“Let’s walk,” Sonia said as the plastic chairs in the conference room expanded, growing thick, cushiony arms and high-backed headrests. They looked like something out of an ancient Victorian drawing room. Ambrose shook his head in disgust, remembering that Adam Trevor was into furniture. Was Ivor determined to make this experience as irritating as possible?

The beige table became a deep, lacquered brown with dark grain patterns.

“Yes,” Ambrose said, “Let’s go somewhere else. Please.”

Sonia and Takashi glanced at each other. Sonia’s flat, businesslike expression softened. Ambrose felt a sudden burst of inexplicable closeness to her, as if they were old friends having a surprise reunion that required a long, warmth-sharing hug. Takashi’s Thoughtstream was having a powerful effect on his own. Ambrose caught a fleeting impression of a moment he’d never shared with Sonia—some kind of gentle, dignity-preserving rejection—that made his throat constrict and his heart beat faster.

Takashi’s crush on Sonia was so obvious it was embarrassing.

She opened the door, which had changed to a thick, medieval-looking thing made of oak and held together with dark metal strips and huge black nails.

This is an exact replica of the door to King Richard III’s throne room!

6,897 other users like this door.

Outside the conference room, the hallway was lined with bubbly temperfoam chairs, popular twenty years ago. Ambrose ignored the detailed furniture wikis instantly accessed by his Feed. He didn’t care that temperfoam had its origins in the innovative mattress designs of the twenty-second century. For New User Adam Trevor, the MEIC was becoming a furniture museum.

Thanks, Ivor.

Ambrose wondered if Mistletoe was giving the old man a hard time. He hoped so.

“Geez,” Takashi said, recoiling.

“Why does this place make you so angry, Adam?” Sonia asked.

His Thoughtstream was displaying his contempt. He shrugged. “Just thinking about something else.”

“One thing you’ll learn very soon is that fleshbound troubles cease to matter in here,” she said.

“But not really—I mean, your problems out there don’t just disappear.”

She nodded, accepting that he thought this to be true. They turned a corner and edged past a crowd of ghosts gathered around a Tetra Jack table. Metallic cards flashed over their heads and descended in a waterfall, reminding Ambrose of the monthly game he used to play with Len and some Programming Associates before they kicked him out for winning too often. His Process Flow ability, in addition to being the crux of the spooky genius that had defined his corporate identity, also made him a frustrating Tetra Jack opponent. And now that ability was gone. He could feel its absence in his mind, throbbing like an amputee’s phantom limb. What if the procedure had extinguished it forever?

As they left the gamblers behind, Ambrose got a vague impression of their combined Thoughtstreams and winced at the seedy desperation.

“Junkies,” Takashi mumbled.

“We all have our addictions,” Sonia said. “You play Saturnine War RPGs; other people play Tetra Jack.”

Ambrose glanced sideways at Sonia, suspicious of her lofty, maternal tone. She sounded more like one of his older friends than Takashi or Mistletoe. He wondered who the Sonia Carter Profile was hiding, and if his mask was as obvious as hers.