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Everyman Felix Iranzo winds up caught in an existential threat to his fictional, and yet terribly real, world.

Here is a cyberpunk story that I've kinda felt like finishing and getting posted for a long time now, and so here we are :3 if you were following this on Patreon, this is an updated version with, uh. Some smut :P and other things fixed. I hope that y'all enjoy it--thanks to Spudz for his help fixing it over the years, and to Arcane Reno for the setting and inspiration.

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute--as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

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"At Second Glance, the Gods," by Rob Baird

"Help! Help!"

The sound was a tinny cry in the wilderness. Felix, by nature and calling the good fortune of lost souls, fetched out his map, turning it until he could orient himself properly. They seemed to be a few hundred meters off: he was the closest one--perhaps the only one--around to lend aid. Gripping his walking stick firmly, the wolf set off.

He had not gone ten paces when a dark shadow fell over him, and a moment later his ears were split by a blood-curdling scream. He glanced up in time to see the wyvern pull out of its dive at the last minute. Leathery wings beat at the air, nearly knocking him over.

Shaking his stick angrily, he swore at its receding form--but of course he was as nothing to the dragon. What was a wolf, even one as noble as he? Just another morsel, and judging by the fetid reek it left behind its jaws had seen more than enough of those already.

Wyvern season, he thought, has come terribly early this year.

Was that what had happened to the person now calling for his aid? Beset by those terrible beasts--frantically trying to fight them off as those snapping, yellow, razor-sharp fangs drew ever closer?

Well, it was their own damned fault, of course. Only the foolhardy chose to explore the valley. None of its rumored treasures counted for much, did they, if you came home maimed? Or not at all. He reached the edge of a rocky outcropping, peering down to the stream that burbled below.

Felix Antoni Iranzo--Felix Lionsbane--cinched his lion-skin coat tighter and picked his way carefully down. Feeling for footholds with his walking stick, he moved slowly, until his heavy boots met the stream bank.

The wolf's sensitive ears guided him towards the one who had called out; he found her pinned by a large boulder. She was shouting at what, at first, he took to be another boulder still--then it moved, and he could see the imposing form of the bear menacing her.

"Begone!" he shouted to it; the shaggy beast turned, regarding him in hateful eyes. Its slavering jaws dripped, and it almost seemed to be licking its lips. Felix drove his staff into the ground with the sound of pealing thunder. "Go!" Bears were not supposed to be hostile, he knew, not at this time of year--but there was no point in taking chances.

The beast turned its massive head between the meal it had almost made and the wolf that came to steal its kill. Felix unsheathed his sharp sword, and with the sound of the metal the bear seemed to think better of the attack. It dropped back to all fours, taking a few steps towards the stream--then it whirled, and charged him.

At the final moment he leapt from its path, using his staff to pivot to safety. In one fluid movement he swept the heavy wooden walking-stick around in an arc, slamming it into the back of the bear's skull.

Yowling in anger, it shook its head, scattering drops of thick saliva. It roared, and Felix roared back. It raised a huge, meaty paw to swipe at him--then it seemed to freeze, as if confused. Its paw twitched; the sound of its snarl guttered.

Two things happened then at once. It became animated again--and it roared in terrible surprise and anguish, because in that moment of hesitation Felix had driven his sword to the hilt in the bear's massive chest.

He jerked the blade back. The damage was done; rich blood gouted from the creature's ruined chest, rattling like heavy rain against the foliage. Its snarl ebbed into a strangled gurgle, and when it tried again to swing for him it staggered and went down heavily.

Felix left its twitching body, and picked his way back to the trapped adventurer. Her eyes were locked on the bear's corpse, but when he crouched in front of her she shook the surprise from her visage.

"Thank you..."

The wolf shrugged. "Doing my job," he grunted. "Nothing more. Now, what seems to be the matter?"

The young woman, a slender fox whose tunic matched the red of her fur, gestured to the boulder. "I... I fell, and I seem to have become... stuck."

"You might've escaped," Felix frowned. It was hard to tell; where the boulder pinned her the rock was largely hidden beneath her cloak. "If, perhaps, not with your possessions..."

"I know," she admitted. "But it would be so hard to come back here to get them... and I thought perhaps you might free me..."

He sighed heavily. What she meant was that she did not want to lose her weapons and armor--quite valuable, he suspected, and liable to be taken by brigands in the time it took to return. "What's your account number?"

"0438547," she said dutifully.

Felix closed his eyes, thinking about the number--focusing on it in his mind until the details came to him in a rush. "Lily Allard?"

"Yep."

"You've already used up your three free aid calls in the current billing cycle. It's thirty cycs for this one."

"Thirty?" the vixen whined. "I could almost buy a new set of armor for that..."

"On the black market, yes," Felix agreed. "And if I didn't catch you, or the gold farmer you worked with, you'd be home free. So if you'd like, I can leave you here."

She splayed her ears. "Surely you can be a little flexible... Maybe you could take something in trade?"

"Something like?"

He could see her performing the mental calculations. Thirty cycs was worth... a half hour of her time? An hour? She would waste that much time just trying to get back to the valley. "You know, this isn't the only thing I'm good at..."

"You're not," Felix pointed out, "particularly good at this."

"Better than I look," she pouted. "But it'd still be better than a skinshop, right?"

Felix Lionsbane rolled his eyes. "I'm on the clock."

"Later?"

Well, what did it matter? "Fine."

"Yeah?"

"The Type Mismatch. Let's make it eight, this evening." Not that she would make the rendezvous; he could've picked anything. Felix was a soft touch.

"But you'll let me go now?"

"Sure." Felix lifted the woman's cloak, and then frowned. It was obvious what the problem was: her lower leg was fully embedded in the rock. No wonder she couldn't budge. With an oath, he struck the boulder with his staff, making it flicker and disappear. "Get up?"

She did so, smoothing her clothes back down. "Thanks."

"Damned collision detection," he muttered. "Probably wasn't your fault. Lag or something."

"It didn't feel like it..."

"Got lucky, then." He waved at the dead bear with his staff. "Might as well loot that, too. Think you can get good money for bear teeth and claws--they're normally pretty rare."

She nodded. "Thanks again. Appreciate you not charging me."

He bowed heavily. "Any time," he said, and then made his way back up the steep bank of the mossy canyon. When he was alone again, he used his staff to summon a tall rock for cover, and muttered a quick spell.

The glowing, spectral form of another canine appeared, flames licking around its head. Despite this effect, he looked rather bored: "'Sup?"

"Couple of bug reports to file, Marty."

"Hit me."

"Got some sync errors in the White Skull Valley subnode, I think. Somebody's av got clipped through a boulder. Wasn't her fault, so I didn't charge..." At least, not officially.

"No prob', hoss. That it?"

"Are we supposed to be having the wyvern event now? Because I got divebombed by one of those, and I thought they didn't spawn randomly as of..." he scratched his head, trying to recall. "Patch 2026? That was last quarter."

"Nope, no wyverns. Maybe somebody aggroed it from another subnode? They're a mid-tier boss in the Blood Canyon level."

Felix wasn't entirely convinced, but he nodded. "Maybe. Last thing, then, is I got a bear spawning with warg AI, I think. It sure wasn't acting bearlike."

"Entity ref?"

He took out a scroll and unfurled it, pulling up the logs of his encounter. "It's gotta be this one, 00A5EC19."

Marty's muzzle opened and shut quickly, and Felix heard the crunch of pretzels through the magic spell as his supervisor looked through the code. "Huh. Yup, you're right. Looks like we had some bandwidth problems earlier; went out of sync."

That wasn't a good sign--not for the most profitable gaming company in the city. "Do we need to comp anybody?"

"Did they ask?"

Not yet--but he could hear another plea for assistance. "No. Alright, Marty, I'm getting another call. Thanks for the help." He closed the portal, and walked quickly back into the foreboding forest, with its craggy, gnarled trees shaped by millennia of dark magic. "Pray, who calls for aid?" he asked, cupping his paw to his muzzle to help his voice carry.

"Up here."

Felix blinked, and looked upwards, to where a dark figure crouched, hidden by the leaves. "How may your humble servant be of assistance?"

"I... I lost my items."

"All of them?" Felix held up his staff, casting a pale glow that revealed the cowering avatar. Yes, he had indeed lost all of them; he turned the light off to preserve the man's decency. "Ah. Yes, so I see. What happened?"

"I don't know. One minute I was headed for the Keep; the next..."

Felix Lionsbane, Tier Two On-Call Technical Support, sighed heavily, and thanked supreme powers he didn't really believe in for the blessed fact that his shift was nearly over.

When it was done, he found a quiet corner, hidden by a curve in the brook. Greenery surrounded him--the trees and vines of the deep forest; the moss of the stones. He heard chirping insects, and the twitter of birds. Then he closed his eyes.

He opened them again in silence, facing a formless grey wall. His apartment measured barely six meters on a side, if one didn't count the tiny bathroom, with its sorry excuse for a shower and the cracked mirror that served as its only decoration.

But none of that mattered. His job gave him the only thing he really needed: the high-end broadband box he used to plug in. That alone was worth the most lavish of real-world dwelling places. Who needed a physical form? The set told him how much energy his body had used since plugging in, and he carefully measured out sufficient quantities of nutrient mix, blending it with water to make the unbearably sweet compound a little less overpowering.

It was late morning, in what small-minded people called the real world; the cold light of winter spilled in its pale way through the drawn blinds. Felix set his alarm to give him a few hours of sleep, then curled up on the bare, thin cot. His dreams, as usual, never lived up to the waking moments of the Abacus.

When he woke again, the sun had nearly set, which was just fine to his way of thinking. He didn't feel particularly hungry, so he sat down before his computer, feeling around for the connection points at his temples...

A sea of unread messages greeted him, though a quick scan suggested that none were especially interesting or relevant. He waved them away with a dispassion born of experience, to focus on more pressing questions: it was always a good idea to be properly attired, and the bar had certain standards...

Settling on a checked shirt whose patterns danced and glowed softly in response to the sounds around him, Felix picked his way through the series of menus for the local network until he found the one marked: 'Maintenance and testing repository--old.'

The node was a mess, filled with unused objects and half-finished ideas. It looked a little like a warehouse after a particularly bad storm, debris scattered everywhere, and the background noise was a whining static that repeated with an audible click every five and a half seconds. Most people would never enter it, and nobody would want to stay longer than the time it took to choose a different node. But it had been designed by the same people as the bar, and they had taken a programmer's customary shortcuts...

Marty had shown him the trick. It took finding a particular object, a coffee mug that always respawned in a particular box against the far wall. Then all one needed to do was to take another object--Felix used an old desk lamp--and try to put it inside the mug. In a well-programmed node the collision detection would prevent this from happening. In the maintenance and testing node, however, it became entirely possible to stuff the lamp into the coffee mug.

The programming logic knew that this was in contravention of all laws of physics and decency, and he felt his hands tremble and jolt as it tried to reposition them in such a way to resolve that conflict. Then it would give up, and try instead to reposition the actor who had brought such chaos into the world--namely, him. His avatar shuddered, skipping about... then hitting the wall and then clipping through it. This triggered a check that transported him into the adjacent node--which was the bar.

And, because there was no ordinary way to do this, the bar's owners had naïvely assumed that anyone coming from the maintenance area was authenticated.

It was an easy way to avoid the bouncers, and the cover charge; a mild bit of mischief that didn't even rise to the level of hacking. Felix appeared in a maintenance closet, which he knew from experience opened into one of the back rooms. A minute later, unnoticed, he was in the main area of the bar.

Type Mismatch was a curious place at the best of times. It hosted many different bands of many different genres, although its specialty was a discordant fusion of tribal rhythms. Felix found it slightly unnerving, to be reminded of what lay beyond the pale of the cities--the wild and the atavistic--but curiously invigorating as well. If you paid attention, the beat was a call to dance; if not, it slunk quietly into the background, and lent a feral energy to whatever else you happened to be doing.

Felix let his eyes wander over the bar's inhabitants. They were of his generation--young, clinging to the spell of the code unwinding in bursts of frantic melody around them. The node employed a heavy degree of visual compression--the colors and shapes, at times, took an abstract, dreamy quality. But this let them stream the music at impeccable fidelity, so they said. It also let them fit four hundred avs in a node that only paid bandwidth costs for three hundred; this, of course, was nothing but happy coincidence.

To his surprise, he found Lily Allard sitting in a booth along the wall. She was watching the live band, and it took her a second or two to note his arrival. When she did, her black ears pricked: "Oh, hello."

"I have to be honest, I wasn't really expecting you to be here."

The vixen grinned. Outside of White Skull Valley, her ears were pierced; the platinum rings flashed and danced to the sound of her bright laugh. "It was an excuse, more than anything."

"For?"

"Coming here. I don't go out often."

He nodded, and took his seat in the booth, facing her. "More the adventuring type, I guess?"

"Adventuring has tangible rewards. This... well... I won't say it doesn't," she smirked. "That would be awfully mean to someone I just met. I did mean what I said, though--thanks a lot for being willing to help out."

"It's complicated." Felix pressed his paw to the shiny surface of the table, and a circular menu sprung from it--little icons showing various consumables they had on order. "What are you having, by the way?"

"Kirmizi sour? What do you mean by 'complicated'?"

He found the icon and flicked it twice with his fingers--once towards her; once towards him. The drinks sizzled into life a moment later, once his account had been properly debited, the dark red of the pomegranate pressed invitingly to the edges of the glass like liquid ruby. "Well, if it was a problem with the node, that's not really your fault. I mean, the Terms and Conditions blame you, sure, but it doesn't feel right to me. I don't like charging people for node problems."

Lily smiled. Before the sharp white of her canines, the kirmizi looked almost like blood. "No problem extorting them for a bit of sport afterwards, though?"

He didn't feel especially guilty about this. "As I said, I wasn't expecting you to come. But the job has to have some perks, right?"

"Besides getting to play for free?"

"I'm not such a fan, actually." He chuckled at her raised eyebrow, and took a drink of the cocktail. Plugged in, and at his sync level, it was very nearly as good as the real thing--and who could get Nafthali whisky in the physical world? Not Felix.

"Alright," she finally prodded. "What are you a fan of, then?"

"Puzzles, I guess. You know, there's that one where you need to solve five-dimensional puzzles? If you're good enough at it, they pay you pretty well--which, to my mind, means that it's doing something to improve your brain. All the fantasy stuff..." he waved his paw dismissively. "It just seems like a distraction."

"Oh. You mean, like it doesn't really matter?"

Felix rolled his eyes. "I'm not one of those people." He knew there were some who believed that nothing incorporeal held any significance--but this was a tedious proposition, and one he had no time for. "I just don't see that it does much to help me in my everyday life, you know?"

"Isn't that ironic?"

"Ironic?"

"I mean, because it's your job."

He shrugged--the first resort of hip, wired men like him, somewhere between insouciance and terminal apathy. "Not really. My job isn't killing dragons or enchanting crossbows. I'm supposed to stay in character, sure, but... like I care about the universe? I don't even know who the king is."

"I don't think I'm really a sorcerer, you know. It's just fun. Sometimes I play other games. Sometimes I just, you know. Look for new things. This music, say."

Felix had tuned it out. Now he made the conscious effort to listen. Lily didn't seem to notice, but there was something subtly off about it to his ears. The longer he listened, the more jarring it became, until finally he could take no more and suggested that they leave. The vixen finished her kirmizi, licking her lips: "Well. Your place or mine?"

"Up to you, I guess."

Outside Type Mismatch--the 'real' entrance, anyway--was the main street of the older entertainment district. There was no reason to leave through the front door, except that it felt more natural, some logical bridge to whatever followed. Lily watched the crowds passing by for a moment, then took his paw and pulled him in for a kiss.

Like 'the front door,' it was something that felt natural. She felt warm, and he could taste the sweetness of the alcohol on her lips, and on her tongue as he slipped into her muzzle. Her fur was soft, because she'd told Abacus how his fingers were supposed to register it, and how it was supposed to feel to have her in his arms.

"Ground rules?" she finally asked.

"Sure."

"No cloning, obviously."

"Obviously," he agreed--not that it was legal to duplicate someone's avatar to begin with.

"Nothing too weird. I sync pretty high."

Felix raised an eyebrow. "How high?"

"Pretty high. Look, it's better that way. You don't?" Her head tilted, and she laughed. "I guess you must see enough in your line of work to stay all... detached and stuff."

"You don't want me to be? I thought this was kind of... uh..."

"Quid pro quo? Transactional?"

He gave a faintly apologetic shrug. "I mean..."

"It was. But. You seem like a nice guy. And..." Now it was the vixen's turn to be sheepish. "You have a nice avatar. I wouldn't mind, you know, exploring a bit." So that was why she'd kissed him: she wanted to see how well his avatar had been programmed. Figured, correctly, that his corporate job had given him a side benefit or two. When he grinned, she took his paw. "Don't judge, alright?"

She pulled him into the next alley, and stepped through a door that opened into a quiet, warm cabin. Her piercings and denim jeans were slightly incongruous in the tidy, firelit residence, more suited to the fantasy game than anything else. There was no one else around; outside, craggy mountains stretched beneath a slate-grey sky. Snow had fallen recently. It promised to fall again soon.

"Expecting more neon?" she asked him.

"Maybe a little." That was the thing with fantasy, though--why she'd asked him not to judge. It could be revealing. Felix's own creations were rarely so sedate, nor so secluded. "It's pretty."

"And the bed's comfortable," she added. The vixen stepped closer to him, arms circling Felix once more. When she pressed her muzzle to his, and their lips met in another easy kiss, she gasped. She'd turned up her sync rate, he realized. And, seeing as how they were alone, he did the same. A little bit, at first. Just to see.

Her fur became softer, warmer; the thrill he felt, drawing her lithe frame close, felt as exquisitely electric as it felt genuine. Their tongues met, and intertwined, and his paw searched for the edge of her shirt. She could simply have deleted it, but they both seemed to understand that there was something to the process, to the feeling of her exposed fur beneath his fingers as he worked the garment upwards.

Lily panted raggedly, and hastily finished the job of tugging it off so that she could press her body back to the wolf's. Her jeans went next, and he groped for her rear, squeezing her tightly, spilling a moan from her tense lips against his own. The cabin had begun to fade--the simulation prioritized what it saw as the most important elements, and the looming snowfall mattered less and less as the seconds ticked by.

They didn't make it to the bed. He guided the vixen to a sumptuous couch, its edges increasingly vaguely defined. The rug beneath it, at least, was soft when he knelt on it, spreading her legs for him. Her thigh fur was even silkier, immaculately kept. And as he nuzzled her, working her legs wider, he caught the scent of her arousal, stronger the closer he got to his goal.

He doubted she'd programmed that specifically--that was all an interpolation, a guess, improvised. It didn't matter. It was still enticing. Her taste, when his tongue worked over her slit, was exactly as tantalizing as it needed to be. And Lily's gratified sigh told him plenty. He kept lapping, pressing in closer and closer, as the tang spread perfectly naturally in his muzzle.

The wolf narrowed in on her clit, first flicking his tongue against it, then circling it with a deepening pressure. Lily bucked and squirmed, and when the wolf growled she shuddered into a breathless moan at the wash of his breath, and the eager way his nose pushed to her. Synced high enough, there was all but no filter between what he was doing to her and how her brain thought it should be perceived.

Raw pleasure, so sharp that as he slipped his tongue between her lips and she gasped in rapture Felix had to admit he was looking forward to experiencing it himself. He did tend to keep himself detached--but now, kissing the vixen's slick pussy, hearing how every touch had her whimpering, he fully intended to abandon that. Anyway the environment was so small and simply rendered that there was nothing to distract him, nothing to introduce those jarring moments of lag...

Just the two of them, and the sudden, tight grip of her paw at his ear that his senses magnified--made warmer, firmer. Like he was melting into her, when Lily pulled his head close. He lapped faster, more insistently, taking his cues from the way her graceful spine arched and she yelped his name until her head snapped back and any words became a high, desperate wail. He looked up: her eyes were shut tight, and her muzzle lolled, and she bucked in convulsive pleasure against his muzzle.

Her peak was so intense that he thought, watching her tremble, her avatar might have errored out. But, no: gradually the jerking slowed, and the hazy edges of the room became clearer, until the view beyond the window once more showed snow-capped mountains. Her fingers relaxed their hold on his ear. "Fuck," she breathed, and sank back into the couch. "Oh. Fuck, it's the little things..."

"Yeah?"

He crawled up to join her. Her face was still writ with slowly ebbing pleasure, and when his paw slid between her legs and his finger ran along her lips the shudder looked to be almost overwhelming. "Something about that tongue. Like you were all... fuck," she sighed again. "All high-definition. That was good, Felix."

"A lot of fun," he admitted.

"How about we, ah, actually try the bed?"

He let her get up and lead him to the bedroom, slipping his own clothes off while he followed. Once again it was odd how natural it felt to do that, rather than to simply disappear them from the system's interface. Even as he tripped over an errant pant-leg, though, he kept going.

Lily giggled, at that, and settled down into the bed. Her ruddy pelt was gorgeous: smooth and neatly brushed, and yet... yet her hair was still mussed, from when she'd tossed her head back, and the fur of her thighs was still damp and matted. And when he got between her legs, leaning over the vixen to kiss her deeply, it no longer served to think about it as a simulation at all. He wanted her. Not his avatar, or hers. His own instincts were in control.

The tip of his stiff length found her easily, nudging warm, and wet, and velvet-soft flesh. Felix pushed, and slid smoothly, slowly into the vixen. Lily's eyes rolled back as he entered--then his own lost focus, distracted by the steamy, clinging heat engulfing his shaft. The act of sinking into her felt so good, so intense and gratifying, that even when he'd hilted he kept pushing by reflex, grinding into the shivering vixen's hips.

"Felix," she whispered through the kiss. He pulled back and thrust again, groaning as her folds enveloped him, and her claws left white-hot lines down his side. "Oh, yes... take me..." She breathed it a few more times, while his hips slowly pistoned, until a heavier plunge drove him in slickly--all the way in, their bodies flush and tightly pressed to one another. That time, instead of a plea, he got an exulting cry.

So he bucked faster, to the sound of her gasped encouragement and the wet rhythm of their coupling. She was irresistibly warm inside, the subtle texture of her walls exquisite as the wolf's shaft stroked over them in the swift, eager tempo of their mating. The vixen's breath started to catch--she gave up the kiss for a sloppy, apologetic lap to his nose--and her legs crossed snug behind his flexing hips.

She squirmed, and tensed. The dainty triangles of her ears swung back, and she managed a few huffing breaths, and then her paws were clutching Felix desperately. The constriction of her legs brought him to his own shaky halt--all he could manage were short, humping shoves--but it let him feel how she tightened around his cock, how her muscles fluttered enticingly about that stiff, intruding flesh. Outside the mountains had gone dull again, and the sound of the fire was distant, but every gasp and clenching spasm of her climax was gloriously, deliriously present.

When she let him go he began to move again, with the same forceful urgency. Her claws dug in, and a strained moan told him her peak had not so much passed as it had receded. He shifted his angle, let instinct take over enough that his knot started to fill out, and took her faster. Harder. Let her feel the thickening bulge sliding in, with its physical promise of an imposing tie, and ground it against her from within.

And sure enough it took precious few of those deliberate strokes before she locked up beneath him a second time. Lily's head fell back, baring her throat. He bit at her shoulder, driving himself against her in steady, sharp thrusts that left him mostly hilted, pushing deep in the vixen. She howled like a coyote, then, writhing while his frame pinned her, and when at length she finally slowed and came to a halt her legs fell limply to either side of his.

"Fuckin'... Felix," she panted. "They teach you that in tech support?"

"Maybe," he teased.

She managed a slightly dazed grin, and pushed his head up so that she could kiss him. Her hips wiggled, shifting his buried cock in her experimentally. She kept her nose pressed to his. "Your turn, right?"

"If you want." He pulled free, far enough that it took a proper, noticeable thrust to claim her again, and a bit of added pressure to sink the knot in. She panted shallowly, and he kept going while she recovered. "Could be."

"You're still very in control," she pointed out. And she was not, from the way she gasped to the slow, full rhythm he built back up to. "Give it up."

"What?"

The next time he hilted, she trapped him with one leg, and pulled his head down for her muzzle to find his ear. "Stop fighting. Here--nudge your sync rate up. Try, at least." She sensed his hesitation; paused, herself, and traced the rim of his ear with her finger. Well, what was the harm? People changed how fully they connected to Abacus all the time. His set was safe.

Then he gasped, as the warmth of her body suddenly hit him. She let him pull free to thrust back in, spearing deep into wet, tight, coaxing heat that bypassed any part of the wolf's rational mind to slam straight into his more carnal instincts. He bucked roughly; grunted--there was an urge now, an impulse to take her. He rutted in, quick and hard, any sense of fading control sapped by the moans that rewarded him.

"There you go," she breathed--clinging to him, riding it out as he rocked erratically between her thighs. "Just enjoy me, Felix, you've earned it."

Without conscious consideration he turned his set up all the way. And then he was snarling, pounding the pleasure-racked vixen. Normally Felix had to think about tieing, of course, had to think about summoning his release when he and his partner decided they were done. This time the outside world drew in tight, and the need to reach climax in his mate did the work for him all on its own. All he knew was the squeezing, rippling pleasure of her body. The feeling of his length, pushing into folds that spread invitingly around him. And, finally, a clinging, giddily satisfying pressure gripping the base of his knot.

He was tied, his fevered humping only wedging him more and more securely in, and the reward for getting himself good and knotted rose up white-hot in his loins. He shoved in hard when the pleasure hit, felt his cock jerk against contoured resistance pressing in from all sides, and groaned desperately as tension yielded in a long, powerful spurt that jetted deep in the vixen--filling her at once, bathing his tip in the slick heat of his own cum even while he planted it in her.

Felix couldn't help himself: kept shoving, pumping his seed into her with the need to empty himself. The messy warmth spread out over his twitching shaft as his load steadily overwhelmed her. He gripped Lily's shoulders to hold her close, heard her squeal again, and seize up about him. But it was second-hand knowledge; all he truly knew was the ebbing bliss of breeding his bitch. Only his knot kept him in place, and as his humping finally slowed there was a curiously visceral squelch to the last few thrusts.

They said that high sync rates were dangerous--that you could wind up getting yourself scrubbed for real if something dramatic enough happened when you were connected that way. It was very hard to think straight, and for a lengthy spell he was half-convinced that he'd managed to do just that. Then a soft touch caressed his shoulder. "Still with me?" Lily asked.

"Yeah," he muttered.

Presently he rolled to one side, with his arms wrapped around her. It had begun to snow outside: huge, soft flakes, threatening to blanket the cabin. She gave him a kiss. "You'd really never done that before?"

"I guess not. Put my subconscious in the driver's seat or something."

"Your subconscious really wanted to make a mess of me, huh?" She reached down, fondling his sack, and Felix hissed a surprised groan. "What now? You want to go again? Done for the night?"

"Stuck," Felix pointed out.

"Well. You can fix that, can't you?"

He could, of course, technically. "Yeah. It just feels... weird. I guess. Unnatural."

Whether she thought it was absurd or not, she obliged him by letting the question go, working her fingers through his pelt. "None of this is really natural, though..."

"I know. And it's better than the real world. I know that, too," he assured her. "I already told you I'm not one of those people."

"True. Haven't been tied in the real world, not for a long time. You?"

"Not ever," he said. "I suppose I'd still enjoy it, probably. Right? It's not like getting into a swordfight or fighting off a bear."

"Sure." She gave the tip of his nose a soft kiss. "I mean, there's the cleanup. Figuring out if you need to apply to the Bureau of Intimacy for a license or go to the clinic for morning-after treatment. It's more risky to be impulsive. So..."

"Good point."

"I figured maybe you'd want to go again, though?"

After the intensity of their encounter, his nerves still felt raw. He found himself thinking about how they'd met, and the vague sense of something being off-kilter. And how, as he'd gone over the edge, he'd felt the simulation go hazy at its edges like he was suffocating. The closer you got to reality, the more those little things stood out.

When they fucked again he kept his sync rate low. Lily enjoyed herself, and that was good enough for him. His thoughts were wandering. Later, still edgy, he excused himself and made his way to the middle of the grand city. It was late at night, to the extent that time existed, but revelers packed the park, and he had to walk all the way to the top of the hill to find some solitude.

Immersing yourself completely took practice. Good node designers knew how to make the environment feel "real," which half the time meant making it behave in completely unrealistic ways--adventure nodes where every bird of prey screamed like a hawk, every mug of beer frothed impatiently, and every bad guy knew to aim for your shoulder.

But bad designers were common--those untalented enough to approximate reality, or so talented that their approximations became unsettling. Dealing with them meant knowing when to selectively ignore those things that were bothersome.

But he still noticed them. That was what had bothered him about the bear, and about the music at Type Mismatch. And that was what was bothering him now.

Outside Abacus, in the physical world, Tel Haherut crowned a large, steep hill; from the city center, one could easily see the forests and mountains stretching away to either side. Its virtual doppelgänger sat in the midst of a great plain, instead, but the geography was largely the same.

The city's links to her neighbors were here rendered like massive elevated highways, with travelers picked out in bright lights. On an ordinary evening, as visitors came to visit her bustling nodes, those paths would be sparkling with constant activity. Now there seemed to be a cadence to the information flows--the movement was not quite jerky, but nor did it have the fluidity that he expected.

He was tempted to blame latency--indeed it had all the trappings of lag or limited bandwidth--but the intercity data cables were multiply redundant and had such capacity that, to hear the corp's propaganda, it could not be saturated by a hundred Tel Haheruts all acting in concert.

What was important, though, was not the reality but the perception. If people felt that the Tel was falling behind, or no longer able to maintain its architecture, they might go elsewhere. That might mean diminishing profits for his employer, and he had absolutely no doubt that his line of technical support personnel would be among the first to go if belts were tightened.

But then, what was he worried about? It could've been any number of things--meteorological conditions turning briefly south, say, or regular maintenance. His mother, from what he remembered of her, had always accused him of paranoia.

Over the following days, though, the problems seemed to jump out at him. He retrieved half a dozen adventurers who had accidentally clipped into the landscape and counseled a dozen more who had lost battles or items as the result of some glitch in the system. Finally, exasperated, he tracked Marty down in his control room.

The control room wasn't real--but then, honestly, was any of it? He had never met Martinus Catilia in the physical world, after all. Probably, in that pale echo of reality beyond their sets, he too was sitting in a water-stained concrete hovel. How silly would you have had to be, to think of that as who he really was?

When Felix knocked at the door to his office, his knuckles against the wood struck with the sound of chimes. The door slid wide, and after Felix stepped through Martinus waved it closed with a theatric flourish of his paw. "Good evening, Lucky. Is everything alright?"

"Maybe," Felix shook his head. "I could just be imagining things."

"Well, we all are, aren't we?" Marty had a warm grin and that kind of unshakable good cheer one acquires from getting in on the ground floor of a massively profitable company. "What are you imagining, specifically?"

"Do you still get the maintenance bulletins?"

"Yeah..."

"Anything on them?"

"What do you mean?" Infrastructure work was not in Felix's remit, of course--and he cursed himself for his lack of curiosity in the past, which made the inquisitiveness now seem slightly out of character. "Anything like what?"

"Are we doing any maintenance on lines..." The wolf closed his left eye--a tic he'd acquired long before that helped him recall the information that swirled in the electronic aether. Numbers seemed to paint themselves over the lid. "Let's see, 85-E, 86-E, or 92?"

He opened the eye just in time to catch the slight twitch to the other canine's features. Martinus recovered swiftly: "No, I don't think so," he said, back to his ordinary, genial mood. "Why do you ask?"

"I'm still getting a lot of glitches, but I got curious and tracked down the interlinks--nearly all of them seem to be on data that's carried over those branch lines. Maybe it's nothing, but..."

Marty had soft, floppy ears that matched his friendly, easygoing nature; now these flicked a bit, as he gave a thoughtful nod. "Maybe it's a problem with your set? Have you considered that?"

It was such a ridiculous suggestion that, at first, Felix wasn't certain the man had made it honestly--not that he meant it humorously, but that he was giving Felix a chance to back away. "I ran a full diagnostic. Anyway a set problem wouldn't show up in the server logs, and, well, you've seen the things that have been happening in our node..."

"I guess..."

"Look, I'm not trying to cause problems, Marty. It's just, you know--we're popular, right? I mean, I saw on the news nearly seventy percent of our traffic is international. I just want to make sure we're not about to have any problems--or if we are, I mean, that I have some answer ready." Why not play the 'good employee' card, after all? He had the years of experience to back it up.

"I'm sure it's nothing."

Felix frowned, chewing on his lip; there was a numb twinge, and he realized he must've been doing the same thing in the physical world. "Marty..."

His ears flicked again, and then splayed. "Felix, isn't it past your quitting time?"

"Marty, come on. When I mentioned the names of those lines, you knew what I was talking about. Now, what is it, man? We planning some new expansion pack? Is it a problem with the company? I can keep a secret, I just--"

"Hey. Lucky." He'd never heard the dog's tone so curt before. "You're off the clock, man. I said it's nothing to worry about. Go home and stop asking questions like that, okay? Somebody's going to think you're losing it."

A glint in his supervisor's eye made it clear enough that he was not going to get any further information, and Felix nodded. He shifted nodes randomly for a spell--staying in one place only until it started to seem familiar, and then moving again.

Why would Marty care? It had to be something with the company, some privileged bit of information that he... Felix trailed off. That he what? That he thought Felix would share with unscrupulous competitors? What would be the point? His life was bound up in what the company gave him anyway.

Finally, despairing, he settled on a more radical course of action. Martinus had once given him his login credentials to the city maintenance servers. He logged in, only a little guiltily, running a few quick scans until he had what he wanted.

Then he wandered out to one of the older nodes, supported with aging hardware--run by some ersatz landlord too apathetic to upgrade. Everything was in low-resolution; the avatars furless and awkward.

He found a transfer terminal that was suitably slow to boot up and tried to remember the sequence. Legacy mode on the terminal... check. He typed a few commands to start a systems diagnostic, occupying the poor computer's circuits so completely that every keystroke came with a noticeable lag before it appeared on the screen. The "teleport" command, when he entered it with a switch to proceed regardless of errors, took nearly ten seconds to bring up the old GUI: "Please specify your destination node." He entered '32767' and then, almost as an afterthought, hit the '+' key to increment the number by one more before hitting 'enter.'

And the world vanished.

The graphic user interface, after all, was only a friendly skin on the age-old TELEPORT command. It trusted its user, and trusted them as well to know that legacy node addresses were stored as a 16-bit integer, for which 32,767 was the highest possible number. When the user tried to go one higher, error checkers in the validation code should've caught this--but the computer was so occupied that he was already gone by the time the message Node index out of bounds flashed on an unseen screen.

He reappeared in legacy node ? 32,768, which by logic had no right to exist. But exist it did: sharp, clean architecture stretched up to a starless night, and straight boulevards were crowded with people.

Most of them were not real. Lifelike avatars, they were designed only to confuse, and to give a false sense of the node's population to anyone investigating. Friendly hats looking to round up someone for their corporation, say--maybe the appearance of all the ghosts would only trouble them for a minute or two, and maybe that was all that it would take.

But the person he wanted to see was not hidden, and made no effort to be so. Vicky Belaia was three meters tall, and when he stepped into her office he had to crane his head to make eye contact.

This was a conscious--and conspicuous--choice. The studies said that people who created imposing avatars tended to be more self-confident back in zero world. It was as though the avatar had recursed back upon its creator. Belaia, he'd heard, was short in the physical world--but so tall here that it was beyond the point at which one could accuse her of overcompensating. The lanky, red-furred wolf seemed to enjoy ducking through doors--or, in areas too primitive to implement collision detection, simply walking through the ceiling.

"What do you want? I'm busy," she said, now; her ears, he noticed, did indeed nudge ever so slightly through the roof of her office.

"I need to talk."

"Yeah? Find someone else. I don't talk to corpies."

Vicky, like everyone in Unsigned City, was off the grid. The hacker nodes were accessible only through tricks and glitches in Abacus's code; their residents were odd and antisocial. But they generated chaos, and chaos was needed for many forms of useful calculations, and the overseers of the project generally seemed content to let them be.

He had almost been one of them--he, and Vicky, and Zafarin Wildborn, and stately CC Keogh. He still remembered the flickering, half-coded café, after he'd been offered the job. "Obviously," Vicky had said, downing a cup of coffee that swirled with vivid neon colors, "you won't accept it."

But, of course, he had.

"Lose the attitude, Vik. I think you'll be interested in this."

"Why?"

"Because I think something may be happening, and that puts you in a position to be first to know." Her white ear flicked, almost--but not quite--imperceptibly. "See? You know I care about you."

"Save it," she growled, and leaned back in her oversized chair, looking for all the world like a monarch. "What's going on?"

He pulled a deck of cards from his breast pocket and gave the pack a firm rap against his paw to activate them with his credentials. One by one, he flipped them onto her desk. "Subnet 7891: nodes 69FC, 3DCC, F969, 998A, and 530B. Subnet 7894: nodes B15E, E0C0, 2A85, 5974, 40D7, and 2E65. Subnet 4274..." he went on, until he'd cast fifty-seven cards before her.

"Yeah?"

"Look at the AMBER rate."

"AMBER," she corrected brusquely--'rate' was redundant. The Adjusted Mean Bit Error Rate tracked how often data was lost; a low rate was a prerequisite for the network. She tapped the table sharply, and the display on the cards flipped to show the numbers. "This is high. What's the floor?"

"Thought you hats could get all that?" he teased. The baseline error rate across node hardware, which could be used to make educated guesses about population and activity, was a closely guarded corporate secret. "Isn't that the point?"

Vicky made a rude gesture.

He pulled out another card, with the data from the maintenance server. "Fine. Here: this is fresh."

"Well, these are high, that's for sure. What, Iranzo--you having problems in Elfstar? Can't level up?"

He rolled his eyes at the derogatory term for the game. "Some of the nodes are company property, yes." He gestured to the cards in turn. "But most of them aren't, and most of our nodes aren't having issues, either."

"What's the corp excuse?"

"I actually don't know," he admitted. "There isn't one yet. The thing that gets me is, I asked my boss and he told me to stop asking questions. But I figured, you know, you'd never stand for that... and I didn't want to let you down..."

She grunted, frowning at the cards. "You believe it's serious, then. We haven't talked in three years--you must have a good reason. You think it's bad hardware?"

"Why would they keep that a secret? They're always working on the nodes."

"The Forster Problem?"

"Heat death? I don't know." Most of the node infrastructure was maintained by artificial intelligence and highly advanced robots. It was said that there were fewer and fewer real people who had a complete understanding of how they operated. Some people believed that, eventually, this knowledge would be inevitably lost. And then, as entropy and system decay took their toll on the maintenance units, they might begin to shut down as well.

Eventually entropy in the system would reach the point at which it was no longer usable. But nobody knew that this would be the case, and the Heat Death of the Abacus was largely a philosophical construct. The inventor of the theory, indeed, didn't see it as a bad thing. Not everyone was a fan of the connected, artificial lifestyle.

Vicky swept her arm in a grand gesture over the desk, and in its wake the cards straightened into neat rows. Staring fixedly at them, she tapped along the glass surface, sending little ripples and shockwaves through the cards, shifting the data written on them, calling up different variables and permutations of variables.

She had always been a better hacker than he, and soon Felix found that he wasn't able to follow the track of her claws as they sorted and resorted the cards. "Hmph," she grunted.

"Hm?"

"Quiet." But this was a good sign--she was getting into the data, losing herself in the desire to understand it. Her eyes, the color autumn leaves always had in the zones that had seasons installed, were sharply focused. "There's a pattern here," she finally said. "But I don't know what to make of it."

"What kind of a pattern?"

She flicked her shadow-black paw, and the cards spun so that he could read them. "It's definitely hardware related, but it's not a fault. It looks a lot like some of the data lines are causing problems. I'd say 82-C, the whole 84 block, 85-E, 86-E... a few others. But there's nothing... special... about... oh, of course."

"Yeah?"

"They're all lines that connect to external ones. If the data stays inside the city, no problem. If it goes outside..."

"Most of our customers are international. That could be why we saw it first..."

"Look at the line diagnostics on the trunk to Tira, though... no errors reported... SNR is almost ninety decibels... last six checks all passed. It's doing fine, it's carrying--ah, fuck!"

"What?"

"It's pushing a hundred and twenty terabits per second. The link is completely saturated."

"That's not possible," he protested reflexively. "They said there's plenty of bandwidth--most of the cable's supposed to be dark."

"No," she said. "That link's well over capacity. That's where your errors are coming from. Same with the link to Eber, same with the link to Korah..."

He looked at the numbers and saw that she was telling the truth. The fiber optic cable, which corporate propaganda said could not be used up in centuries, had been completely filled. This had unpleasant implications of its own: "That's got to be close to the processing power of the whole city, to generate that much data. What are they doing?"

"Find a cog to tell you," Vicky shook her head. "Because I have no clue. We haven't heard anything about it, here. But you know who might..." she trailed off, and before he had the chance to ask he noticed she was already starting to sweep the cards back into a stack.

"No?"

"Then come on, let's take a walk." She handed the stack over to him, and he dutifully stuffed it into his pocket, standing up along with the wolf--who had to bend over to keep from sliding through the ceiling. "Have you met Weird Rasa before?"

Weird Rasa's house--Vicky called it a temple--rested at the bottom of a cliff so steep that the server seemed to have difficulty rendering the bottom of it. Felix was half inclined to find an interlink that led directly to it, but Vicky bared her teeth in a knowing grin and nodded to a rickety tramway.

"Rasa knows all the strings behind the scenes, Iranzo. If you try to take a shortcut there, you'll wind up scrubbed. You can reconnect--if you don't get too sick--but he doesn't take kindly to that."

"Is that legal?"

"Is anything here? Come on." The tram lurched into motion, and as they descended on ancient tracks down the cliff the sea crashing against the rocks took on odd, fractal patterns. Up close, it looked silvery--like a pool of mercury, but agitated with titanic ferocity.

The little wooden shack a hundred meters above the water's edge was marked with a hand-drawn sign that read 'RASASASTRA,' and then below it: 'Go away.' Vicky, who was slightly taller than the shack itself, rapped heavily against the roof. The message on the sign changed: 'Can't you read?'

"It's important, Rasa."

Finally the door swung open; for all that Vicky had talked him up, Weird Rasa looked remarkably normal. A nondescript canine with dark red fur, his muzzle was starting to go grey--either an affectation, Felix supposed, or he was one of those who took pride in making no alterations from their offline appearance. His voice was gruff, and graveled. "How important can it be?"

"What do you know of," she asked, leaning her massive body down to look at him from eye level, "that would take a hundred terabits per second of bandwidth?" When he made no answer, she grinned fangedly. "What about four hundred and twelve?"

"I don't do fantasy stories, Bella," he grumbled; he had a slight accent, to Felix's ears, which had to have been an affectation as well. The server software handled translation automatically. "And who is this one? Using his real name, no less. Unmasked, around here? Pfah!"

"Felix here is a corpie. They don't do masks; you know that. Upstanding citizens--but he used to be a friend of mine, and he has an interesting little dilemma."

"Something's occupying all of our intercity backbones. Vicky thought you might be smart enough to figure out what it was. Anyhow, she wasn't."

The red dog grunted. "Hardly a surprise." Finally he sighed, and stepped back into his shack, pulling the door open wide. "Alright, come in."

Vicky had to squeeze to fit herself through the door, and when they took a seat around a small table her hunched form looked rather comical. Their host, however, didn't remark on it, and Felix suspected that Weird Rasa must've grown as immune to her quirks as he had.

"The real problem with answering your question, of course, is that nobody really knows what Abacus is about, anyway. Do you, Felix Iranzo?"

Put on the spot, he shrugged. "Harnessing the computational power of living brains."

Rasa and Vicky Belaia exchanged tired looks. "Thank you," the dog said drily. "If you were writing an encyclopedia, that answer might even have been useful. Harnessing them for what? According to the corporate propaganda, it's doing useful tasks--analyzing chaotic data, powering wind tunnels, solving unanswerable mathematical quandaries and that sort of thing."

"You're saying that's not it?"

"I'm saying for using all that brainpower, they haven't made many changes, have they? Where is your cold fusion? Where's your immortality? They have the whole of the world bound up, every city cranking away on... on what? What do you do, corporate man?"

"I'm a moderator for a game node. I help people out, settle disputes, that kind of thing."

"How much better has your game gotten since you've worked there?"

"Better?"

Rasa shrugged and turned up his paws as though the question had been obvious. "Fancier enemies, larger worlds--things like that."

"Not... too much..." he had to admit. The Valley looked about the same as it had the first time he'd seen it.

"Really. All that computing power lying around, and they couldn't spare the cycles? Because that power was working on a cure for all known diseases? No. No, there's some other purpose. The corporations let it come into being for some reason..."

"Well. It keeps us stupid," he offered, and this drew a thin smile, a beckoning nod. Felix had come to the conclusion himself, as had nearly every other rebellious hacker at some point. "As long as we're in here, we're not causing trouble offline. What's there to be mad about when food, and medicine, and anything we want is virtually free? Who cares if they're taking some of our mental capacity--we're not using it anyway, right?"

"That's a start," Rasa nodded.

"But they still have to be using it for something," Vicky pointed out. "And apparently, that something isn't just here in our city."

"Which means it must be important," the old man agreed. "Now, what Felix calls 'keeping us stupid' some of us might call 'keeping us safe.' A lot of the processing power is pure maintenance, naturally. Power lines, water lines, environmental systems. And the biological component..." When he saw Felix's questioning look, Rasa smiled. "It gets to what you were suggesting, Felix Iranzo. A city can monitor everything; they know when dissent is starting to emerge, and why, and what they can do to defuse it. As I said, it lends a particular security--although some people believe, in their paranoid way, that that was the point all along: corral everyone where they could be kept docile."

"And what do you say?"

Rasa gave a cryptic shrug. "I'm just pointing out that, even if they're right, we haven't had a war in more than two decades, and that has to count for something. Of course, now you're talking about something a bit more complicated--if they're pushing that much data, that means that multiple cities are at full power. That should only happen in very rare circumstances--circumstances where there's something big enough to require cooperation between a bunch of corporate boards that ordinarily wouldn't give each other the time of day..."

"And do you know what that would be?"

"I know what was in the design documents, at least," he smiled. At Felix's questioning expression the red dog chuckled. "Well, I should--I helped write them."

He glanced at Vicky, but the wolf didn't seem inclined to skepticism. Bristling at the shared joke, he glared: "That's not possible. The project's practically ancient--all the engineers are long dead."

"You'd think that, wouldn't you? But being one of them has to have some advantages. And we worked on some truly remarkable problems, in the early days..."

Felix rolled his eyes. "You said we hadn't discovered the secret of immortality."

"No," Rasa reminded him. "I merely asked where yours was. But maybe it won't matter. To nip this friendly little digression in the bud, I'll tell you now that the only reason we architected the ability to share computational power between cities was to prevent a global cataclysm. An impending supervolcano eruption, or a meteor impact, or something that had severe implications for the survival of our planet--in those cases, maybe, we could work together."

This proved to be too much even for Vicky; the massive wolf shook her head. "We haven't heard anything about that, though, even in the underworlds. If it's something that big, it would've leaked out by now."

"Not necessarily. Do you know what sentience is really about, my friends? It's about the ability to find patterns. You start to recognize that beating two rocks together makes sparks, or that sharpening a stone makes it easier to slice open a gazelle. You see the cycle of the seasons, and to explain them first you settle on gods--and then on science. You don't think about your ability to find patterns consciously--but Abacus is constantly at work looking for them. They might've discovered some minuscule perturbation in seismic data warning of an impending earthquake, perhaps--or a gravitational wobble from a comet aimed too close. That data would never be exposed--even to you, Bella."

Felix wasn't really sure that any of it was to be taken seriously--but on the off chance, he lifted an eyebrow and leaned forward. "And what about you?"

"Me? Yes, I can find out," the old dog nodded, licking his muzzle contemplatively. "A good mystery deserves an answer. You two should go--it's not good for your signatures to be seen here. I'll be in touch when I find something out."

Outside, with the platinum waters dashing silently below them, Felix turned to his companion. "Do you believe him?"

"No," she said, flatly. "I think he's playing us. But maybe when he comes back with an answer it'll have some clue we can make use of."

"But you don't think the world is going to end?"

She looked at him askance, her gaze sharp. "No. You know, Iranzo, I like you. I always have liked you, even after you sold us out to run with your corporate goon friends. But you have an unfortunate love of paranoia."

That was true enough. Really, the whole exercise in tracking down the root cause of the system bugs was an object lesson in paranoia, and where had it gotten him? A cryptic old man pretending to be an original programmer and a warning about the end of the world.

So he nodded to Vicky, and didn't contest her accusation. They walked back towards the tram in silence, and when she had pulled the door closed, contorting her tall body into the claustrophobic cabin, he responded to something else instead:

"I didn't sell you out, you know. They didn't even ask."

"I know. But my point is that you could've been one of us. You could've done great things--you've seen some of the work we've accomplished, even down here. But no, Iranzo. No, you sold the only person who matters out instead. You sold yourself out, for a comfortable paycheck and appropriate benefits." She spat the word, waving her paw in angry dismissal. "You know, we recently invented a new connection method. We're looking at safe sync rates higher than even the Amarna Gang was able to manage."

His ears drooped. The truth, which he had never been particularly enthusiastic about admitting, was simply that he had no place in their circles. Articulating it had always proved to be more difficult: "But I'm not one of you, Vik. It was always a lie. I don't have your... your passion. I don't know how to change the world." He glanced out the window; the fog that limited their view distance was starting to shroud the sprawling ocean. "I'm small, Vicky. I went someplace..." He sighed, pressing his nose to the glass. "I went someplace there was room for small people."

Sleep, that night, proved to be elusive--and fitful, when it came. He tracked Lily Allard down, and over drinks he went over what had happened while she chuckled quietly. Of course, he supposed, to her it was some sort of adventure.

He had gotten over himself by the next morning, when he reported for work to an unremarkable world. Even the tickets had become less bizarre; he unlocked a few accounts, rescued one person from ravenous wolves, and then slunk off to take a break, summoning up a portal distractedly. "Hey, Marty?"

There was no answer from the line; he tried again, and growled in frustration, pulling up the schedule sheets. No, Martinus was definitely supposed to be there... Resigned to logging another bug in their system, he was just starting to record the connection details from his system when an unfamiliar face appeared in the portal. "Felix Antoni Iranzo?"

"Yes?"

"You worked for Martinus Catilia?"

Worked? "Yes..."

"We're going to need you to come in for--"

The face disappeared, and was replaced with Vicky Belaia, glaring with what could've been anger but was more likely to be her ordinary appearance, seen head-on. "Where are you connecting from?"

"Home? What's going on?"

"Get out. Now. There's a public café on 31st and Snowden. Get there and log in to terminal sixteen."

"Not if you don't tell me what's--"

"Felix," she snarled, with an intensity he hadn't heard since the night he'd told her he was leaving. "Go!"

He didn't realize until after he'd disconnected that he was panting softly, gripped with sudden anxiety. Throwing on his coat, he took the few personal documents that mattered, shoving them into his pocket--knowing, somehow, that he would never be returning to his apartment.

More worrying than anything Vicky could devise was his concern for Martinus. Had he been arrested? Was something happening to the game? It seemed almost impossible; the game had been around forever, and Marty was so fundamentally good-natured that it was difficult to believe he might've transgressed.

The café was filthy, as he'd known it would be; he almost felt unclean just thinking about letting it probe into his thoughts. Turning the sync rate down, he logged back into his account to find a glowing red message from Vicky. In it were the coordinates for a private node; he keyed them in and the world flickered.

The node was completely dark, and unfinished--she must've rented it for the occasion, he decided. Vicky herself was rendered in low-resolution, highly polygonal and looking quite irritated nonetheless.

"Do you mind explaining what's happening, Vik?"

"We need to talk in private." Her eyes, rendered poorly by the public terminal, had been given a profoundly unsettling glow.

"We are talking in private..."

The eyes flashed brighter. "Don't be more stupid than usual, Iranzo. They'll be tracking this--they're probably already headed for your café. We're going to meet offline--you need to be quick and discreet. Do you understand me?"

"But... Marty..."

"Is dead," she snapped. "And you're going that way, yourself. Now, Oakview Park--there's an old bronze statue, if it hasn't been scrapped or destroyed by vandals. Get a seat--I'll find you. And stay offline." And the node fuzzed out of existence.

Getting his paws on a paper map took some doing, but he finally found a bus station that still had one up. The electric busses ran irregularly; there was no particular reason to move around in the real world. Oakview Park was a thirty minute walk--in the bitter, irksome cold of what he thought was probably winter.

From her description, Felix had initially assumed that there might be difficulty in finding a seat at the park--that it was a popular gathering point. But it was dead. Concrete paths wound through grass kept immaculate by robots; there was no sign of human life at all.

The statue was done in a metal whose thick patina had long ago obscured any of the man's features. A forgotten hero of an irrelevant war, perhaps, he stared out over the park, eternally impassive. And the park itself, Felix decided, was an anachronism, too. Empty space in the middle of so many buildings made it look nothing so much as though the city had been shorn for surgery, and the sidewalks cut like scars through the open grass.

Once, in a time well before his memory, the park had been dominated by a playground; now, though the paint was fresh and immaculate, the very quiet of the scene itself told him it had not heard children's laughter in months or more.

"Iranzo." Even thinner and deeper, the voice was unmistakable; he turned--then his ears flicked back all of their own accord.

Vicky Belaia was short, boyish, and wiry; were it not for a certain bluntness in her muzzle and the color of her startlingly white fur he might've taken her for a jackal. "Hey," he managed. "They always say your heroes look smaller in real life..."

"Shut up," she growled, a roiling puff leaving her muzzle with the force of the exhalation. The look of Vicky's avatar was one thing, he decided, but none of her personality was an affectation. "I'm out here on your fuckin' account, aren't I?"

"What's happening, anyway? You haven't seen fit to give me any straight answers--I could head back to my apartment right now and be finished with this whole thing."

"What's left of your apartment," Vicky muttered darkly. "You've really done a number this time, Iranzo. Rasa is supposed to meet us here. I think he'll have some explanation. All I know is you and I both made the mistake of trying to do a little poking around. Marty disappeared late yesterday. And two of my friends closer to the surface?"--by this she meant the open net, not the clannish hacker society. "I don't know, but I was talking to them and they vanished right before my eyes. It must be corporate security. So much for wanting to be small, Felix."

"Maybe it'll blow over. You know what Rasa looks like offline?" Someone was approaching them, swaddled in a heavy trenchcoat.

"No."

The figure drew near; his paws were jammed into his jacket and a scarf surrounded his throat, but even from what they could see he looked nothing like the ruddy dog. This one was brown and black, with triangular ears that hung down from a broad skull--and not a trace of aged white marred his blunt muzzle. But he nodded to them anyway, a conspiratorial gesture: "Vicky and Felix, I take it?"

"Weird Rasa?"

Even the accent was gone, but the solid canine nodded. "Close enough. I don't know what this body used to be called, but Rasa will do for now."

"Used to be?" Vicky's ear flicked at the newcomer.

"It's not worth explaining, my friend."

The diminutive wolf growled, her eyes narrowing. "I'd prefer you did."

"Fine. At certain high sync levels, getting scrubbed can cause a catastrophic failure in the brain--it has symptoms somewhat like a stroke. If you don't get medical attention in a few minutes you'll be dead--and even then massive brain damage is almost universal. They're not worth saving. But if you find them just as it's happened, you can imprint a new signal directly on what's left."

"You're saying you... download yourself into an unlucky hacker's body? Recycling, huh?"

"Or immortality," Felix muttered.

"That's right," the dog agreed. "Which is why I look different. The only downside is having to dispatch your previous body. Sometimes they forget that it's for the best. Nobody," he mused thoughtfully, "can beg for their life from you as persuasively as... well, as you."

"Charming."

"Oh, come off it, Bella; it's only meat. You know that as well as anyone. Now, I have some answers for you--and some instructions, as well, though you won't like them. Answers first?" He looked at the two, and when they didn't object he nodded. "Alright. It's not the end of the world, at least on purpose. It's a virus--a computer virus."

"A what?"

"An imperfect metaphor, I guess, these days. It's a bit of code designed to perform some malicious activity--and spread. In this case, it targets adjoining cities, spawns copies of itself, and then transmits random data to those copies. It's nearly perfectly efficient, designed only to overwhelm the communications networks."

The more Felix thought, the more he believed he had heard the term 'virus' used to refer to networks before--but they were archaic, with the automatic threat detection these days... "Why?"

"Abacus is fundamentally dependent on low latency and easy manipulation of data. We've gotten complacent, over the years; the old checks to ensure data integrity are... not what they used to be. If the links become saturated, race conditions will start to emerge; errors will grow increasingly common. Unchecked, it could begin a cascade failure that would bring down the entire system."

"We could clean it and restart it," Vicky said. "I don't see as that's such a terrible thing."

"No," Rasa said sharply. "It's unthinkable. Everything is bound up in these computers. Finance, politics, your nutritional calculations; the penal system. Years and years and years of trust in an infallible system destroyed in an instant. To say nothing of the base rage and disappointment of having our entertainment taken away..."

Felix blanched at the thought. "So anyone aiming for this..."

"Yes, Felix Iranzo. They're out to destroy the world."

"Do you know who created it?"

"Yes. Sort of. At least, I know someone who seems to be pulling the strings. His name--or his mask, anyway--is Heylel. He used to be one of us, one of the old programmers. He had somewhat unconventional ideas, and eventually we restricted his access to the development systems to prevent any... problems."

Vicky snorted. "But so much for that, huh?"

"Indeed. Now, he's dangerous, of course. He has access to all the old development zones, just like I do. It's probably where this program originated, and where it hides. All the cities have underworlds like Tel Haherut does; they take different forms, but the architecture of the system always creates these little spaces where things can hide."

"Can you stop it?"

Weird Rasa took a deep breath, and sighed, a white cloud forming about his muzzle. "It's hard to say. The programs themselves are well designed. Their data signatures are indistinguishable from legitimate traffic. You'd have to do a deep-packet inspection, but we're talking about doing that on trillions of connections every second. Now, the one good thing is that they seem to be referencing a control center somewhere. It's got to be a dev node, but there are tens of thousands of those to search. It'll take time--and meanwhile, there are other problems."

Vicky crossed her arms skeptically. "Such as?"

"Heylel has corporate backing. His enforcers are already trying to get to Felix here, and you'll be next, I'm sure. You, and the people you've talked to. Have you told anyone else, Bella?"

"Two people, yes--I'm sure they're already toast. They weren't smart enough to cover their tracks, and they disappeared while I was talking to them. Scrubbed, definitely, but probably worse, too."

"What about you, Felix?"

"No. I don't talk to anyone outside of..." He blinked, and then swore fiercely under his breath. "Actually, that's not true. I told a... a friend of mine. Lilian Allard. She lives in ring 6, sector 28, I think." He could double-check her account details, if he had to.

Rasa clicked his teeth, looking past the silent metal of the playground to the street and the city beyond. "There's a safe house in ring 8, sector 28. If you wanted to see if she's still alive, we could meet there."

"Would it matter?" Vicky was asking.

His tongue felt thick--it seemed such a strange thing to think he'd put Lily in danger with mere idle speculation. "Yes," he managed. "It matters. I'll go, and meet you later if I can. Where is this place?"

"It's in the basement of a coffee shop called the Singularity Blueshift." Rasa unbuttoned his trenchcoat and slipped a broad paw into it, drawing it back out with an ominously shaped bit of metal that he pressed into Felix's grasp. The gun felt heavy, warm with the dog's body heat. "Take this with you. I haven't charged it all the way, but--"

"I've never fired one of these before."

"Bare your teeth well enough, and the person you're pointing it at won't have to know. You've got maybe half a dozen shots before it'll run out of juice, so try not to act like too much of a hero, okay?"

Felix nodded, tucking the gun into his jacket. He forced himself not to run as he made his way to the bus station: it was important not to draw attention to one's self, particularly carrying a loaded firearm in the city center.

The next bus was twenty minutes late, and nearly empty; he paid his fare and took a seat. His thoughts were still racing. It was impossible to confirm anything that had been said--he didn't even know what Martinus really looked like, or where he lived, or what had happened to him at all. Maybe it was nothing but a dream, no more substantial or meaningful than anything else that happened online.

He kicked himself for thinking that. No, it was important even if he'd never really shared drinks with Lily. Beyond her set there was, after all, still a living creature, and that had to count for something.

He found the building without too much effort. The elevator was out of order, and the placard that read "L. ALLARD" pointed him towards the eleventh floor. By the time he reached it, he was out of breath and his legs burned. Things were so much easier, he thought, when I could just reprogram my musculature...

He knocked at the door, but there was no answer; he tried again, and when only silence greeted him he felt his heart sinking swiftly. "Lily?" he called, his voice far shakier than he'd wanted it--try not to act like a hero, indeed. "Lily!" He banged his paw hard against the old wood, and just when he was trying to remember how to kick a door open it swung wide.

"Felix?" The vixen's voice was a mumble, her eyes bleary. She was still wearing a nightgown, and her fur was disheveled from sleep. He hugged her then anyway, so tightly that she let out a muffled yelp.

"I thought you were dead," he explained breathlessly. "I thought--"

"What are you talking about?"

"We need to go," he told her firmly. "As quickly as possible. Look, I..." she had stepped back from him, and her violet eyes were blinking, not comprehending his panic. "Something's happened and I think you're in trouble, okay?"

"Is this what you were talking about yesterday?"

"Yes--yes, exactly that," he nodded. "Something... something seems to be happening; I don't know what, but I know it's trouble. We need to leave before anything happens. It might--"

"Now?"

"Yes! Now!"

She waved her paw tiredly, and stepped back to let him into the apartment. Then she closed the door, leaning against it with a sigh. "Cut me a little slack, okay? You come here, you get me outta bed babbling about some... harebrained conspiracy theory you came up with yesterday..."

"It's not a conspiracy theory. Lily, I'm trying to do you a favor."

Lily raised an eyebrow. "Naturally."

There were sirens, wailing in the distance. There were always sirens in the city; he subdued his momentary terror with an effort, trying to speak calmly: "There's a safe house a few blocks away. It's probably got a better connection than here--would you mind indulging me and just coming over for a bit? I can try to explain."

"I'm not even dressed."

Were the sirens coming closer, or was it merely his nerves, amplifying the undulating wail into something threatening? "Then get dressed. I... look, if I'm wrong, I'll find some way to make it up to you, alright?"

She sighed heavily, and then pointed towards the door. "Wait outside."

In the hallway, he glanced around like a hunted man, jumping at shadows. He could still hear the sirens, and it seemed to him that she was taking far, far too long. His eyes narrowed on the nameplate to her door; it was typed on a piece of paper, and prying it from the holder didn't take very long. On a whim he switched it with another apartment, six doors down.

Lily's door swung open again. She was dressed in a bulky coat, and heavy pants that flattened her legs into shapelessness. "Felix? I think there are cops outside."

Felix cursed, and the wolf slipped back into the room, dashing over to the window. Eleven floors beneath them, two cars had drawn up to the front of the apartment; their sirens were off, but the flashing blue lights made their allegiance clear. "Does that happen often?"

"First time I've seen them here." Some of the skepticism was gone from her tone.

"Is there another way out? A fire escape, maybe?" Three men had left the cars and were making their way into the building, leaving only one of their number to guard the entrance. He couldn't quite read the badge, but they had the livery of one of the corporate enforcing firms that passed for police in the city.

"I don't have one. With the elevator out, the stairs are the only way down..."

Felix pressed his muzzle awkwardly up against the door so he could look through the peephole. He could hear heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, and the sound of the stairwell door being opened roughly. A figure ran past. Two. Three. He heard a shout--"this one!"--and a glove-fisted hand pounding hard against a door. "Lilian Allard! It's the police--open up!" The banging resumed.

Lily was next to him, whispering. "Why are they--"

"I switched the nameplates. Hold on," he motioned her back. The pounding was getting louder; the policeman was threatening to kick in the door. As soon as he heard the boot crashing into the old wood he took a deep breath and turned the knob of Lily's own door, opening it hesitantly and leaning out into the hallway. "What's going on?"

One of the three cops turned, glaring at him sharply. "Get back inside, sir!" Then he followed his comrades into the other apartment. Taking the brief opportunity, Felix pulled Lily with him out into the hallway, racing for the door to the stairwell.

"Good thinking, with the plates," she gasped breathlessly as they gained the stairs. He nodded; they bounded down the flights five and six steps at a time, reckless and knowing that their deception would be discovered at any moment.

They were out of breath, panting raggedly, by the time they reached the ground floor. The remaining police officer was standing in front of his car, watching the entrance. The main doors had been propped open, but there was no way past the cop. Felix gritted his teeth and reached in to take the gun Rasa had given him. When he switched off the safety the coil whine of charging capacitors filled his ears.

Lily turned with a start. "Where did you get that?"

"A friend."

"You know how to use it?"

No. No, not at all. "It can't be that hard..."

"You'll only get one chance..."

He took a few deep breaths, and then stepped out into the lobby, leveling the gun and squeezing the trigger. The railgun kicked in his paw, and the metal slug went wide; the policeman started in alarm, grabbing his own weapon. A shot ricocheted off the doorframe and Felix had to press himself against the wall of the lobby for cover.

Now that he had been warned, the man guarding the entrance was ready for them; Felix leaned out to get a closer look and was rewarded with the sharp crack! of disturbed air and a bullet flying centimeters from his muzzle.

It was so much simpler online. And so many fewer risks... undoubtedly the man had signaled to his companions; they'd be coming down the stairs any minute. Felix leaned out, finger on the trigger. It seemed to him that he pressed it--but then his arm was jerked back sharply, suddenly cold and numb. He could see it moving almost frame by frame, twisting through the air, and hours later he heard the metallic clang of the gun striking the ground and skittering away.

Feeling was slow to return; when he looked at his paw he could see white bone where the passage of the bullet had torn his skin. Blood was starting to flow now, and he watched in horror as, in time to his rapid pulse, it rilled down along his elevated wrist.

"Put pressure on it," Lily snapped--her voice jarring him from the sudden confusion. She seized his other paw and pressed it firmly to the wound--sharp pain jolted him, and he tried the command to reset his avatar two or three times in his head before realizing that it didn't work. Couldn't work. They were stuck there.

"They'll--they're going to be here soon. They gotta--have to--maybe--they heard the shot and--and they're just upstairs," he babbled.

"I know." The vixen looked between him and where the gun had been flung by the impact. It seemed to be intact, although he was certainly no expert. "How many rounds are left?"

"I..." If he looked at his hand it became hard to think; he forced himself to stare fixedly at the wall. "The guy who gave it to me said it had charge for... half a dozen... I guess?"

Nodding, Lily cracked her knuckles. Then she dove for the gun, rolling to lower her profile. Snatching it up, she turned to the door, squeezing the trigger three times in quick succession.

Over the report of the rounds slamming through the air he heard a high-pitched yelp of pain and the thud of something striking the pavement outside. Lily kept the gun pointed for a second or two longer, and then sprinted back to him, grabbing his forearm roughly.

"Coast is clear--for now."

"Where did you learn to do that?"

"Huh? Computer games, where else?" The vixen grinned, and then stuffed the gun back into his pocket. "Where's this safe house you mentioned?"

She was pulling him through the old parking lot. He hazarded a quick glance: the cop was slumped forward against the hood of his vehicle, and a dark stain spread ominously from his crumpled body. "Uh. Ring... Ring 8, sector 28," he managed. "It's a café, Singularity Blueshift."

"That place? Really?"

"I guess." His hand throbbed dully, and he found that talking exacerbated the pain that pulsed steadily from it. Lily wanted to run, but the exertion was wearing heavily on him; every pounding step took an effort.

Tel Haherut was organized in rough concentric rings, with broad streets that formed a spiderweb out from the forgotten parks and civic buildings in the city center.

By the perimeter of Ring 7 she had to drag him, and he leaned against her shoulder, panting heavily. They waited at a stopwalk, and even after the light changed he paused, trying to catch his breath. Fortunately there was no traffic; the city was dead.

"We're almost there," she told him.

He looked up. The neon lights of the café's signage were blurry; there seemed to be one and a half signs... then two... then only one again. When he jammed his paws together the pain clarified his vision--but it was only a few more steps before it grew worse again.

Felix couldn't keep up with the vixen; another half block, and he stumbled, hard. His muzzle struck pavement, and the world went black.

When he could see again, a white face was glaring sharply at him, muzzle parted. He shut his eyes and the teeth vanished. "Hey, Vik."

"Hey," she grunted. "You'll live, by the way. Sit up."

He did, gingerly; his body felt warm, and numb, and he gathered that he had been drugged. His right hand was densely bound up in bandages. "Any news?"

"We've found where the guy's hiding." That was Lily's voice; he started to turn, and found that quick movements made the world blur disconcertingly. "Careful. Anyway, he's a hacker, alright. I guess Vicky and Rasasastra are putting together a plan to deal with it."

"Is that right?"

"We've pinpointed the control server for the virus," Vicky explained. "Rasa thinks we can shut it down, but any attempt we make and we'll be discovered, I'm sure. Heylel is smart--he'll have automatic monitoring systems looking for the slightest sign of anything being amiss."

"That, my friend, is where you come in," the dark canine said. Without his jacket he looked even more imposing; his body was stocky and muscular. "You'll need to connect, though."

"Why?"

"We need to distract him. Vicky and I have been off the grid for too long--we don't have current access codes that won't flag a dedicated scanner. Lilian is a logical candidate, but she has no administrator rights."

Felix was starting to piece it together. "But an employee of a big corporation--maybe someone whose boss lent him a few access codes a couple months back... they wouldn't arouse any suspicion."

"Plus," Vicky added, "you have a logical explanation. You saw the system irregularities. You came to us, you followed the breadcrumbs; you knew vaguely what to look for. You know the stakes are high, so..."

"So I figured on a... a quick tête-à-tête. What do you want me to do?"

Rasa took a seat, leaning over to examine the electrical connections at Felix's temple. "These'll work. You need to find him, and keep him talking. That's all--we can do the rest, but we need that distraction."

"When?"

"The situation is already critical. The longer we wait, the greater the risk we run of experiencing cascading system failures. So in other words..." The big dog clamped his paw over Felix's muzzle, to hold it in place, and pressed something hard and cold to his head.

The room vanished. He thought so, anyway; it had been dark, and hard to see details. Now he was in an empty black field, with a white, even gridline on the ground. Bit by bit, the world began to fill in: the sky turned purple, and then blue; blades of grass sprouted up, and a few seconds later he was in the middle of a park. They were in the Old Town, an anachronistic node frequented by families with a romantic view of the past.

It was brighter than Oakview had been--and this time, there were people there. This buoyed his spirits for reasons he could not immediately divine; it was nice, in any case, to see the activity. There were couples in quiet conversation, and children laughing on the swings. Children, he thought, who had no idea of the looming catastrophe. Innocence was terribly liberating.

Something in his pocket buzzed. He pulled it out to find an old-style mobile communicator. When he flipped it open, holding it to his ear, Rasa's voice came through the line: "Find a mirrored surface, and tell me what you see."

Glancing around, Felix crossed a quiet, cobbled street to find a storefront, looking into the glass. "I'm a... a tiger, I guess." He held up his free arm, looking at the striped fur with flattening ears. "Yeah. I see a gold-colored tiger. Denim jeans, a t-shirt. I don't exactly fit in..."

"They'll think you're just curious," Rasa told him. "We're proxying your connection through a series of masks. Don't trip any security alarms and you should be okay. Heylel will probably be able to get through them. If he manages to find your real connection, he might be able to reverse-geocode it to this café, so we've planted a logic bomb. It'll scrub whoever runs it. If you feel in danger, pull the plug. Got it?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Now, he has a public front--an avatar that works at the New Day Corporation, in the town center. Edward Nicholson. You need an address?"

Rasa read out a series of numbers, the node coordinates. Felix found a quaint rotary-dial phone and entered the sequence; the world disappeared once more, and this time he was standing in a bustling downtown, crowded with foot traffic, before a tall, obsidian-colored skyscraper whose upper floors rotated and undulated slowly. He closed his eyes, thinking hard, and when he opened them again his jeans and shirt had been replaced by a more stately outfit.

The lobby floor was made of marble, finely polished and so reflective it seemed to have an infinite depth it. This was the mark of ostentatiousness; real-time raytracing, which used computers to simulate every bit of light, was fantastically expensive. He made his way to the front desk.

"Can I help you, sir?" the receptionist was finely groomed--and again, every bit of fur seemed to be rendered fully. It was a remarkable effect, so interesting to watch that it took him a few seconds to answer. "Sir?"

"My name is Felix Antoni Iranzo. I'm here to see Edward Nicholson."

"Does he know you're coming?"

"He'll want to see me," Felix assured him.

Nodding, the receptionist waved his paw, calling up a hologram that, from Felix's angle, proved to be invisible. "Good morning, sir. I have a Felix Antoni Iranzo here for you. No, sir." A pause, while some question was presumably directed at him. "No, sir. ... Of course, sir. Thank you." They closed the hologram, and smiled thinly. "He said he is quite busy. I'm afraid you'll have to come back later."

Felix narrowed his eyes. "Call him again. Tell him it's about an acquaintance of his, Heylel."

The slim man did not seem terribly convinced, but he started the hologram once more. "Pardon me, sir, but Mr. Iranzo is quite insistent. He says it's about an acquaintance of yours named Heylel. Shall I send him away? Very well, sir." Something in the man's demeanor had changed; this time, when he disconnected the link, he nodded crisply to Felix. "Take the elevator to floor 73. It's the third door on your right."

In the elevator, Felix smoothed down his coat and watched the floor indicators sweep past. He felt around in his mind for the safety of the logic bomb Rasa had talked about. It took an effort not to pull it right then and there; indeed he was not entirely certain what he was even doing. Distracting the designer of a program that could destroy the entire Abacus? Unlikely.

The door marked "Nicholson" swung wide when he approached, and the rich carpet of the hallway ended abruptly in stone. Craggy and sharp, it led upwards to a rocky pinnacle fifty meters distant. He looked around and, not seeing anyone, started up the path.

Nicholson's back was to him, and he was facing a muted sunrise; Felix could only see the bulk of the man's body in a silhouette that seemed lumpy and misshapen. At the top of the pinnacle he paused--and then gasped. Nicholson's office stood at the edge of a vast cliff above a gorgeously rendered jungle, emerald green and tinged with the blazing orange of a brilliant sunrise.

At the sound of the gasp, the man turned. His features were too sharp and his ears much too big for him to be a wolf; Felix made him for a coyote. What had seemed deformities from the pinnacle's base proved to be wings, the feathers a soft cream. "Good morning, Felix," Nicholson said. His eyes were dark, the pupils cold onyx in a field of clear, pale yellow.

"Heylel?"

The coyote templed his long, bony fingers. "Why do you ask a question like that?"

"I want to make sure that I have the right person, that's all."

Looking away, the other man flexed his wings, and said nothing for a long time. The sun now soaked golden light into his feathers. "Which one told you? Rasasastra? Ostanes? Was it Alkindus, that tired old failure? Who, Felix?"

"All I want are answers," he said softly. "I don't really know your past, I just want to know what's happening. I got shot on account of this--offline I mean, where I can't even respawn. It hurt like a bastard."

"Offline," Heylel growled. "It's interesting, don't you suppose? That the only thing that really matters there is pain."

"What do you mean?"

The coyote's fur was short, and immaculate; his angular, craggy features were so ageless he seemed to be young and yet impossibly ancient. "Pleasure offline is nothing like what you can dial up in some particularly unregulated node. I imagine you know that, don't you? The stimulation of your tastebuds here would make any offline chef shudder in raw shame. Your digital ears can hear sounds no living man could even perceive. But pain... pain means something, Felix. It means that something's wrong--the only sensation that's more significant offline than in this--the real world. Oh, I see your skepticism--but by any measure this is the realest world we have. We've stripped offline of everything but pain, my friend."

"And death. You killed my boss, Martinus Catilia."

"He was going to make some very foolish decisions," Heylel growled. "Before I was ready for him. It was quick, Felix--and, ironically for what I just said about the offline world, painless. He didn't even know it was happening. Nor is he completely dead--yet."

"What?"

"I have an image of his consciousness. I needed to have time to scan it, to figure out what he knew. Unfortunately living brains are rather too fragile for that. I'll probably delete him soon, to be honest. It's more merciful than the alternative."

"Which is?"

"Keeping him alive? Activating his brain in some black void, bereft of any sensory input? Or making him a shade..."

Felix shuddered. He had heard rumors of such things before. Everyone had. Everyone had a story about someone who knew someone whose friend's brother had done the forbidden, and downloaded himself fully into the Abacus. Shades, it was said, were bodiless, and condemned to wander forever. But, fully immersed in the network, their brains operated at the clockspeeds of the massively powerful computers. Thousands, maybe millions of years passed by in the blink of an eye; every world could be explored in that time, and not one conversation. Shades, they said, went mad in the merest fraction of a second.

"So, yes, I will end his essence. And I'm sorry that I had to do it--I truly am. And that the same will probably have to happen to you..."

"Why?"

Heylel stood. He could not have been much taller than Felix in his tiger form--certainly not as extreme as Vicky Belaia. But there was something imposing in his slim body, so that he seemed to tower over the younger man. "What did your contact tell you? About me; about what I'm doing."

"They said that you had some unorthodox ideas, I guess. For the most part all they said was that what you were doing might destroy the entire Abacus project."

"Which they described, no doubt," he said, "as eschaton. The end of the world."

"Yes."

Heylel's muzzle curled in an ugly grin. "If I can end the world, who are you to stop me?" He took a step towards Felix.

Swallowing, Felix stepped back carefully. "I don't... I don't know. It wasn't my goal to stop you--just to understand what you were doing in the first place. And why." Heylel advanced again, and Felix retreated until he felt his back nudge up against a sharp rock face. "Just answers, that's all..."

The coyote's muzzle was inches from his own. "Why do you think you deserve those? Who are you, really, Felix?" His yellow eyes burned into Felix's soul. "Why don't we have a look..."

"A--a look?" he stammered. He couldn't tear his gaze away from the coyote's. He seemed to be peering into eternity itself, into the very birth of the universe--and perhaps its death, too, in an icy, lightless, loveless cold. The blackness grew, and grew, until it was all-consuming.

Then he was seated behind a metal desk, in a tiny, empty office, and Heylel stood before him. "What?"

"Where--"

The coyote looked around, muzzle darting sharply as his eyes flicked over the corners of the bare room. "Your brain is empty," he muttered. "How is your brain empty? Unless... ah!" He threw his head back in a cackling chuckle. "Of course, of course, a mask. You're not as dumb as you look. But you're not smart enough, either." He tried the handle of the office door.

Felix was, himself, still slightly bewildered. "I don't even know where we are, let alone..."

Abandoning the attempt, the coyote turned to look at him. "An abstraction," he smirked. "A symbolic representation of your brain--what I can perceive of it, anyway. Now, where's the key for that door?"

"I don't know." This was the truth. Besides, even if he had known, he suspected that he was not to tell the lean coyote anything. "I've never seen this before."

"Well, think." And when he did, he suddenly realized that the key was in the uppermost drawer of the desk. "Where is it?"

"I..."

The coyote leaned forward, over the desk, his muzzle bared in a growl. "Don't toy with me, my friend." Taking the desk in both paws he pulled it back swiftly, upending it, and the canine's ears perked up to the clink of metal on metal. "See, there we go..." He pulled the drawer wide and reached his arm in deep, pulling it back with the small brass key between his fingers.

Felix could do nothing but sit back, cowering up against the wall. Ignoring him, Heylel slipped the key into the lock and turned the handle. The world shuddered. They were back in the office; he was back behind the desk.

"Clever." The coyote turned around, looking to Felix, and then his eyes arched. "Well, that was unexpected..."

Felix glanced down--catching the fine fur of his slender arms, and the curve of full breasts beneath a dark, well-tailored blouse. His ears felt heavy--a rabbit, perhaps? He skimmed his tongue over buck teeth experimentally. In the surprise of the moment, he gave in to honesty. "A bit."

"And the key?"

Wasn't it supposed to be his mind? As an experiment, he jumped for the wall, and decided that, so far as he was concerned, gravity in the room was supposed to be reversed. Sure enough his stomach flipped, and he just barely caught himself, landing solidly on the ceiling. Across the room, Heylel slammed into it with a painful-sounding thud.

As the coyote got back to his feet Felix thought frantically. He tried to imagine his brain full of thoughts, and memories; filing cabinets popped into existence, resting incongruously on the ceiling.

"You're learning," Heylel muttered. "Sort of." He delivered a solid kick to one of the cabinets, and its drawers flew open--empty. "You can't do any better than that?"

Felix turned gravity again, placing it up against a wall this time. The cabinets tumbled down to pin Heylel, and he heard the coyote growl sharply in surprise and pain.

The key was still in his desk--but when he thought about it, it shifted to the doorframe, and he thought up a nail holding it in place, too.

Heylel crawled from the pile of filing cabinets, shaking his wings a few times to settle the feathers back down. "I'm done playing, now," he growled warningly, and hopped lightly into the air; his wings spread, and when Felix reflexively tried to shift the room once more the coyote glided effortlessly down, grabbing him by the throat and pinning him against the wall.

The dull claws burned fiercely as they gripped him beneath the chin, cutting off his air. He tried to think up some escape, but the mortal panic of suffocation filled his thoughts. He struggled fiercely in the coyote's iron hold; Heylel's saffron eyes smoldered, boring into him, no less painful than the claws.

He couldn't hold his concentration. The filing cabinets vanished first; then the desk, then finally the nail he had thought into place. The key dropped with a clatter, and Heylel's wings beat slowly, carrying them over to where it had fallen. He didn't let Felix go until the door was unlocked and starting to open.

"This is more like it," the man breathed, dropping Felix. This room was huge, crammed with bookcases like a tiny library, all full of memories. Felix was back in his comfortable, ordinary form, and as soon as his paws hit the floor he took off running.

Heylel didn't follow. Instead he took his time, picking his way through the stacks. Felix watched his shadowy form move; heard the sound books being pulled almost at random from the library.

"Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. Felix Antoni Iranzo--it's really you? You're a trusting soul; I thought for a bit you'd just taken that poor bastard's identity. Let's see... technical support. Rather below your station..."

"What do you mean?" In the halls of his own mind, Felix's voice echoed. "Below my station?"

"Inquisitive. Intelligent. Curious about the world around him. Full of ideas. I see here, my friend, a man full of possibilities. Just... weak."

What was the use in arguing? Heylel had him open, vulnerable as any surgeon's patient. "Yes."

"Consumed by the vulnerability of his own self-doubt," the coyote continued. Felix saw, from the halting movements of his shadow, that he was looking through the books carefully--and then reshelving them, with the thoughtful grace of a scholar. "Struck mute and motionless by the fear of failure. But, my friend, we all must fail at one time or another. It's not so bad."

"No, I suppose. Objectively."

"That's the secret that the offline world offers," Heylel mused; he was silent, waiting for Felix to answer, and when the wolf did not he continued anyway. "Failure is a form of pain, itself. But it's only from that that we learn, and develop. Insulating ourselves from failure is insulating ourselves from our own evolution."

"The last time I tried anything in the real world," Felix countered, "I got shot. No thanks to you."

"No thanks to me," Heylel agreed. "But at least it was tangible. At least it had lasting consequences. Only the immutable is sacred, my friend, and only the real world is immutable."

He was drawing closer; Felix had to move again, slinking down the stacks of his own memories. He saw them, from the corner of his eye--equal parts embarrassing and nostalgic. "And that's worth the pain, to you?"

"Of course. I've had a long time to think about all the advantages of this place," he snorted derisively. "After all..." Heylel's voice trailed off, and then he gave a barking chuckle. "Well, that explains something, doesn't it? I see you've been talking to Weird Rasa. We never do escape the ghosts of our past..."

"You know each other?"

"We worked together, many years ago. Before things changed. He's like me, you know: a monster, consumed by what he sought to become. Ah, my friend, if only I saw another way..."

His voice seemed to be coming from a different direction now. "Another way than..."

"Than what I had to do. Then what he had to do. Everything that happened between us... everything that will happen... come here, Felix, why don't you?"

"I think I'd rather not."

"I think, my friend, that I don't care. Come, and we can chat. It's what your friends want, anyway. Right? They want you to distract me, so they can go about their business. Rasa always was a bit of an idiot. He knows I elevate the real world above all else--you can't stop what I've done from inside Abacus, and the control center in the real world responds only to my biometrics. But we can play along. Let us talk, Felix."

"I..." Felix turned, and suddenly Heylel was standing before him, the thin coyote's eyes glowing softly in the darkness of the library.

"Let us talk."

Felix twisted about on the ball of his heel, and started running again. He heard footfalls behind him--then they stopped, and the coyote's head appeared around the edge of the bookcase. Felix just barely managed to stop without tripping. "What--"

"I didn't mean to give you the wrong impression. I may prefer reality, but I've been living in this fantasy here for far longer than you. I know how to manipulate my sync rate, friend, better than you ever will."

Heylel started towards him, and Felix tore at the bookcase, pulling it over to block the man's advance. Sync rate was the term they used to measure how deeply you were connected. The more you let yourself sync with Abacus, the faster your reflexes and the sharper your wits.

The coyote was already ahead of him again. How much faster was he moving? Ten times? A hundred? Felix swallowed heavily, and this time, when Heylel stood before him, he had the unshakeable sense that there was no escape.

Still, he tried to pull away when the sharp paws gripped at him. But at every move he was checked--as though Heylel knew what he was planning even before Felix himself had thought of it. He must, the wolf knew, have been putting nearly all of his brain into the simulacrum.

"Alright," Felix whispered. "Let's talk."

Heylel let him go. "I want to know," he said, "what Rasa told you about me. Anything but that was I was deranged?" Felix shook his head. "Fine. And what did he tell you about himself? He told you that he was one of the architects. Did he tell you what the Abacus was for?"

"He implied that it was for our protection--they use it to keep us safe. Which... which they do, after a fashion. We're fed... housed..."

"Kenneled," Heylel's fangs flashed. "My curative program targets the links between cities. He told you about those?"

"He said the cities were linked so that... so that their computing power could prevent a global cataclysm."

"Yes? Tell me, my friend"--the coyote's voice was a base sneer. "Did he tell you what that might be?"

"A meteor? A gamma-ray burst?"

Heylel laughed, then, his muzzle parted and his tongue curling. The sound was chilling, and even though his eyes were mirthful Felix shuddered to the cool sound of his voice. "Oh, much worse than that."

"Worse?"

"Think about this virtual world, my friend." That was a phrase he had used repeatedly--Rasa, Felix recalled, was fond of it too. "Think about it, and the liberty it simultaneously offers--and denies. Man is free, but everywhere he is in chains..."

Felix blinked, dubious. "That may be a bit harsh..."

"Oh? Is it? Why do you suppose they fought the Unification War? Why was it so all-fired important that not one city escape the clutches of this monstrosity?"

The war itself had been relatively minor, at least for a citizen of Tel Haherut. "I don't know," he had to admit. "Why?"

Heylel stepped back, and splayed the fingers of his hand. "Let's think about this." He started counting out on the long, bony digits. "In the two hundred years after we invented the train, their top speed increased by a factor of sixty, then leveled off. A century and a half after the first power station opened, the generating capacity of a single plant has increased by a factor of almost ten thousand--but the most powerful plants were opened four decades ago. In the hundred years since the first flight of an aircraft, their top speed increased by a factor of a hundred and fifty--and stopped. Do you follow?"

He didn't, not especially, but he nodded anyway. "Sure. Progress has its limits."

"In the fifty years after they invented the digital computer, processing power increased sixteen billion times. It follows a trajectory that is very nearly exponential. Now, my friend, ask yourself at what rate we have matured."

"I don't understand what you're trying to say."

"With a ten-thousand-fold increase in the power of industry we forged mechanized empires that laid the entire planet bare. With advances in aviation and rocketry we created terrible weapon after terrible weapon. How many people died to those inventions, in the wars between the city-states? Millions? Tens of millions? Hundreds?"

"So..."

"So we saw that the growth in computing power was being harnessed by people whose minds had not grown along with the power they were asked to contain. What world-rending weapons could you invent with a computer sixteen billion times more capable than the ones available when we first split the atom?"

Felix drew a deep breath. "You're saying Abacus was meant to provide a safety valve? If we wasted our brain cycles here, we couldn't spend them on something more destructive..."

"Exactly. And that's why it's so imperative that no one leave our happy family--they would have a terrifying advantage over anyone who was not blinkered and shackled. All this power goes to waste. The official mission of Tel Haherut is to prove the existence of the gods, do you know that?"

"How?"

Heylel grunted. "Idiocy. They reason that quantum mechanics suggests analog signals that cannot be fully processed in a digital world. They feel that by examining the most infinitesimal interactions they might discover evidence of artificiality--and, thereby, creation."

Felix shook his head, comprehension slowly dawning; slowly building on itself, resolving the picture in his head. "Then Rasa was right. The Abacus is here to keep us safe. At least... to keep us from each other's throats." Heylel nodded. "Why destroy it?"

"Of all the things we underestimated, the most significant was our hubris." Heylel folded his paws together, and from the tension Felix could see in his grip he felt that the man considered this a point of severe contention. "What right did we have to make that decision for anyone? Whose needs craved the status quo? Some fat corporate CEO who didn't want to risk his profits? We hackers, convinced of our own innate superiority? Who empowered us to take control of evolution itself?"

"Evolution?"

Heylel tore his paws apart, waving one angrily. "The Bureau of Intimacy. Didn't you think it strange that the people you randomly encountered online--the support tickets you drew, your passengers on the tram--seemed so attractive to you? So... what is the term they use... genetically compatible? Who appointed themselves the right to that little bit of eugenics, Felix?"

"So by dismantling Abacus..."

"By dismantling this cursed thing I mean to give us back the ability to take control of our own destinies. And perhaps, yes... perhaps we will destroy ourselves. But we'll be free. You could see it even now, a few minutes ago--at this sync level, how fast I was, how sharp my reflexes became. Why should I be the only one? Rasa is a conservative old fool, comfortable, set in his ways--he fears change."

"But change is the only way we can save ourselves?"

"No. Change is the only way we can be something worth saving."

The coyote was quiet, then, and Felix had nothing else to say. "What now, then?"

"Where are you? In the real world."

"I..."

"Quickly, now, my friend. There's not much time. Where?"

"I'm trying to remember," he muttered, stalling for time. If the man was right then Rasa had played him. Indeed, he had played them all. They were complicit in their own subjugation. Then he thought of what the coyote had also said: he could not insulate himself from his failures. But betrayal...

"Take responsibility," Heylel growled. "This is your chance, Felix..."

The wolf tensed; he felt nervous, and cold. He jammed his paws into the pockets of his jacket--then he paused, as his fingers closed around something hard. "What..."

The coyote blinked, and tilted his head. "Yes?"

"Nothing. Just... wondering what I have in my pocket, that's all."

"Well?"

Felix withdrew his paw; in it was a small velvet box, such as might hold a small piece of jewelry. He had not put it there--or if he had, he had completely forgotten it. "I don't know what this is," he murmured, confused.

"Give it here," the coyote snapped.

"It's not yours, I'm sure of that."

Heylel snarled, and took the wolf's wrist firmly. Felix didn't really protest--not that it would've mattered. The coyote's thin fingers turned the box over, examining it. "A secret?"

"Maybe."

Shaking his head, the coyote flicked the box open with this thumb. He blinked; his eyes darkened. "Oh," he said, simply--then he disappeared, the box tumbled to the floor, and Felix knew that it was the logic bomb at work.

Alone in his thoughts, shaking, it took him a minute to bend down and retrieve the thing. Inside the box was empty--pure, solid blackness. He closed his eyes to shut it out, and when he opened them again he was once again in the Singularity Blueshift, surrounded by his companions. "Hello..."

Vicky looked at him anxiously. "Well? What happened?"

"Nothing. I found him. We talked. Did you have enough time to shut down the program?"

"We won't know for a little bit," Rasa said. "I hope so. What did he tell you?"

"Madness," Felix answered, as carefully as he could. "He's gone mad. He told me that we were the children of stars, and that we would have to return to them. It didn't make much sense."

Rasa nodded, and looked ever so slightly relieved, leaning back. "I figured as much. You did a good job, then, my friend, to put up with it."

"But you found the control center?"

"Rasa did, yes," Lily reassured him, and patted his shoulder gently. "Now we just have to wait."

They did. As the minutes passed Rasa seemed to become more anxious; the big dog swallowed nervously, and glanced on occasion to the door of their little room. Only Felix seemed to notice his concern, and he began to wonder if Rasa thought that he had failed. Felix trusted Heylel more, in any case--as much of a zealot as the coyote was, he could hardly have put his faith in virtual security. Lily didn't know that Rasa had lied.

Then there came the sound of the doorknob turning; they all stiffened, and with the perfect, crystalline clarity of winter frost on window glass Felix suddenly knew what had happened. He knew what to expect, as the door swung wide. The coyote there was older--even more gaunt, with a snowy muzzle--but the resemblance to the man he'd seen online was unmistakeable.

But Heylel, he supposed, was gone. "Hello, Rasa," Felix said. Vicky and Lily looked at him as though he had gone mad. The seated Rasa said nothing, and the man in the doorway simply nodded in greeting. His skeletal muzzle turned to his younger, seated doppelgänger expectantly.

The black dog swallowed thickly. "It's done?"

"It's done," the coyote confirmed.

"Then..." The dog trailed off. Felix could see that he was trembling slightly; his dark eyes pensive. He looked back to the standing coyote just in time to see him nod. "Okay," the seated Rasa whispered, in a haunted voice.

In a single, fluid movement the coyote reached for his belt and drew a pistol of the same make Felix had been given. Then he fired, over and over--six or seven rounds, until the capacitors were drained. His victim jerked, breath leaving him in a bubbling sigh--the life already gone from his eyes as he slumped motionless.

Vicky was the first to come to her senses--leaping to her feet, the short wolf's fangs bared. "What are you doing?"

"Ask Felix," the old coyote smiled wearily. "He knows."

"It's Rasa," Felix muttered. "That was his plan all along. He wasn't looking for a control center online--maybe there wasn't one. He just needed me to bait Heylel into increasing his sync level, so that when he found the logic bomb and got scrubbed..."

"Exactly," the coyote nodded. "But it's over now. We've won. I'll take care of my old body." He pointed, at his own corpse. "For the rest of you... I've provided for your bank accounts. It's enough to live quite comfortably--hopefully, enough to make up for any inconvenience. But I'd prefer that you leave now... and maybe it's best if we don't see each other, ever again."

Outside the air was cold, and though it was early afternoon the wintery light was thin and tired. Vicky and Lily helped him to a cab, pointing the driver in the direction of a hospital. He didn't ask questions; perhaps, Felix thought, the real world had enough pain in it that one more casualty wasn't a surprise to the cabbie.

Recovering from the surgery--the doctor was a robot, and so he lied, saying that he'd been in an accident--he plugged in to the network. It was the same quiet residential neighborhood as before, and Felix felt a little chill despite the warmth of the sun on his fur.

He made his way to a bank, putting on a smile for the teller and asking for his account balance. When it came back, he swallowed a few times, trying to count the digits in the figure. "This is accurate?"

"Of course, sir," she said sweetly.

It was more money than he had ever seen, ever conceived of, and the cycs felt completely meaningless. Baldly artificial, like the magic spells Lily Allard's sorcerer might've cast. He found a bench in the park, and wept.

Nobody stopped him.

Finally, spent, he disconnected. In the bright light of the hospital room, the figure next to him looked deceptively angelic. He turned to them, eyebrow raised. "What are you doing here?"

"I thought you might want some company," Vicky said. "Anyway Unsigned City hasn't quite held the same... uh... thrill, I guess. The path to Weird Rasa's house is gone, too."

"That doesn't surprise me too much." Felix shook his head. "You know, I've been thinking about him."

"Why?"

"After I disconnected, he looked almost paralyzed with fear. He knew that... that..." Felix tried to find the proper way of describing it. "He knew that he'd be coming for himself. And the thing of it is, he was a big, strong guy. He could've overpowered the coyote... but then, at the same time, he couldn't have."

Vicky looked skeptical. "How do you figure?"

"How long do you suppose he's been pulling that reincarnation trick? Maybe a half-dozen times? Maybe a dozen? He's always been successful in getting rid of his older self. But that's because he can't ever slip up, don't you see? Try to imagine the sheer, mortal terror of knowing your life was about to end --and that you were responsible. If he survived, he'd have to confront that. I think... as terrifying as knowing he was about to die was, facing the reality of his past was even worse."

"When you put it like that, it doesn't sound quite so nice," Vicky agreed. "Maybe not worth being able to change your body whenever you wanted. Even if that does has its own appeal."

"I wondered if it might. But it's not like this is... how would I even say it? It's not like this is the 'real' you, right? It's not like this is the 'real' me..."

She shrugged. "It's not how I think of either of us."

"It's not who either of us have to be, either. You know... Heylel said something to me. He said that Rasa was a monster, consumed by what he wanted to become. And he said that he himself was, too."

"You said he was crazy."

Felix smiled wistfully. "It may be a bit more complicated. They are... were... supermen, after a fashion. In many aspects, beyond our comprehension. It's a funny thing, to meet someone like that. At first, I have to admit, I was awed by both of them. But at second glance the gods seem almost fragile, in their limitations. Almost... pitiable."

"Almost." Long seconds of quiet drifted. "What did Heylel really tell you?"

Felix levered himself into a sitting position, and looked into Vicky Belaia's dark eyes, searching. "I'm not sure I really know." He hoped she would accept that it was complicated. That he was still trying to make sense of it, to explain it to his own satisfaction.

In any case, she didn't press the issue.

They discharged him from the hospital the following day, with a healthy supply of painkillers, and he rented a hotel room on the top floor of a stately old building. From his balcony he could see Tel Haherut, spilling down its hill to where the city walls held in the sprawl. It was beautiful, in its own way.

Over the following weeks, he came to believe that it was important that what had transpired not go unnoticed. Men had died on its account. That had been real, and irrevocable; he owed them something for that. Only the immutable, after all, was sacred.

On a crisp winter afternoon, he slipped his headset back on. He found Lily in one of the virtual city's parks, sitting on a bench as he had done. "Hi," he said. The vixen turned to him, nodding slightly. "How've you been?"

"It's been a bit strange."

He nodded, too, and took the seat next to her. The slats of the park bench were warm, touched by a completely fictive summer sun. "Been back to White Skull Valley?"

"No."

"Me either."

"You know how sometimes you can't tell whether you've actually woken up or you're still dreaming?"

It was a rhetorical question. But there was an answer. About what had happened; about Abacus, and the awkward serendipity of their lives. There was an answer about what they had been asked to do, and what they had done. He did not know that he would be able to explain it, only that he had to try. "Do you want to get some coffee?"

"Where?"

There were a handful of them, out in the real Tel Haherut, where homeless men and the indigent came to escape the cold. Any would do. "I was thinking, perhaps, The Has Beans, in Ring 4."

"Offline?"

He nodded again. "It doesn't even have any terminals."

Outside, fallen leaves and the city's debris whirled past in a cold wind, unwatched. Outside the busses hummed, carrying their riders from fantasy to fantasy. Outside the faint sun waned, and an unremarked day yielded up the last of its possibilities to growing twilight.

Two figures sat, in an empty café. And one of the figures spoke, over scalded, bitter coffee, and told the truth.