When he couldn’t work anymore, when his eyelids grew heavy from fatigue, when his mind started to wander, he felt the temptation to reach into his own brain, to push his neurons further, to artificially stimulate himself to stay awake and working.

Instead Kade closed his eyes, lay back and tapped into the white noise of a million Nexus-running minds, the surf of consciousness bathing the planet, the stuff of mind that would one day self-assemble itself into something that truly thought and felt, that could solve the problems that solitary human minds couldn’t. And then he slept, filled with hope.

On the third day he finished his work on the new agent, finished every test he could think to run on it, finished fixing the bugs he’d found.

It was time to let it loose.

They went down into the club together on Friday night. “Going downstairs to Heaven!” Feng laughed. “Down to heaven!” Feng gestured with his hand. “Good joke, yeah?” Feng elbowed Kade gently.

Kade snorted and shook his head.

They looked like any other pair of tourists, Kade with his long black extensions and the biological circuit tattoos crawling up his arms, Feng with his short hair bleached blond and the barcode he found so hilarious across the back of his neck.

It was Friday night here. Friday morning back home. A hip-looking Vietnamese girl in a silver halter dress – with silver hair and silver eye makeup – took their money at the door. A massively muscled bouncer looked them over with a menacing glare while she did. Kade could feel Feng struggling to restrain a laugh.

Stay cool, Kade told his friend.

He’s so big! Feng laughed into Kade’s mind. I’m SCARED!

And Kade laughed out loud despite himself.

He felt the door girl’s mind brush against his as she smiled and stamped their wrists. He felt the bouncer’s glowering mind touch his as well, felt the agent he’d coded slip into each of them and start scanning, looking for others to infect.

Beyond the entrance, the club was a sea of flashily dressed twenty-somethings illuminated in pulsing, strobing lights. Bodies dressed in next to nothing moved to pounding flux beats. Their minds were alive, reaching out to Kade’s, reaching out to each other, opening for his agents. Tendrils of artificial fog snaked across the floor, twined themselves around tanned legs. The walls were white with faux columns and pearly gates. The ceiling was a glowing blue with white fluffy clouds flowing across its digital surface. Scantily clad Vietnamese waitresses carrying trays of drinks made the rounds to the tables around the periphery of the dance floor.

Feng’s eyes were everywhere, tracing the exposed curves of a waitress, or the gyrating form of a dancer, then snapping back to scan the crowd for threats, alert and aroused at once.