He leaned back, his fingers steepled together, the voice still ringing in his ears. What was it the man had been shouting? Something about wanting to find his father. An odd choice to turn to in a moment of panic—a biological predecessor you’d never met—but then again, it was probably as much help as anyone or anything else, himself included. Now, what else had the chap said? Something about finding a code. No, not a code. The Code, he’d said. As if it was somehow supposed to be different from all the others even though, ironically, it fit in perfectly with the rest of them. The Code. The Way. The Word. The Book. They all had fancy names, and they all meant the same thing—idiocy, a chimera of hope for some deluded cyber-junkie. A secret message hidden away, somewhere outside the network. A word with the power to change the world forever. A lost text that told of a new way of life. There was no end to them, and they were all classified as Unapproved Content. No wonder—there should be a law against being that gullible. Which wasn’t the official reason of course; that had to do with how treasure hunts like these encouraged forays beyond the safe, sanitized confines of the network, towards unknown and potentially contaminated information sources. Or some big, wordy line like that. Of course, the bans only fuelled speculation, with the usual nonsense of there being no smoke without fire and so on. And every so often, some fool would pop up on the network, willing to risk his life and other people’s in pursuit of quasi-religious mumbo jumbo.

Albert snorted and, pleased with the effect, did so again. The Code. That was a new one, he’d never heard of it before. Maybe it was new—for all he knew, Tweedledum might have come up with it himself. Which could even be why the lawbots had come for him.

Albert frowned, shaking his head. No, that hadn’t been the reason. It was far more likely to have been what he’d said next. And there was no way he’d heard wrong; the man had said the word twice, loud and clear. Virgil. That one he had heard before. Everyone had, even though just mentioning the name was one of the most efficient ways of achieving state-assisted suicide in existence.