“That is actually an intentional part of how it all works—it’s why Maeve built hers in a circus school,” C-plus said. “It is supposed to be convincing on every level, right? Well, what does it mean for a thing to be convincing? Qualia are only part of it. I get those from the visuals, the movement, the air currents. But it turns out that we are wired for intersubjectivity. Our perception of reality is as much social as it is personal. Why are we disturbed by psychotics? Because they see and hear things we don’t, and that’s just wrong. Why do prisoners in solitary confinement go nuts? Because they don’t have others to confirm their perceptions. So when I bust a move in this rig and stick the landing, it’s not enough just to simulate it and show me; others have to see it, and react. Ratifying the qualia, cross-linking the history into a social matrix.”

“Makes me wonder what it must have been like for my uncle, when he was first booted up, all alone, in a world with no qualia at all,” Zula remarked. “Was he in hell?”

“I’ve often thought about the same thing. And did Sophia put him there?”

“Knowingly? Intentionally? Of course not.”

“Sure,” C-plus said. “But innocently? Inadvertently? I think so. All in the hopes that he wasn’t really dead.”

“Well, if I hadn’t known you for seven decades, I’d say the drugs were going to your head—the wrong part of it, I mean,” Zula said. “As it is, it seems more and more like you’ve found what Dodge wanted for you when he put you in charge of Weird Stuff.”

“Thanks. I am. The drugs are going to my head, though, and so I hope you won’t find it off-putting if I leave this thing on. The visual field stuff gets really problematic if I suddenly take it off.”

“I don’t mind,” Zula said, “though I wish you’d look right at me.”

“I actually am doing so,” C-plus assured her, “it’s just that—”

“Crows have eyes in the sides of their heads,” she said.

“Do I repeat myself?”

“Yes. For my part, I’d come over and hug you, but—”

“You might crush me. It’s a design failing of your exo,” C-plus said. “See, you repeat yourself too.” He couldn’t see it, because the visual simulator shopped it out of the image, but Zula was wearing an exoskeleton—the latest incarnation of Fronk—that handled most of her physical dealings with the material world, and did so in a way that kept the frail nonagenarian body inside it safe from most hazards. “Did you have a nice walk down here?” he asked.

“I ran,” Zula corrected him.

“Why the hurry?”