“I wish you all the best of luck with your brand,” Corvallis said, sliding out of the booth, reaching out, almost as an afterthought, to throw an arm over Dodge’s messenger bag and the sack full of his effects. He turned without shaking El Shepherd’s hand and stalked away. His exit route took him right along the line of bar stools. Four of these were supporting humans. For midday drinkers, they seemed curiously fit. Maybe it was because they were all drinking water. They raised their heads and tracked him in their peripheral vision. One then glanced back at El. “It’s okay,” El called, “let him go.”

The sign hanging in the front door said OPEN to Corvallis, which meant that it showed as CLOSED to people on the sidewalk.

So, El had rented out the whole bar just for this conversation, and staffed it with his private security detail.

Let him go. Those were the words that stuck with Corvallis as he strode to his car. Was it a serious possibility that they wouldn’t? Were they thinking of detaining him?

It was unlikely, Corvallis decided, as he shifted his car into gear and began heading north on Airport Way. They might have been goons, but they were probably professional goons. They had no legal power to detain anyone, and they knew it. Inwardly, they had to be thinking about what a dickhead their boss was to even say something like that.

Or maybe he was just trying to settle himself down by telling a comforting story.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7

He had intended to go straight to the hotel to drop off Dodge’s things, but Zula waved him off via text message, letting him know that they were going to be busy with “the transfer” for a couple of hours. Then she added another message: C U @ Richard’s in a couple hours.

So. No vent farm for Dodge. He was going to die in his own bed.

He pulled over into a legit parking space and texted Stan: Can El get a court order? Is that a real thing?

Then he dialed Ben Compton’s number. Of the game programmers who had defected from Corporation 9592 to the Waterhouse Brain Sciences Institute, Ben had been the first to go, and the ringleader. Later, some of them had drifted back to the world of conventional game programming, but Ben had stuck around.

“C-plus.” Ben’s voice was flat. He had, of course, heard the news. His voice was coming out of the car’s sound system, Bluetoothed to the phone.

“Ben. You know about it.”

“Yeah. Of all the fucking horrible things. I don’t know what to say. Almost didn’t come in to work today.”

“Maybe it’s good you did.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Reserve a conference room in half an hour.”

“Will attempt. Food?”

“Sure. I just had a really unsatisfactory lunch.”

“What’d you have?”

“Half of a beer.”