Donny complied, opting for the big couch. There was a peach-colored Financial Times on the table, with headlines above the fold about catastrophe-bond traders shorting the future, the Australian walkout from the Port Moresby talks on the rights of seaborne refugees, and rogue Prince Harry’s purchase of enough Honduran dirt to turn the small island he had bought into a new military airfield in the Gulf. Donny opted for one of the dog-eared back issues of American Heritage, from the years when it was edited by restorationist patriots. That magazine had been one of Donny’s transgressive vices in college, mostly for the illustrations that were perfect for perusing while stoned—paintings by artists of the Norman Rockwell school channeling the garish subject matter of men’s adventure pulps. The cover of the issue Donny grabbed featured a shirtless and bloodied dude shoving a large animal bone into the input drive of a wall-sized computer, under the headline my war with a chinese machine intelligence. Donny flipped to the classifieds in the back, with political recruiting ads that had seemed so laughable at the time, a decade before the networks they helped create managed to seize control of the nation-state. The memory of how clueless he had been caused him to put the magazine back. He looked at his watch, and then noticed the nearby display case full of vintage oral-surgery instruments polished to a stainless sheen, and remembered when Dr. Lecker had a very different office nearby, and Donny was one of his teen patients.

“Mr. Kimoe,” said the voice, older and harder than Donny remembered, but somehow less scary, maybe because he didn’t have Donny in a dental chair and his hands in Donny’s mouth. Dr. Lecker had retired from that practice, though there were stories that he still dabbled in a more experimental mode of oral surgery—or had before the Compact was signed.

“Thanks for seeing me, Doc,” said Donny, turning to face his childhood torturer.

Dr. Lecker didn’t look that different. Old but fit, with what appeared to be the same black-framed glasses. He still had his hair, but it was all white now, and the lines in his face cut deep, making the gray-blue of his eyes seem even colder. And when he shook his hand, Donny could remember one of those hands holding his head from squirming while the other pulled out the noncompliant tooth with dental pliers.

“It’s always nice to see an old patient,” said Dr. Lecker. “Even when they have failed to follow your advice.”

“Are you talking about your medical advice, or the political lectures you gave along with them?”

“They were all grounded in the same philosophy,” said Lecker. “And in your case, it was the mouthing off about politics that caused you to lose your tooth. Much to your father’s disappointment, as I recall.”