'Isn't this fun?'
'Yep,' he said, 'it is.'
Thursday, June 9th Quantico, Virginia
Jay Gridley wasn't exactly thrilled about having to go back to work.
Yeah, sure, it was what he did, and yeah, sure, he loved it, but
rolling around with Soji, even in a drafty tent in the rainy woods?
Well, that had work beat all hollow.
He never thought he'd hear himself think that, but there it was.
Truth was, even though he was dropping by the Net Force compound late
Thursday afternoon, he didn't really have to be back until Monday. But
Soji had clients she had to counsel, and she refused to take a laptop
or net phone with her into the woods, so they had packed up the camping
gear and came back to civilization. In her net persona of the old
Tibetan priest Sojan Rinpoche, Soji taught basic Buddhism and also
offered a kind of psycho E
spiritual first aid to people who had suffered various forms of brain
damage, usually secondary to drugs or stroke.
That was how they'd met, on-line, when Jay had been zapped while
chasing the guy with the quantum computer.
Soji had an apartment in Los Angeles, but she was going to be working
out of Jay's place, at least for now.
And he hoped he could convince her to make it permanent, though he
hadn't yet worked up the nerve to ask her to move in, much less to
marry him. But he was gonna.
Eventually.
Commander Michaels was in his office when Jay got there. He waved at
the receptionist.
'He busy?'
'No, go ahead in.'
Jay tapped at the door, then opened it.
'Hey, Boss.'
'Jay? What you doing here? You're not supposed to be back until
Monday. How did it go?'
'The mosquitoes got so bad we had to come back for a transfusion. Other
than that, it went great. How's business?'
'Slow. Nothing major. Usual net scams, viruses, illegal porno stuff.
Nobody trying to topple the world that we've noticed, thank God.'
Jay wanted to ask if Michaels had heard from Toni Fiorella--her
quitting had hit the Net Force group hard-but he didn't bring it up.
Toni had called Jay from London and he had heard that she'd called a
couple of other people in Net Force, too, but he still didn't know what
exactly had gone down between her and the boss. It must have been bad,
though. Michaels had been pretty miserable about it, even if he tried
to pretend otherwise.
'Nothing interesting at all?'
'Nope. Well, one little thing. You know about something called
HAARP?'
'Sure, the atmosphere burner up in Alaska. The guys in aluminum-foil
hats love that one. What happen, it melt down?'
