The Leap

Chapter 1

The first time Sean Meade had the thought, she dismissed it. It wasn’t possible, it couldn’t happen, this wasn’t how things worked, and besides, the thought arose at four a.m., it was propelled by the unexpected, unwanted, odd comm she’d had with Ethan, and by four thirty, when she finally got up, the thought had almost completely disappeared.

At five, when Sean was stepping through the waist-high maze of documents in her workroom, she was thinking of something else entirely: how to generate enough income to pay for the repairs she needed on the roof. Needed? She could just put more buckets and pails in the attic and wait another few days or weeks or months. Years, maybe. She had more interesting projects than roof repair to pursue.

Sean sat in the one corner of the workroom where there was space for her to sit down and leaned her head against the wall. Then she made the mistake of stretching out her legs, which resulted in one of the towering piles of documents becoming less towering and less of a pile and, worse, the papers now blocked one of the narrow paths in the maze.

Six months ago, Sean had had what seemed like everything, but five months and twenty-seven days ago, she’d taken that everything and morphed it into nothing.

She kicked at the fallen-down docs. She’d have to restore the pile. The order was vital. Necessary.

She tried not to think about what that everything she’d had had been and what the nothing had become even though she was aware that the not-thinking method always had the opposite effect.

What had the everything been? The job of her dreams as a detective on the elite squad of the Osada City Joukko, work on the most interesting case she’d ever encountered, an appointment with the impossible-to-pin-down expert who was going to repair her roof, and what had seemed at the time like the start of a promising relationship with Ethan Stiles, the sullen yet intriguing medical examiner and research geek.

Now? Nothing. The nothing was easy to not-think about, since it was, well, nothing.

Although she did have a case. She’d been doing private detective work since her escape from the joukko, and although her current job wasn’t much, it was something. Wasn’t something better than nothing? Wasn’t that a reason to get up in the morning? Although she’d yet to find anything that was a reason to go to bed at night.

Sean pulled herself into a crouch and started re-creating the stack she’d knocked over. As she did, she glanced at each paper, reassuring herself that even though she’d lost a lot, she hadn’t lost her mind, which was as sharp as ever. Each paper, as she replaced it in its proper position in the tower, was as familiar to her as her own name and address, as familiar as her former desk at the joukko, as familiar as the empty place in her heart, a place that seemed destined to stay empty.

Ethan. They’d ruined their friendship by attempting to make it into something it wasn’t and couldn’t ever be. Sean had suspected that from the beginning, but hoped she was wrong.

As she finished reassembling the tower, her meanderings congealed around her departure from the joukko and the job she’d always thought she wanted but as it turned out she didn’t want it. Not just because they didn’t want her—or didn’t act like they wanted her—but because she didn’t belong there. Having to do things in a prescribed way, a way that wasn’t her way and that she couldn’t force herself to fit into. Their useless, inefficient, bureaucratic, nonsensical methods.

Her comm interrupted her. Ziva Walls, her current client. Sean was still not used to having clients. A detective didn’t have clients—a detective had cases and even that wasn’t quite accurate. A detective had a job to find out the truth, and the people involved, no matter how much you might like them or think you liked or might like them, didn’t matter. The truth was what mattered.

But now, as a private detective, it was the client who mattered, since Sean had to get paid. The client was the direct conduit to Sean’s continuation as a person with a home and food and some new clothing when what she was wearing fell apart.

The stack reconfigured, she stood, walked through the maze and over to her desk, and turned the comm to voice.

Meade, Sean said as she put her feet up on the desk and worked away at the burgeoning rip in her pants leg.

It’s Zee, said her client.

It’s early, Sean said, glancing at the time. It was 5:27 a.m., so maybe it wasn’t so early. When your husband had been missing for nearly two weeks and the joukko hadn’t helped you at all, 5:27 a.m. was probably already much later than you wanted it to be.

I still haven’t heard anything, Ziva said.

I’m working on it. Sean didn’t want to tell her client or herself that she’d made almost no progress. She would make progress. She had to.

Work harder.

Your case is my sole focus until it’s solved. Sean’s client had to be reassured and she didn’t want to have to explain to Ziva Walls or to anyone that her focus was never on only one thing. It couldn’t be. That wasn’t who Sean Meade was. She needed a lot of things to focus on or she’d go mad. Hence the labyrinth of papers, documents, reports, bits of information—the towers, piles, stacks, and the maze itself.

"Morris has been missing for two weeks now. He’s not like this. He’s never been like this. He wouldn’t do this to me. He’s responsible. He’s not the sort of person who would go missing, who wouldn’t call his wife, who’d just disappear. I want answers. I didn’t hire you to work on it. I hired you to find Morris."

Zee, if anyone can find him, I will do it.

Are you saying maybe no one could find him?

Yes. Sean hadn’t wanted to say that, but it was true.

A not-insignificant number of missing persons stayed missing. Anything could’ve happened to them—abduction, accident in a remote place, and death were likely probabilities. Sean had a theory that at least 17 percent of the missing didn’t want to be found, they’d wanted to escape their lives for any number of reasonable or unreasonable motives, and Zee Walls’s husband, Morris, could be one of those. Sean had known Ziva Walls for only a few days but she could understand why Morris might not want to be found.

He’s not like that. That was one of Zee Walls’s insistences: Morris just wasn’t like that.

I’ve seen odder cases. What Sean meant was that she’d found missing persons before who’d begged her not to let anyone, especially not their spouse or business partner or parent, know where they were. Know they were even alive.

I’m coming in, Zee said, and Sean heard her unlocked front door opening.

One of the worst features of being a private detective, if not the absolute worst, was that her clients felt like they could drop by her house anytime they felt like it, although up until Zee Walls, no one else had. But none of her other clients had so far been this desperate.

Sean got up and wound her way through the maze in her workroom and out through the mountainous fortress of books and periodicals lining the corridor. Her living room, though, unlike most of the rest of her house, was spare, neat, and devoid of any trace of what someone else might refer to as Sean’s hoard, but which wasn’t a hoard but a collection of significant, useful, necessary, and often crucial information.

Ziva was sitting on the red-upholstered, sculpted, antique chair that was where Sean always sat, but she kept her mouth shut. That chair had set her back a month’s pay, back when she got paid every month, and no one else had sat in it since she’d brought it home.

You’ve gotten nowhere, Zee said. "Just admit it. If the joukko can’t find him—not that they care to or are trying to—and if I can’t find him, then I was a fool to think that anyone, much less you, could find him."

Would you like some coffee? Sean herself despised coffee but everyone else loved it, so she had it handy on the minimal chance someone would be at her house and want coffee.

I don’t want coffee, Zee said, I want answers. I want to know where Morris is, why he left me, and what you’re going to do about it.

Whoa, whoa. Wait a minute. Morris left you? That’s the first time you’ve said anything like that.

I didn’t mean it like you’re implying.

Maybe you did. Maybe the pressure’s built up to the point where you’re realizing things you didn’t realize before. That can happen. Your subconscious can know things your conscious mind is unaware of. Or unwilling to face.

That is not not not what’s happening. He’s gone. That’s all I meant. He’s gone. Disappeared. Ziva’s harsh demeanor cracked and she fought back tears, but Zee Walls wasn’t the kind of person who’d cry. Sean recognized the type, since she wouldn’t cry either.

Sometimes people keep secrets, Sean said. And maybe you’ve discovered something you’d like to tell me about?

I ripped the apartment apart. It’s not all neat and tidy and spare like your house is. Zee swept her hand in a big gesture around the picture-perfect living room while Sean held back her laughter. If Ziva Walls saw the rest of Sean’s house she wouldn’t be speaking sentences with neat or tidy or spare in them.

I thought you might be right. You said that the first day we talked—that he might have been keeping secrets from me.

It’s not uncommon.

I ripped the apartment apart and found nothing. He’s not like that. He wouldn’t be like that. He’s incapable of being like that. He’s a nice person. Loyal. Reliable. Dependable.

Sean didn’t want to tell her she’d heard all this before. That the loyal, reliable, dependable people were often the ones who were actually disloyal, unreliable, and unstable and the person they seemed to be was just a front.

My place is a wreck now. Not like yours. You have to find him. Zee sniffled a bit and said, Allergies. They’re quite bad since Morris left me.

Zee—

Since he disappeared. He did not not not leave me. He’s not like that.

Was Morris seeing anyone else?

Morris would never—

I don’t mean necessarily a romantic interest. Maybe he had a new friend? Maybe a friend of a friend? Did he have any new business contacts? Someone at his job? A friend on the meshwork?

Sean had asked her all these questions in their initial interview, but there seemed to be an opening now and Sean was going to take it. Ziva Walls was not telling Sean everything she knew. That was how people were—they told you what they wanted to and occasionally added in what they thought you’d like to hear. Everyone did it, not just clients or suspects or witnesses.

He’s not like that. Ziva’s mouth settled back into a tight line, the line where it’d probably been since Morris’s disappearance. Or since he’d left her. Or during their marriage.

Well, everyone meets someone new every once in a while. Give yourself a minute to think about this.

You mean someone new he met could’ve done something to him? Killed him? Zee’s voice quavered.

Don’t go there. We don’t know what’s happened to Morris—

See? I knew you didn’t have any leads. You’re just as useless as the joukko.

Are you sure he didn’t have any new contacts, either personal or professional? Or even peripheral? Maybe he and a colleague had lunch somewhere new?

Nothing like that. Morris had a routine and he stuck to it. I’ve told you all this before. That’s how I knew immediately that he’d disappeared. He always commed me at five and he didn’t. I knew right away.

Yet you didn’t report it until the next morning.

I wanted to give him a chance, Zee said, rubbing her right hand against the arm of Sean’s favorite chair.

You might as well just tell me what it is you don’t want me to know, Sean said. How can I find him if I don’t have all the facts?

You have as many facts as you need. Even if I suspected he was having an affair with his boss’s wife, who’s had an affair with almost everyone at the company . . . even if I suspected that, it’d just be my imagination. Nothing more. Nothing real. Morris isn’t like that.

What’s her name? Sean pulled out her notepad and waited for the name.

What do you mean?

The name of your boss’s wife, the one who has affairs with everyone.

That’s irrelevant.

Let me decide.

What if I refuse to tell you?

Look, I know where Morris worked.

Works. He still works there.

He hasn’t been there since he went missing.

But that’s still his job. It has to be. He wouldn’t lose his job. Not over something like this.

Sean sat up straighter. There was a this. Now she was getting somewhere with Zee, and maybe that somewhere was Morris’s current location.

The point, Zee, is that I know where Morris works. It’d be easy enough for me to find out who his boss’s wife is. There’s no point in your not telling me.

Althea Pierce.

Description?

Tall, red hair, very opinionated. Everyone wants her. Ziva Walls herself was tall and opinionated, but her hair was brown.

Everyone but Morris?

Of course Morris wouldn’t be like that.

Right.

I don’t appreciate your sarcasm. My husband’s missing—he’s disappeared—and you don’t have a clue about where he might be.

I will find him, Sean said, reassuring not just her client but herself.

Are you going to talk to Althea? Zee was rubbing both hands on the armrests of Sean’s favorite chair now and Sean was starting to worry she was going to have to have it reupholstered. That plus the roof repair were going to set her back even further than she was already set back. It was at moments like this that her spontaneous decision to leave the joukko started seeming foolhardy.

Yes.

You can’t talk with her.

Why not?

You just . . . can’t.

All right. Sean would talk to Althea Pierce as soon as she could. There was obviously something going on there but it might have nothing to do with Morris Walls’s disappearance.

Find him, Ziva Walls said as she stood up and pointed her right index finger at Sean. I mean it.

After Zee left, storming out in the same abrupt way she’d stormed in, Sean wondered what was going on between Althea Pierce and Morris Walls. Or maybe between Althea Pierce and Zee Walls. She felt this would be the key to finding Morris.

It wasn’t. And even if Morris Walls had been having an affair with Althea Pierce or with anyone else, by the time Sean Meade would find him it didn’t matter anymore.

Chapter 2

Everything, it seemed, in Oliver Hirata’s life had slowed down. This had happened so gradually he hadn’t noticed it until a couple of days ago and even then he thought maybe he was just tired. Anyone could be tired and Hirata had spent so many hours poring over a stream of never-ending numbers on the meshwork that he had a good excuse for this tiredness.

But his initial self-diagnosis, if he could call tiredness a diagnosis, wasn’t quite right. Hirata wasn’t tired at all, but he was slowed down or the objects, events, and perhaps even the people around him had slowed down. Or his perception of them had. Or the world was moving so fast that in comparison everything else seemed much slower than it should have been. He couldn’t sort it out.

That was the other thing—the part of his brain in charge of focusing and sorting things out seemed clogged up, lagging.

Hirata had kept these symptoms, if that’s what they were, from everyone he knew, including his current lover, a person he right at that moment couldn’t name and was unable to call up an image of.

Was this early-stage dementia? Oliver’s great-grandmother had died after years of dementia, but she’d been 218 years old and sickly—she’d never taken care of herself—not 37 years old and in superb health. Until now. If this was ill health and not just exhaustion.

Maybe Oliver Hirata was just sick of his work. He’d always enjoyed numbers, which was how he’d gotten into actuarial science to begin with, learning it from the ground up so that he’d eventually become one of the foremost programmers in the field.

He hadn’t gone in to work yesterday, one of the rare at-the-workplace days in his schedule. Did he ever go in to work? But he’d woken up and it seemed like the moment he opened his eyes, the exhaustion—the slowness was more like it—had escalated. And this morning it’d been even worse. As though sleeping was causing this slowness, which made no sense, if there was anything that made sense anymore.

And, worse, working, which had always been his refuge, seemed to exacerbate the overall slowness of everything.

Right now he was lying on the floor of his garage. Why was he in his garage? How had he gotten here? How long had he been here? He didn’t know.

He tried to summon up the name or the image of his current lover. Althea something. Yes, that sounded almost right. Was her hair red? He tried to imagine making love to her but his mind’s eye showed him only a sequence of numbers with no pattern or purpose he could discern. Yet numbers always had a pattern and almost always had a purpose. Didn’t they?

Three weeks earlier, Oliver Hirata had had no problem at all with anything. His life had been chugging along at the correct rate as had everything and everyone he encountered, his work was mildly amusing, and Althea—well, she was a stunning fringe benefit to his consultancy at Pierce Sangstrom.

The day when Oliver had had lunch with the ultra boring Morris Walls and Althea Pierce had stopped by had been a revelation. Not just because up until that moment he hadn’t realized there was even one interesting meson in Morris Walls’s corpus but because the moment Althea Pierce leaned down and kissed Morris, Oliver knew he and Althea were destined to have a fantastic interlude.

That interlude started two days later when Althea Pierce showed up, without warning, at Oliver Hirata’s apartment. She was delivering sensitive Pierce Sangstrom documents, she said. Her husband, Charley Pierce, couldn’t make the trip and he’d entrusted the documents to her. She was the only person Charley could really trust. When Althea said that, she was laughing.

Your apartment’s beautiful, Althea said, staring over Oliver’s shoulder into his living room. The wall of windows was one of Oliver’s best assets, as it often made him seem even more enticing than he already was.

Come in, Oliver said.

Althea came in and stayed for two hours and forty-seven minutes. That was the kind of thing—exact timing—that Oliver Hirata had formerly had a tight grip on. But now, lying on the floor of his garage—why was he there?—he once again lost the name of his current lover. Maybe he didn’t have one. Didn’t he? Wasn’t there always an ongoing interlude? But . . .

His heart was racing but he was slow, or the world around him was slow, or both. He thought about turning over onto his side or maybe getting up but then he forgot he’d thought that. He stayed on his back.

Once upon a time, he thought. What did it mean? Why would he think that? And didn’t he have work to do?

Once upon a time there was a forest and in that forest was a house made of glass shards. The glass had been manufactured at a seaside facility in a city whose name was now another missing element. The Lost City was famous for its glassmaking industry. One of the most convenient aspects of the glass-shard houses was that the shards could be broken off and used for many purposes, including piercing intricate shapes into your skin.

The garage floor was cold. Oliver Hirata remembered her name—Althea Pierce—but not what she looked like or why he knew her. Or if she was his current interlude.

Oliver sat up. Everything became clear. This was the moment he’d been waiting for, his return to normalcy when the slowness would end and the confusion and random oddness would stop. He stood and went back to his apartment.

A vivid memory of a conversation he’d had with Morris Wall jumped into his head.

I’m having a hard time of it, Morris had said.

I know what you mean. Oliver had stolen Morris’s lover and from what Morris had said about his wife, the fantastic Ziva Walls, this was a big blow to him. But that wasn’t what he meant.

You and Althea—I don’t mind, Morris said. She’s like that. Short attention span. Or maybe no one is as fascinating to her as she is to everyone else.

Oliver just nodded. He couldn’t disagree. He himself wasn’t half so compelling as Althea Pierce was, and Oliver Hirata thought he was damned compelling. But his ego had definite limits and he knew how to evaluate just about anything. That was his job.

What is it, then?

Oliver had to be responsive to whatever Morris was saying, since Morris Walls was his main contact at Pierce Sangstrom—not counting Althea, of course—and this consultancy was quite lucrative. He was going to make enough on this job to buy the apartment next door and expand his view after he knocked down the wall in the living room. The vista would widen and so would his prospects.

It’s this program, Morris Walls said. He put his hand on his forehead and grimaced. Something’s not right and—

You’ve been working too hard, Oliver said. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to say?

Maybe. Morris ran his hand back through his thick, curly hair. Maybe.

Take some time off, Oliver said.

Althea, Morris said. I think she has her sights set on someone new.

Oliver Hirata himself had his sights set on someone else. Once his interlude with Althea Pierce ended he’d see if Ziva Walls wanted another interlude. Planning was part of the game and sometimes it was the best part, although there was no way to tell until the interlude commenced.

Morris Walls seemed to be about to say something else, but he didn’t.

The garage floor was cold, or maybe Oliver Hirata’s back was cold. Hadn’t he gotten up? Hadn’t he just gone back to his apartment and into his living room and looked out over the grand vista of Osada City and the turbulent lake? Wasn’t he going to buy the apartment next door and expand his view?

Once upon a time there was a dark forest where only one stream of light entered through a break in the trees. Everyone called the light Lux Fiat. Each person was allowed precisely two minutes a day to stand in Lux Fiat’s beautiful glow. Lately the population of the Lost City had increased and your time in Lux Fiat had been reduced to one minute and thirty-three seconds. Too bad for you if you showed up late for your appointment.

Oliver had missed his scheduled Lux Fiat that day and was angry at himself. He went home and worked on his loom. He couldn’t remember what he was making, but that was part of the process as he loosely understood it. The loom knew how to make things and you were more like a participant than a weaver.

I feel desperate, Morris Walls said. He touched his balding head. Did lack of hair make you desperate? Oliver Hirata had a full head of hair, or at least he thought he did. If he could reach his head to touch it, he could verify this shaky fact but his hands didn’t want to move at the same pace his memory thought they should. He’d have to wait.

Oliver Hirata wondered how many things he’d forgotten in the last few days or maybe weeks. When had things started to slow down?

He congratulated himself for being able to have these cogent thoughts. Logic. Logic would save him. No matter what rate the rest of the world was moving at, as long as he could maintain his logical focus, he’d be fine. He’d survive this. He’d survived worse, he was sure.

He’d stabbed himself with the glass shards of his forest home and lived, hadn’t he?

But the day he’d missed his time in Lux Fiat. That had been very bad. Almost as bad as today, if it was today. Was it?

What was a day, anyway? A collection of thoughts and memories and activities? Chores and errands and achievements and accomplishments?

Right before Oliver Hirata’s brain shut down he had a series of lucid, vivid thoughts.

Oliver Hirata. Thirty-seven years old. Actuary. Owner of apartment 9 in the Normandie, Osada City’s most luxurious residential building. Owner of a garage on the outskirts of Osada City, a rare find in a city with limited space. His assets were accumulating. He had no debt. His life was on the right track, the one where it should be. He was, for the most part, satisfied with his life, his possessions, his interludes.

Current assignment with Pierce Sangstrom. Main contact at Pierce: Morris Walls, who was Althea Pierce’s former lover. Next assignment in the works.

Last interlude with Althea Pierce. Next interlude with Zee Walls, if he could swing it, in the works. If not, there would be someone else. And then Zee.

The world had slowed down for Oliver Hirata exactly two weeks, three days, and twenty-two hours ago. Althea Pierce had just woken up and nudged Oliver, who was sleeping late. Very uncharacteristic. He always kept to a schedule. He never slept in, even during his interludes. Even during ultra interludes, which this one, with Althea Pierce, qualified as. She had a superior rating in his mental-only catalog of interlude appraisals and calculations. He excused himself from such vagaries since he was an actuary, and quantifying things was as natural and necessary to his life as breathing.

When he opened his eyes part of his being moved off-center. That’s what he’d thought at the time, a fleeting notion. And now, during Oliver Hirata’s last lucid moments, he remembered this occurrence, this direct, unexpected sensation.

That day things had seemed just a tiny bit slower than they should’ve been. That morning, though, it worked out well for his time with Althea. He’d told himself it was just pure hedonic extravagance. Here in his luxurious apartment in the Normandie, where he was about to buy the apartment next door and expand all his horizons.

Oliver was certain this cascade of coherent, distinct, nonfantastic memories was a sure sign he was recovering from whatever it was that had been afflicting him for the last couple of weeks. It was over and he was himself again. He’d have to comm Althea right away. Then maybe he’d comm Zee Walls as well, get her set up for the next interlude.

Once upon a time . . . the phrase refused to go away. He tried to shake it out of his head, but his head was now moving at an even slower rate than the rest of the world. Than the rest of Oliver Hirata.

Once upon a time there were seventeen sheep in a dark forest. They had to pass under Lux Fiat every day so they could be properly accounted for and today Oliver Hirata had been chosen to give up his allotted time in the beloved light stream in order that the Lost City could make sure there were still seventeen sheep. Seventeen was the magic number of sheep that guaranteed that Lux Fiat would always be there for the residents of the dark, dank forest.

Oliver Hirata hadn’t wanted to give up his time in Lux Fiat, since he relished it more than he relished anything else in his life, including numbers, including apartment 9 in the Normandie, including his interludes, past, present, and future.

He needed that light. Lux Fiat was life itself. While trying to reclaim his rightful place he tripped over the twelfth sheep, who had an unusual symbol sculpted, it seemed, into its coat. Oliver realized he was illiterate and that symbols that should’ve meant something and that did mean something to others had no meaning for him.

Shortly after Oliver Hirata’s brain shut down, his body shut down.

Hirata’s garage was located in a remote area of Osada City populated mostly by garages and storage lockers. By the time his body was discovered by Beryl Carson, who owned the garage next door to his, Oliver Hirata had been dead for nearly a week.

Chapter 3

The routine was always the same: wake up, cleanse his computer, and, while this was taking place, scan the house for anything untoward, drink two glasses of purified water, go for a seven-mile run, take a shower, reconfigure his computer’s operating system, and get to work.

Jonathan Lee Summers had been doing this for so many years that, had he chosen to, he wouldn’t have had to think about any of it. It was as though the routine could power and execute itself. Yet he didn’t let his own careful sequence run in the background of his consciousness. He was aware, present, and active in every step of the process. This was the only way to be absolutely certain.

A few months ago he’d had an argument with his former roommate, Ethan Stiles, about this. Ethan, as sloppy and haphazard as ever, had said that repeating the same routine day after day was bad policy, since it left no room for the odd, serendipitous revelation. Jonathan Lee was certain that having a daily routine was the sure path to revelation.

When they’d been at the Acres together, he and Ethan had done a lot of arguing and they still did, yet they remained good friends for the twenty-plus years they’d known each other.

Back at the beginning, Jonathan Lee thought a mistake had been made. The Acres was legendary for its uncanny ability to place the right two or three people together in the same dorm room—the people themselves were never consulted on this placement—but Ethan Stiles? Really? The guy was a slob, he never smiled, and, worse, he never slept and made a lot of noise while he was at his late-night, early-morning doings, whatever the hell they were.

Look here, Jonathan Lee had said at two a.m. after Ethan’s banging around had driven him from his scheduled sleep time, you can’t be like this.

It’s my method, Ethan had said. I need it.

Despite his sullen demeanor, there was something so honest about what Ethan said that Jonathan Lee decided he liked the guy, that he’d get earplugs or listen to some kind of sleep hypnosis during his scheduled sleep periods, and he’d let his roommate do whatever he wanted to. It was his method, and Jonathan Lee respected method. After all, it wasn’t like Ethan complained about Jonathan Lee’s rigid habits, which must have conflicted with Ethan’s scattered, disorganized style of living and thinking.

Jonathan Lee and Ethan didn’t always argue, but when they did they used a style of disputation they’d developed that suited both of them. It had been honed to perfection during their sojourn at the Acres, where Jonathan Lee still was, since he was now a lecturer there.

The Acres had some kind of hold on not just Jonathan Lee Summers but on many of its students, graduates, dropouts, and most of its faculty. The place engulfed you, you became yourself there, and Jonathan Lee hadn’t wanted to leave. So he stayed. He was now their premier lecturer on code formation, manipulation, and analysis, a field well suited to his regimented temperament, and one he excelled at.

Ethan, the fool, had become a medical examiner after shocking Jonathan Lee by going to the medical college at Keff instead of staying at the Acres like any less sloppy person would’ve done, but that hadn’t put a dent in their friendship. Even now, with two very different careers and lives and being in different cities, their friendship was as strong as ever.

Jonathan Lee’s stoic exterior—but not his regimen, which was ever-immovable—had disintegrated under the glance of Beryl Carson, who was getting her doctorate at Keff Institute in some obscure branch of botany, a subject Jonathan Lee had no interest in. But Beryl herself was of tremendous interest to him.

Ethan had introduced them to each other during one of Jonathan Lee’s visits to Ethan at Keff, and Jonathan Lee never thought any of what transpired afterward was Ethan’s fault. He couldn’t’ve known. Jonathan Lee himself hadn’t known that Beryl would marry him, give birth to Patterson Summers, and then abruptly leave him, taking Patterson with her. They lived in Osada City now and he seldom saw either Beryl or Patterson.

After Jonathan Lee’s computer finished its cleansing routine that morning, he wasn’t happy with something. He couldn’t say what that something was, and it didn’t matter. But once a computer got infected it was never the same.

Jonathan Lee’s basement had a supply of new builds. He’d constructed all of them himself—it was a sort of hobby, although it was a necessary hobby—so he could be sure of each computer’s integrity. And yet things happened. Computers were all vulnerable, even if you built them yourself. An attack could come from anywhere.

Gone were the days of a century or two ago when all