It was about a thirty-foot vertical drop onto concrete. Connors sighed. “But you don’t want to escape?”
“Not question of want, we’re in their territory. I’ve gone through thousands of scenarios, and the best one is to sit tight. We can negotiate our way out.”
She turned to him. “You know what I think?”
He sat up and smiled. “What?”
“I think you want to be here.”
“Want to be here? If I don’t get out of here, I could lose a couple of hundred-billion dollars.” With the charges filed against him, he could stand to lose more than just Phuture News. He could end up in jail. A real jail, where he wouldn’t be able to escape into simulated reality. A confined concrete cell. No future, no movement, no control—the thought made Vince ill. He put his beer down.
Connors laughed. “I’m sure you can tie up the courts for years. I bet you have cash squirreled away all over the place. Characters like you always have escape routes planned.”
That was pretty accurate, Vince had to admit. He nodded and picked up his beer again. Hotstuff, sitting in the corner, raised her eyebrows. Vince slouched into the silk pillows, inspecting the gold-flecked wallpaper and brass lighting fixtures above his head.
Connors gave up on the outside. Leaning on the balcony railing, she turned to Vince. “So you said I had it wrong?”
“Yeah.”
“How so?”
“We were trying to do the right thing when I breached all those future confidences.” Vince sensed that doing the right thing was what drove Connors forward.
“And what was this thing?”
“We found out that Cognix was hiding some test results on pssi.”
“I heard about that. So that was you guys who forced it out?”
Vince shrugged. “Didn’t quite work out like that, but we pushed the issue.”
“Interesting.” Connors considered this. “And you don’t think your friend Robert Baxter had anything to do with the attack in New York?”
“No way.” Vince shook his head vigorously. “He’s a good kid. Can be a bit of a flake…”
Connors smiled. “And this coming from you?”
Vince smiled back. Finally, a sense of humor. “Bob’s one bright kid.”
“Not just a kid, a pssi-kid,” corrected Connors. “It’s hard to know what they might be capable of. They’re…” She paused, searching for the right words.
“Not human?” Vince offered. “That’s not true. They’re just like us, but slightly more advanced. People 2.0.”
“If you say so.” Connors pressed her hands together at her chin. It was her thinking pose. “And you know Baxter this well how?”
“From surfing together.”
Connors’ head sagged and she snorted. “Surfing together. Wow.”
Vince sat upright in the bed. “You can tell a lot about a person from surfing with them. Board meetings, we’d call them, sitting in the swells and chatting. Bob has a lot of friends. That says something about someone.”
“Sure. A lot of criminals have a lot of friends.”
“Funny.” He put his beer down. “I’m being serious. The way someone lets other people get up on the waves, helps out if there’s a problem. He’s a straight shooter, nice guy, whatever you want to call it, but he didn’t unleash some weapon that hurt people. Of that I’m sure. His worst crime is being a little nosy.”
Connors paused. “I heard he’s a drug addict.”
Vince stared at her. “And did you also hear his twin brother killed himself?”
“Yeah, I did…”
“So give the kid a break.”
Connors pushed herself off the railing and came into the room. She sat down on the bed opposite Vince. “And what about Sidney Horowitz. Do you think he had anything to do with that reality virus that nearly wrecked Atopia?”
Vince didn’t answer as quickly this time. “Naw. Sid likes to think of himself as a rebel, likes to play pranks, even get up to some mischief, but he’s a good kid, too. A bit of a loner, but a good kid.”
“Forensics said his digital fingerprints were all over that thing.”
“Maybe, but it wasn’t Sid that unleashed it.”
“You sound awfully sure.” Connors narrowed her eyes. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Vince finished off a last gulp from his beer. He put the empty bottle down. “What do you mean?”
“Makes you look awfully suspicious to jump off Atopia right after someone sabotaged it, then go and hide. If you guys had nothing to do with it, what are you doing out here?”
Sighing, Vince picked up a pillow and fluffed it, then stuck it behind his back and leaned against the headboard. “I’m not sure how much I should tell you.” Patricia had given them strict instructions to keep this to themselves. If nothing else, Vince liked sticking to a plan.
Agent Connors pointed toward the locked door. “We should be working together to find a way out of this. I know you have more information than you’re telling me.”
“Work together?” Vince threw his hands in the air. “Find a way out of this? We are only in this because of you.” He swung his legs off the bed to face her. “And I should help you for what, so you can drag me to jail? I saved your life.”
Connors didn’t flinch or back away. “Someone’s got a quick temper.”
“You come out of nowhere, try and snatch me out of the sky. You know nothing about me—”
Agent Connors held one finger up in Vince’s face. “Oh, I know you.”
“You know me?” He looked at the ceiling and then back at her. “Why don’t you tell me, then?”
“I know you stole Phuture News away from your business partner when you started up.”
Vince stared at Connors. “You know nothing about that.” He took a deep breath. “Want me to describe you?”
Connors shrugged.
“Let me see,” began Vince. “Workaholic, never married”—one hand shot up—“wait, married to the academy. That’s you.” He rocked back a little. “I bet your dad was a cop.”
Connors’ face remained impassive.
“Yeah, that’s it. Trying to live up to Daddy, always needing to prove yourself. That’s why you tried to snatch me out of the sky. All this drama. You need to prove yourself.”
“Not bad,” said Connors quietly. “But I know you, too.”
“Oh yeah? Try me.”
“Just another rich asshole who thinks he’s above everyone else.”
10
“For the money, of course,” replied Bunky.
Sid volunteered to help Shaky and Bunky repair one of the construction mechanoids. Melodies of a Lynyrd Skynyrd song echoed from a hundred years in the past. The music filled the virtual worlds Sid was building for the simulations. He had never heard the song before—a tribute from another time to an Alabama homeworld—but it was growing on him. Bunky picked it.
“I mean, it’s not just the money,” Shaky added, “it’s our jobs, like, you know what I mean, mate?”
They were trying to explain to Sid why they’d kidnapped him. On Atopia, money had never really been a motivator. It was just something that existed, in the background, secondary to the grand experiment that was Atopia. With unlimited access to synthetic reality, who needed money to buy things? You could just spawn as much of anything you liked, at any time, and perfect health was an unspoken part of the deal. On the outside, however, all these things he had for free on Atopia—the smarticles, unlimited multiverse access, skins—cost money.
“It wasn’t really about kidnapping you, mind you.” Bunky clapped Sid on the shoulder. “We were just securing you. The money was supposed to come from the bounty for catching Willy’s proxxi.”