“El is fine, thank you,” said the voice on the other end of the connection. Then there was nothing, for a moment, save for the sound of a propeller-driven aircraft taking off. “Sorry,” he said when the sound had dwindled, “I’m at Boeing Field. Just let me get inside the building here.”

“You flew up?”

“Yes, you might have seen that I tried to call you a couple of hours ago. From the tarmac in San Rafael.” El then gave a muffled thank-you to someone who, to judge from sound effects, had held a door open for him. Corvallis knew exactly where he was: the private jet terminal on the eastern edge of Boeing Field.

“Yes, sorry, I was in a meeting. With the family.”

“Of course.”

“I had heard you didn’t like to fly,” Corvallis said.

“That’s actually true, unlike a lot of stuff that’s written about me,” El said, “but there is a need to take calculated risks.”

As often happened when he was talking on the phone, Corvallis’s gaze was wandering about freely, focusing from time to time on things that lit up his visual cortex: a pretty student from the adjacent university, a purple Tesla driving by, a chocolate Lab taking a crap in the bushes as its owner stood vigil with a blue New York Times bag everted over his free hand. A perfect red maple leaf lay spread-eagled on the sidewalk at his feet, plastered down by the rain. Around it, the concrete was stained with the colors that kids’ toys came in: sickly artificial purples and greens and pinks. Someone had come here with a box of sidewalk chalk and drawn a piece of art. Corvallis took a step away from it and saw a rain-blurred portrait of a man with white hair and beard. A God of the Old Testament in grape-colored robe with a rainbow aura surrounding his head. Inscribed at the base of the artwork was EGDOD. The name of Dodge’s most powerful character in T’Rain. Some fan must have seen the video on Reddit, pulled out its GPS coordinates, and come to the site to pay homage by chalking up an ikon. Maybe they believed that Dodge’s hospital room overlooked this place, that Dodge was in some sort of condition to look out the window and see it.

“You still there?” El asked. “I ducked into a conference room.” The private jet terminal was the sort of place that had nice conference rooms just sitting there available for people like El to duck into.