“Atif was really nice to me,” Jessica says quietly. Then she lets out a soft sob and Carmen rushes over, hugging her from the side, stroking her hair and saying—“Oh, honey. Oh, honey.”

“It’s not like they’re conscious,” Alex says, somewhat nervously, glancing in the direction of his vat.

Kierk, now down in front of Atif’s organoid, so close he is micrometers from pressing his nose up against the glass—“Now how could you possibly know that?”

Carmen lags behind as everyone leaves. She’s thinking that it’ll be easier to get the truth out of Greg if it’s just the two of them—it’s not like she’s unaware of the effect she has on him, and though sometimes the way she looks slips her mind (or of course when she internally feels underdressed or bloated and gassy or awkward or fat, and so on), she’s currently very cognizant of it, expressing it, right now trying to radiate an interested look. So when she tugs on Greg’s shirt he pauses, hooked, his worry replaced by consternation combined with hope.

“Could I talk to you a moment?”

“Of course! What’s up?”

“Privately.”

Carmen beckons him into a nearby break room, closing the door behind them. Greg stands nervously, fidgeting.

“What’s, um, what do you need?”

“I didn’t know you used to work in astronomy, Greg.”

His face drops. “I . . . don’t do that anymore. I switched to computer science in graduate school.”

“Because the paper on anomalous star dimming was retracted.”

Now Greg’s face pales to an even purer shade of egg white.

“How’d you find out?”

“The internet.”

He lets out a breath. “Does Kierk know?”

Carmen’s eyes narrow. “No one else knows. So far.”

“Please don’t tell anyone. I switched to my mother’s maiden name. And it follows you around! Forever! It’s impossible to shake, a stain on me, a stain on that name. And now it’s followed me here. Fuck. Just . . . Fuck.”

“Why’d you do it?”

“I really did lose that data. The files! The files became corrupted. Some sort of virus. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Carmen shakes her head softly, holding up her hands. “Stop, Greg. That’s impossible.”

“It actually happened! Someone did it to me on purpose. Framed me.”

“You lost all the data. That’s just not possible.”

Greg moans. “Oh, Carmen, you don’t . . . You don’t know these people.”

“What? What people?”

He looks around like he’s checking the room for listening devices, which makes Carmen nearly laugh aloud.

“If someone signs a nondisclosure agreement, they can’t even say if they’ve signed one. Is all I’m saying.”

“Wait. DARPA? You’re talking about DARPA.”

“. . .”

“You’re lying.”

“Did they make you retract?”

“No!”

“Did something happen? What?”