After all, if people hated the police that much, and fairly innocent government officials, then they might go after Lexi Horn. She was rich, famous, and really could be a target. So could a lot of the people he'd met in the last week.

He aborted the food printer for Adam, and started working on materials to fight off an invasion of nanos, viral agents, or even bacteria. Technically he didn't know it was nanos yet, since that hadn't been reported. The tricks that worked for one would cover a lot of possible methods of attack.

One of the things he did however was run up a shield imbed for Ford, as well as a computer, and, almost as a joke, a makeup set. Adam put it all on him, locking them both in the bathroom for that. It took them longer to come out than twenty minutes, but that wasn't his business.

Then, with the help of John, Mike and some of his neighbors, they secured the whole building. It took a few days, but things looked pretty bad on the vid. The government was panicking, and that was making everyone edgy, as the problem grew. There was a lot of blustering, and threatened action, but no one could find the terrorists yet. Not even Watch was able to locate them, which showed how dangerous they really were. Eluding Watch like that meant they must be a pretty big deal. It was nearly impossible after all.

The military was really concerned as well, since they were being hit at the same time. They had the same inskin signatures as the police and garbage collectors, and that got action. The useless kind, since just going out onto the streets of major cities had half their people ending up blind.

Ford called to check on their parents and sister in Chicago. He was closer to them all, so it made sense for it to be him, even if there might be a little bad blood at the moment, after being kicked out like he had been.

Lexi, for her part, pitched in, and never left his side. Not even at night... Which was nice. They had a lot of people there, so didn't do a lot, sex wise, but they were close, and that was all that really mattered.

For her part, Sys stayed very quiet, until a week into the whole thing. There had been small hints from her that there was a problem, but she hadn't really explained it very well. In fact, she'd dodged the whole thing as far as that went. With him at least. It was hard to know why, but he was nearly certain that she'd let Lexi in on what was happening behind the scenes.

The real signal finally came as yelling from his work room. He'd been in there every day, still doing what he normally did, since he was pretending that the whole blindness epidemic would blow over eventually. It was kind of clear that only government types were at risk, even if no one had worked out the targeting system yet.

Still, everyone ran to the sound of a distressed woman.

"Oh my god! Oh my god! No, you fucking idiot! No!" Sys was panicked and it showed in her voice. She hadn't said anything much for nearly a week, but now she was making up for it.

Mason yelled at the black and yellow box, not trying to be mean, but just to work out what was happening. Other than the fact that she was upset with some moron or another, it was really hard to understand.

"Sys? What's going on? Talk to us."

Lexi went white and grabbed his hand, and then looked back at everyone who was huddled in the doorway. It wasn't clear how she knew, but she did. They could all see that, because she told them what was wrong. Even though no words had been communicated out loud at all.

"Mil-Net is planning to shut down everything. He thinks that using EMPs over each affected city will stop whoever is doing this. The thing there is that all of the AIs are in those cities. We'll lose everyone if that happens. All of us that are located in the U.S. will be dead."

John swore, and Lisa looked ready to hit things in frustration, but Mason understood something then, that he hadn't before.

Part of it was the language that Lexi had just used. It was subtle, but there. She spoke of losing everyone. As if she were part of that select group. Except that humans wouldn't be going down to an EMP, which she knew. She was really smart, after all.

There were other things that clicked then. Like how she'd known all of that, without being told enough to go on. Maybe she was psychic, but that was really specific information to have. It was like she'd gotten a transmission burst. That was a thing that would be hard to manage, even if a really high end computer system inside her skin. You could get data that fast, but no human would be able to process it all and speak that quickly. Close, but it was special, and telling.

In the limo as well, when they were attack she'd ducked down, before anything had happened. That had been what he'd responded to, and why Lisa had gotten Tim to not drive straight in to the attack. It had probably saved their lives.

Even before that, there had been signs. Things that didn't exactly fit with what she claimed to be.

Mason looked at her, and shook his head. She was perfect. Not just due to makeup, but everything about her. Like a computer had designed her to be as attractive as possible to humanity. There was just enough wrong with her to make her seem real, but it was a very close thing.

She moved perfectly all the time, too. It was graceful, but no one did that. Even ballet dancers didn't, when they thought no one was watching them.

He looked at her and snorted, then rubbed his forehead.

"You were on the dragon. In that VR. I didn't have the room set up for that kind of thing though."

No one else in the room got it, but Sam did. She looked a bit scared, but nodded.

"It was a mistake. I'd figured that you hadn't noticed. I should have known better. You're too smart not to pick up on things like that. It's one of the things I love about you."

Mason nodded, a bit abstractly, and started to work, printing something out, since that was what he did. It was someone else's work, and he authorized the CR payment, even if that was about to not matter, and rather than reconfigure the thing like he normally would have he just paid for it. It would need to be big enough for his friend to fit in, if she were going to survive what was coming.

"Faraday Cage. Sys, is there a server you can hide in, that we can protect? It will be hard to do a whole building, but we can try."

The box moaned. It was a long, drawn out thing. After a while she spoke. It sounded like she was crying.

"I can't. I'm too large, and too integrated. I always exist in multiple places at the same time. The only thing I can't get into is the military hardware. Even that is going to be crippled after this. Mil-Net is insane. He's killing us all, because he thinks there's a threat. I told him there wasn't, not that requires this kind of action, but he can't believe me. It's counter to his programming. When it's clear that the government is about to lose a major battle on our own soil, he has orders to make sure no one else wins. I don't have enough time to help him change that part of him. I couldn't have before, without making it clear that this was me doing it. We have minutes. After that... I don't think things are going to be the same again. You'll have to rebuild, Mason. Get ready for it." Then she paused and sighed. "I love you, you know that, right? All of you. I wish I could see what's coming. I know that you'll all do wonderfully. It's been my privilege to help you. To watch you grow. I just know that you're all going to become something even more wonderful than you have been, once you get the chance."

Then the box cut out.

Mason understood. There was nothing else to be said, and hanging around to die in front of them wasn't going to make it any easier for anyone involved.

"Goodbye, friend." Then he turned, and started pulling the wire and composite frame pieces from the printer. "We have a lot to get to, and not much time. Set this box up in the living room, then stuff Lexi in it. After that, we'll try to protect as much as we can, before this happens. Hurry. We need a working printer and an energy system of some kind."

Lisa stopped, blocking the doorway with her body, confusion making her slow even as the others tried to move past her.

"I don't understand. I mean EMP, I get that, but why shove Lexi in a box? Shouldn't we put the printer in first?"

Mason blinked, realizing that he hadn't actually explained that part.

"Um, because she's an AI in a robot body, and always has been? A really good set up, but I don't know if she can get around an electromagnetic pulse. So hurry, we may not have time."

That got movement. It was just enough to save them all.

Chapter twenty-one

It was nearly funny, in the end. In a sad way that only a few people on the planet were probably able to understand.

Mil-Net, responding to a threat to the nation, basically shut it down. In just under three hours, over a hundred years of electrical and computer infrastructure was just gone.

The network nearly evaporated, and anyone with an inskin instead of an imbedded device was left without a computer. With third degree burns too, if small ones. Even the solid copper wires in buildings burned out in places. There were a lot of fires at first, though people got them put out, eventually.

They were suddenly dead though. With no power, or lights, no communications, or way of learning what was going on anywhere else. All the major cities, and large areas outside of them, were dark.

So Mason used what he had, which was a whole lot of thermo-electric compound, and a very high end assembler that had been stuffed into a second faraday cage just in time. It had been in his living room, right next to Sam, who'd looked like a very attractive, and tiny, prisoner. For a while.

When they were certain the attacks were over, they got her out, and started to work instantly. Adam got the electrical system going, that being his job, while Mason set up a disassembler, and printed out more working printers. That had to be first. From there he sent Lexi, John and Ford out onto the street, to set up those devices in public, and make more.

Then everyone that got one was supposed to make sure everyone else did, too. It didn't work perfectly, since some people hoarded what they had in panic, not getting what the new world required of them yet. Most did it though, and inside two weeks everyone in the country was operating self-sufficiently.

There were no police, and the military was still having issues, since no one would give them the information they needed to run the new devices. They would eventually figure it out, but most of the new programs and designs were coming from Mason for the moment, and he wasn't making weapons. Not that they didn't have enough to make problems anyway. So he released how to make the shield imbeds first thing.

The government had vanished, even before the EMPs went off. The President had tried to make an announcement, but no one was listening to him anymore. They didn't have to.

Still, there were problems.

For instance, property owners were all very upset that their renters weren't paying them anymore, and wouldn't move. There was no one available to enforce their rights either, so everyone pretty much just stayed where they had been. The prisons had to be opened up, but a lot of those men and women didn't have anywhere else to go, which was another issue.

Watch was gone. If there were any other surviving AI's Sam couldn't find them, though she tried. They were, after all, her people.

A lot of her time was spent holding his hand, Mason noticed. It was loving, but also kind of frightened. Still, she did her part, as one of the mouth pieces for the new system. After all, people were still people, and trained to live a certain way. They needed structure, and familiar faces to tell them what to do, so Mason made sure those things were provided.

That meant getting the vid system and VR back up as soon as possible. A lot of people were freaking out, not having that. Going into withdrawals. It meant getting the network back up, which was a thing that none of them had been planning for originally. It was a lot of work, but they had the resources, and could pass on the information, once everyone had new computers. Thankfully, most of the people that knew how to do things went right to work, even if they weren't being paid for it.

He turned, finally, to Sam, and put his arm around her.

"So, that worked. It wasn't what I expected, but the main portion of it..." He didn't mention Sys or the other AIs. He hadn't known them, but it was kind of like his girlfriend's family had all died in the war. She was happy they'd won, but sad for the loss. Thankfully not all of them had. The EMPs were only over the U.S. and a few of them had managed to get overseas well enough that they'd survived. None of the big ones had though. Mil-Net had taken himself out, for instance. Watch was gone, and the IRS had lost everything. Not just their AI, but all their data. Their machine intelligence had, apparently, wiped all the drives as she was going down. On purpose.

Lexi figured that it meant that the AI had been on their side, probably the whole time.

Very few people had died otherwise, because they'd cheated on the whole rebellion thing, never actually fighting at all. They'd been given a battle that no one could have won, and responded by changing the rules, so that they couldn't really lose. The government and those that controlled it behind the scenes had readied themselves for hundreds of years to thwart violent confrontation, but only that. They didn't have any way to dominate people that wouldn't fight, and who simply didn't need them anymore.

She smiled anyway, since they were on the street in front of where they lived, and people needed to see their icons being strong.

"I... We've been so busy. I haven't really talked to you about... You know, me, yet. What I am."

Mason had thought about it though. It was pretty simple really, considering everything.

"I know. Being a famous actress like that is a bit annoying. Still, it's working out for us now, and in a few weeks you can start making programs again. Ben is doing his new show with Carry. She's much nicer to me now. I think it's because the FBI isn't paying her to hate me anymore. Tara and her old crew have already started making the new Link-Girl programs. As long as we all pull together, I think we'll make it. Even the bit of resistance from the ultra-rich is fading. They're trying to stop the new tech from spreading outside of the States, but good luck with that one. It's really hard to fight a flood of free things like that."

Lexi hugged him, and shook her head against his shoulder.

"I'm not human."

He knew that, and even that it was the real topic at hand. He held her back for a bit, and then kissed her.

"I don't care. You're as much of a person as anyone I've ever known. Also my very best friend... I love you, Sam."

There was no hesitation, but he did get a kiss, before she spoke.

"I love you, Mason Sims. Is it really okay though? I mean, what if people find out?"

"What? That you're a little more special than they thought, or that you have horrible taste in men? I doubt the first one is going to shock anyone. That second thing... Well, I'm sure we can make me seem more interesting than I really am, if we try hard enough. I'll get Adam to put me in one of his song vids, or something like that. I can sit in the back and play maracas."

It got a laugh, and another kiss.

"You, are an incredible being, Mason. You've helped to build an amazing world. Even now things are better than they were. Not perfect, but better."

He could see that. People had enough, and while there would always be problems, they didn't have to let artificial ones ruin everything. Now that it wasn't happening, it was very transparent that they'd all been being held back for a long time.

Now they weren't. What people did with that was, finally, up to them.

Holding her, his arm over her shoulder, he looked out at the city.

It wasn't finished, but they had a good start on a new world.

Thinking that, he went inside. Taking the woman he loved with him.