She seemed perfectly all right, chipper as ever, which only served to make him feel more irritated with her.

‘What is it, Theo? I’m very busy.’

‘Busy? I thought yer said you din’ have no—’

‘Yes, well, something’s come up,’ he said hastily, cutting her off before she could say anything else.

‘So it ain’t stupid any more, or—’

‘Look, what is it?’

‘Nothin’, Mac! I jus’ wanted to see yer office, y’know?’

Mentally, he slapped himself for being stupid enough to get into this. ‘That’s nice, Theo. And now you have. So I have to go now, all right?’

‘Yah!’ she said, but he had already disconnected the call, even while she was still sticking her tongue out at him.

How long had the conversation lasted? Not long enough for anyone to figure out, he hoped. Well under a minute, probably. He quickly glanced at the timer on the door. Yes, easily under a minute. That was too short a time for anyone to pick it up, of that he was confident.

He could have asked the screen the exact duration, but somehow, something prevented him, something that told him that he was better off just not thinking about it at all. Anyway, what did it matter? He was safe, surely.

He was interrupted from his musings by a beep from the screen.

SUE WANTS TO HAVE A CONVERSATION.

Sue? Probably just some idiot trying to get her quota done. It had to be. ‘Not interested.’

The screen blinked obediently. Interruption dealt with, he swivelled in his chair to face the wall and returned to his deliberations. If someone had picked up the conversation, he might be in serious trouble. Granted, it was unlikely to be anyone important, he reasoned, especially considering the volume of traffic, but it could happen. The consolation was that, if he had in fact been detected, the lawbots would have been at his workspace by now. That hadn’t happened, so, in all probability, he was safe.

Albert decided that the best thing to do would be to get off the network as quickly as possible. He’d had enough of it for today, anyway.

‘Log out,’ he said, without turning around. He heard the screen beeping, and then the robotic tones of the audio interface.

CONNECTION SUCCESSFUL.

‘What—’ he began, spinning around quickly, and then stopped abruptly. Where there should have been only a screen, blinking into oblivion, he found words, flashing repeatedly.

SUE WANTS TO HAVE A CONVERSATION.

‘No!’

He couldn’t understand it: How was she back? Had the system misunderstood what he had said? That had never happened before. ‘Block user! And didn’t you hear me? I said log out! Log out!’