He left the shade of the last tree and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The city had gained in population: thousands of potential Friends—users with similar interests and values and thought patterns—appeared as translucent ghosts walking the streets. He moved among them slowly, unused to the anonymity the new ID provided him. There were no attempts to mass-Friend him. No Application creators were mobbing him for approval. He watched a vaporous little boy chase an even younger Friend across the street. Under the UniCorp Family Plan, even infants could be granted a login. Their privileges were severely limited, but it was in UniCorp’s interest to create the demand for BetterLife as early as possible. Status-conscious parents tended to have reckless spending habits.

A Feed that occupied the same internal mirror space as his Profile blinked to life.

Ambrose Truax @ New User Adam Trevor: On behalf of my family, I’d like to extend a very warm welcome. Better life in Unison!

Shocked, Ambrose almost shimmered out before he remembered that Len had insisted on sending automated “personal” messages to each new user. There was one from Len, one from Ambrose, and one from their father.

He remembered the day he had argued with his brother about the wording of the welcome message. Such a pointless, trivial detail, and yet they had spent hours going back and forth. He squinted up at the geometric patches of blue sky that appeared between the atmoscrapers. Barely any time had passed since he had run out on his old life, and already the things he used to care about seemed absurd. Then suddenly the details of his bedroom came rushing back—closet full of holo-fashion, top-of-the-line synth-table, beautiful view of the pasture building next door—and a dull ache spread from his chest to his legs.

He’d never see those things again.

Clamping down on the wave of longing, he reminded himself that Ambrose Truax’s family, career, and possessions were all built upon the great lie of his creation and that he was here in Unison to find the truth. Magnus and Ivor had shown him the classified transmissions. He knew his father’s secret: along with Mistletoe, Ambrose had been created according to the transmission’s instructions. This was an unreal, disconnected sort of knowledge. He didn’t feel any different, but then again, he hadn’t yet viewed the specific blueprints of his creation. It was hard enough to grasp the fact that he wasn’t fully human; he didn’t need to see the spidery nanotech of his cellular makeup laid out coldly before him. There would be time, later, for such strange and painful things.

First, he had accepted the brothers’ offer to help track down and pinpoint the source of his creation instructions. He didn’t exactly trust the brothers and their anti-UniCorp friends, but Magnus had posed an irresistible question: How many people in this world get to personally investigate the mystery of their own existence?

Not very many, Ambrose had conceded. Maybe he was the only one.