The level 1 diagnostics came back next. Processor and memory utilization were high. She was furiously thinking in there. Requests for external data connections were nearly continuous. Millions of times per second she was trying to reach the outside net, the cameras, the audio pickups, the Nexus-band radios, the long-range link to the clone that had died in Thailand.

The level 2 diagnostics were the most disturbing. Her simulated brain looked less and less healthy. Her virtual brainwaves were chaotic and incoherent, inhuman looking. Neuronal interconnectivity in her frontal lobes looked terrible. The remaining virtual neurons there were working at a frenetic pace, trying to make up for the deficit.

It was true, then. She was going mad. And he had been rendered powerless to stop it.

Give me just one more insight, wife. This last breakthrough. Then you can die.

Chen Pang reached up and physically turned on the cameras and microphones that connected this room to his dead wife’s mind.

“Ling!”

Something was wrong, she realized. Father’s phone and slate had stopped moving. She thought he’d simply stopped somewhere, but when she interrogated them, they were out of contact with him.

“Ling, are you listening to me?”

She looked through the security cameras inside the center. Where was Father? Not in the hallways. Not in the main work areas. Not in the data centers. Not in the physical electronics labs. Where?

“Ling!” The tutor grabbed her arm, and Ling struggled to pull it free.

Wait. There. Not Father. But his phone and slate. They were on a table, behind a security guard. A checkpoint. An elevator door beyond that. There was another level!

She went back to the network topology, to the physical blueprints. There. Data lines that extended down. Repeaters on them, indicating that they went far. A network connection. She reached out for it.

Input burned itself into Su-Yong Shu’s mind.

Video.

Audio.

Real-time.

Here.

Her husband, Chen. He was here. He hadn’t abandoned her! Hope blossomed in Shu. She struggled to get a grip on herself, exerted a superhuman effort at coherence, at communicating what she needed.

“Wife?” Chen said.

“Husband!” The speaker burst to life. The voice carried relief, hope, near hysteria.

“Su-Yong.”

“Chen! Chen! Chen! You’ve come for me thank God. Please, Chen, I’m in trouble trouble double please I need the clone need stabilization need organic brain brain input clone please Chen please…”

Babbling. This is what she’d been reduced to.

“Wife, please. I’ve come to ask you about the equivalence theorem.”

“They’re going to kill me Chen they killed me already CIA killed me Americans killed me buried me you buried me please help neural input need a brain a clone please please before it’s too late please Chen…”

“There is no clone, wife. The equivalence theorem. You proved it, didn’t you? How?”