experience, marriages, the usual living-life stuff. No trouble with
the law, no beefs at work, pretty much Mr. Dull and Boring right down
the line.
The only blot on an otherwise white-bread career was at the job he'd
had before going to work for HAARP.
He'd been doing some kind of behavioral modification experiments on
chimps, working with extremely low frequency radiation, a post-doc
research project at Johns Hopkins, and it had apparently petered out.
He failed to get the results for which he had been looking. His grant,
as the report mildly and politely put it, had not been renewed, and
he'd been out of a job.
A small red flag went up in Jay's mind, but when he thought about it,
it wasn't that big a deal. Yeah, the guy was into ELF stuff, but
that's what a lot of HAARP was about. If you were looking for a
plumber, you didn't hire a cabdriver, now did you?
'All work and no play make Jay a dull boy,' Soji said.
He smiled up at her. She stood there in a bathrobe.
'Look who's talking. You've been so deep into the web I haven't been
able to see anything but your back for days.'
'Want to see something else?' She undid the bathrobe and held it
open.
'Oh, mama} Come here!'
Before she could move, however, the phone played the opening strains of
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.
Unfortunately, his phone was programmed so it played that particular
tune only if the call was IDed as coming from Net Force HQ or Alex
Michaels's virgil.
'Shit,' he said.
Soji closed her robe and belted it shut.
'He who hesitates stays horny,' she said.
'Hey, Boss,' Jay said.
'Better get to the office. Jay,' Michaels said.
'There's been another case of collective madness.'
'In China?'
'No,' Michaels said. His voice was grim.
'Closer than that.'
Sunday, June 12th Portland, Oregon
John Howard watched as his son came up to make his throw. The boy
stopped, rubbed his fingers back and forth, and allowed some glittery
dust to fall to check wind direction.
He held a stopwatch in one hand and his boomerang in the other. The
judges waved Tyrone into the circle.
Howard felt more tense than he'd thought he would. It was a^big deal
to Tyrone, of course, but it was just a game, after all. No reason to
be digging his fingernails into his palms.
Off to one side and behind Tyrone, Little Nadine stood, waiting for her
turn to compete. She was three contestants behind Tyrone, so she'd
know what time she had to beat.
So far, the times hadn't been very good, according to Tyrone, and both
