Jacob sat up, foggy from his sleep. “Okay. I’m awake.”
Kat met the doctor at the entrance of the room. Jacob and Sandy stood and held hands.
“I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “There was nothing we could do. Near the end, we tried to upload his consciousness to the cloud, but there was a technical glitch. We were...”
He continued to talk about the upload and bullets with anticoagulants and the medical nanotech and too far gone and gotten here sooner, but most of his words were noise in the background while Sandy hugged Kat. The room seemed to draw back from Jacob, as if he was watching from a distance, floating in data and code, watching reality unfold below.
Chapter 31
“Where does this leave the project?” Mr. Craig asked. He leaned back in his chair, placed his elbows on the armrests, and brought his hands together near his chin.
“It is a setback,” Johnson said.
“A terminal setback? Perhaps an unfortunate use of words, but nonetheless, how does this setback affect our going forward?”
Johnson considered. “Ultimately, I believe Mr. Quince will continue. It may be difficult for him. He and Mr. Gomez have been friends since childhood. However, I feel that Mr. Quince has something within that he has yet to discover for himself. Otherwise, I would not have suggested him as the target for this operation.”
Mr. Craig nodded. “However, you will keep me updated.”
“Yes, sir,” Johnson said. “May I ask how your meeting with our Russian friend went?”
Mr. Craig smiled. “It went well. He was understandably upset by our methods of forcing the issue, but you were right to have suggested he should have been our initial subject.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“The Russians and the Chinese will continue to distribute chips and code decks for our research program, as originally planned, and Mr. Tal will be our eyes and ears for their operations beyond that. As for the research itself, it goes well. The data we are gathering is invaluable. Of course, the income is a bonus. Just yesterday we were able to finalize two more codes and should bring them to market within a month. There is still the issue of the missing technology and how we intend to resolve it.” Mr. Craig stood up and went to his wet bar. “But something tells me you already had that information.”
“Yes, sir.” After he said it, he realized the arrogance of the statement.
Mr. Craig poured two drinks and chuckled. “It is perfectly natural to want to gloat a bit, Johnson.”
“Sir, I was only…”
“Nonsense.” He handed Johnson a drink and sat down. “I would have done the same thing. It shows an instinct that is important to our line of business. A drive to be better than the person in front of you. It is admirable, and I wish we had more like you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Mr. Craig waved his hand as if to say no need to thank me while accepting the thanks at the same time. “Now, what are the possibilities Mr. Quince and his team is, how do they say it, on to us?”
“Their discussion in the hospital waiting room indicates they are suspicious, but they believe our people arrived at the garage to strike back at the SRS. And at the moment, they discount the possibility I am working for the corporation.”
“Good. That will play to our benefit, I believe.”
Johnson thought for a moment. “I do think, sir, we need to discuss the possibility of Mr. Quince and his team deciding to call off the project.”
“That, Johnson, is a possibility we must not allow becoming a reality. They must go forward. If there is any indication otherwise, convince him the project has to go to completion. If they waiver, if he waivers, you have permission to use whatever tactics necessary to ensure their compliance,” Mr. Craig said, tapping his finger on the edge of his desk.
“Of course, sir.”
Chapter 32
A lone skyscraper in this part of the city stood across from The Galleria. It had once housed multinational corporations and was considered a classic of postmodern architecture. Now, its sixty-four floors served as low-income housing, and instead of bearing the name of a corporation, it was known only as The Tower. Below The Tower, rows of shipping containers stacked three high were arranged in a neat grid known as The Market. The bottom container of each stack had been converted to a shop or food service, and the two top containers had been converted into living quarters. Like The Galleria, The Tower and The Market were home for those on the fringes of society; all three were extensions of each other, existing in their own economy, their own reality, one separate from the surrounding city.
Neither Jacob nor Sandy had ever lived in The Tower, but they, and many people who lived in The Galleria, often went to the old sky deck on the 51st floor. At times, families with young children would have picnics by the observation windows, the children pressing their faces against the glass and looking down. Jacob had done that himself once, after seeing the children. There was the sensation of floating above The Market and the structure that used to be a water wall at its far end. Jacob wished he had seen the water wall when it was flowing. Pictures gave the impression of water flowing from an opening in the sky. But like many useless things, when the corporations no longer found the water wall necessary, it stopped flowing. Now, the structure served a practical use as a vertical garden, the original plumbing used for watering the crops.
Smoke from the East Texas fires had thinned, but enough still lingered in the air to give the impression the sky itself was on fire during sunset. Jacob and Sandy sat on the floor of the sky deck watching a small boy press his face against the glass, his body a dark outline against the reds, oranges, and yellows filling the sky. The boy’s mother, a young woman in
