“Ms. Paget?” comes a modulated, electronic voice, and Iris turns. The Clockwork waiter stands behind them. “You’re the only one left. Would you like to float back to the world below?”

“Can I take my friend?” Iris asks.

The Clockwork and Chip glance at each other and share a few megabytes of data in a quantum burst.

“Yes,” the Clockwork waiter says. “The Drop Bubble can support up to seven hundred pounds without deformation. Your chance of dying accidentally remains one in one hundred and twelve thousand.”

“Good,” Iris tells him. “Because in my family no one dies without getting paid for it.”

10.

They fall slowly into darkness.

The bubble, almost twelve feet in diameter, detaches and begins to spin lazily down through the gloom. Iris and Chip are standing when the Drop Bubble lets go of the hatch, but not for long. Iris’s knees knock, not from fright but because her legs are so wobbly on the slippery-stretchy material under her feet. She loses her balance and plops onto her butt.

It is difficult to imagine Chip off-balance. He crosses his ankles and carefully sits across from her.

Iris leans forward to look through the glassy bottom of their bubble. She sees other bubbles, spread out below, floating here and there. Blue will-o’-the-wisps drift among them, constellations of bobbing, hovering lights: swarms of drones the size of wasps, armed with sapphire LEDs.

“This was just what I wanted for my birthday—only I was going to come here with my family and friends,” Iris says. She cradles the aquaball in her lap, turning it absentmindedly in her hands. “I’m glad I didn’t now. Those little girls were gross. That little creep playing her smug power games, trying to blackmail me. All of them casting spells on one another with their overpriced Hideware. My friends and I are older, but I’m not sure we’re any better. Maybe sometimes it’s best to experience something alone. Or just with one friend.”

“Which is it? Are you alone? Or with a friend?”

The bubble carries them into cool, drifting mists. Birds of shadow dart through the clouds around them.

“To be a friend, you’d have to like me as much as I like you.”

“I don’t just like you, Iris. Until the meter runs down, I would do almost anything for you.”

“That’s not the same. That’s a program, not a feeling. Clockworks don’t feel.”