Ambrose nodded and followed Danielson past carefully tended shrubbery and through the glass doors. His Process Flow abilities, always murmuring on autopilot in the back of his mind, indicated that the procedure would usher in a new phase of his young life, in which Unison would easily surpass plasteel as the most important human invention of all time. His father’s careful preparations ensured no other outcome.

The pair’s hardcoded security tags opened another set of doors, and they strolled into the crowded lobby, where Ambrose stopped, transfixed. He had not been to UniCorp HQ in years, and things had certainly changed. The cavernous room was a museum for every innovation in social networking, right up to the current Unison Version 2.0, a demonstration of which was projected twenty-five feet above their heads. And the demos were actually functional; he watched a weary teacher usher a group of little kids around twin screens—screens!—displaying Facebook and MySpace, or as Martin Truax called them, the great-grandparents of Unison. The teacher clicked an antique mouse and a series of boxy faces appeared. Ambrose wondered if the creators of those networks had even bothered with Process Flow and shuddered. How did they maximize profits without knowing exactly what people were going to do with their Accounts?

“Funny, isn’t it?” Danielson asked.

“What?”

“How people used to accept being anchored to a screen and a keyboard. Seems like it ignores the basic fact about human beings.”

“What’s that?” Ambrose knew, but played along.

“We’re all animals, and animals hate to be trapped.”

As they threaded their way across the lobby, Ambrose paused at the U-Space exhibit, the first major transition away from screenbound social networking. It was way before his time, and so primitive looking that he laughed out loud. Glitchy, stuttery avatars—simple projections—viewing hovering text, manually adding Friends to their lists. It was embarrassing, and he felt a strange sort of gratitude at being born in this exact place and time.

U-Space had been short-lived. It was too much like a game and too little like the real world. People wanted something familiar, an enhanced version of reality, where everything ran smoothly. But U-Space did one thing right: it paved the way for a young genius named Martin Truax, who emerged from out of nowhere with his revolutionary BetterLife networking model.

Martin Truax forbade his programmers to simply refactor existing code. Unison would be constructed from the ground up, its pieces designed by small teams of Associates dedicated to the philosophy that Danielson had just repeated for the millionth time: human beings are animals, and animals hate to be trapped. Independent ideas would then be analyzed and integrated into early stages of development or stripped for bits of code and rejected. The result was something radically new that still felt like an old friend the very first time you logged in.

Ambrose wandered in front of Danielson, feeling increasingly dreamy as he moved past the Unison Version 1.0 display. It was a decent imitation of the real world: you logged in and walked around your house, your neighborhood, your school, but everything seemed better—there was no waiting in lines, information flowed freely and easily, Friendships and Activities were predetermined from Process Flows and prescreens. Real-world problems melted away. Widespread contentment became the rule rather than the exception. Ambrose scrutinized the Version 1.0 demonstration until its flaws became apparent: the clunkiness, the glitches and delays as people entered crowded places. He watched as a shopping mall (scaled down to fit inside the roped-off exhibit space) blinked and froze hundreds of people mid-purchase. He shook his head. The hazards of 1.0.