Diana Oro's office faces the bay. On a clear day, the mountains are visible in the distance as a jagged strip of land at the horizon. On a cloudy day, like this one, the Pacific fog is bleak, and it dulls and darkens the color of the landscape. The fog makes Diana's office feel colder than usual. Diana likes the room dim — reducing the stress on her eyes, she says, to relieve some of the stress of her job. Today it just means that the fuzzy fog-light coming through her windows is the only true luminescence.

  But rarely is she actually in her office, and when she's there, she is never alone. Her schedule is hectic. She ports all over the globe, a sort of figurehead, the harsh but humane Chief of Restore, and appears to sleep in a different city every night. Her EA has dropped hints that Diana aligns her schedule to a rigorous twenty-eight-hour sleep cycle, though Saul doesn't see how that's possible while remaining remotely sane. That time management in itself would be impressive, alongside all the other demands.

  Regardless, Saul finds her well-rested today, and she's graciously made the time for a one-on-one to discuss some major issues at hand. For starters, Amos had let it slip to Bryan Berman that Zeus was not just attempting to ship high-voltage devices, but was also trying to make advances in the world of quantum computing. Bryan's offer to take on Saul's last meeting had paid off, as the good cop to Saul's bad — Zeus is trying to send entangled molecules through the Porto network.

  "I don't know how they expect to get very far with us," Diana says, "with an attitude of renegade abuse of our systems." She leans back in her cushy office chair, swapping a pen between two hands, a common fidget of hers. "They're trying to port these devices even though they clearly know that those limitations are inherent to the system. It's really frustrating to see yet another company try to circumvent basic physical reality with us, just because they think that's what we do."

  "Is that not what we do?" says Saul. "Sufficiently advanced technology is still indistinguishable from magic, for a lot of people."

  "Zeus should know better," says Diana. "Magic still needs rules. They seem to be unable to follow our rules. Quantum porting is not feasible, it's not done. And if they want to break the rules, over and over again, they're on their own when it blows up in their faces like this."

  Despite the new generation of computer processing and infrastructure being reliant on quantum technology, for the immense processing advantages, there is still the entanglement problem. Two atoms can't remain effectively entangled if they've been disassembled from their atomic infrastructure. Calvin has been working on this problem — the porting of hard-designed quantum systems — for a long time. There were small successes in re-entanglement, but only at a very small level — low masses, tiny distances, and long timescales. The actual demands for large cargo are still a pipedream.

  Apparently some people still think that teleporting works like in old movies and TV — molecules are converted into energy and directly transmitted from one place to another. It isn't like that. It's unsettling for a lot of people to find out that it isn't. But that's the reality — it isn't.

  Still, the advent of quantum computing was heaven-sent, and Ocular can't exist without it. Once you adapted to the novel data infrastructure; the processing advantages are astronomical, particularly for compression. It has to be, since just the atoms in a human body are a couple hundred yotta-qubes worth of data. It still remains the one sticky contradiction of porting, though — the inability to transport the very hardware that it relies upon. Ocular's stock price is particularly reliant on slow incremental progress on this problem.

  "Zeus's contract isn't voided, though," says Saul. "We still have to make an attempt."

  "No, I think we've made our attempts," says Diana, throwing her pen on the desk. "I'm done extending olive branches. We're putting a moratorium on their Restore contract until they can prove that they understand what's on it. I've already let their reps know."

  If Diana is actually pissed, her face doesn't betray it. It doesn't betray much, actually, except consummate professionalism. Not much seems to faze her overall, considering her role.

  Saul glances at the picture of Diana's family that sits on her desk, facing away for visitors like Saul to see. She and her husband, and another man and woman, and five kids, mostly teenagers. A mixed nuclear family. Two of the kids are hers, the other three are the other woman's, and lord knows which ones are the fathers of each. Maybe that's why nothing fazes her, Saul thinks. Five teenagers.

  "There's one more thing I wanted to talk to you about," he says. "I know you have places to be."

  "Don't worry about where I have to be, Saul. You're my employee, you're my priority right now." Diana smiles, a kind smile, with wrinkles that form around her lips adding to its depth and warmth.

  "I supervised a public Restoration yesterday," Saul says. "Katerina Atherton."

  Diana's smile abruptly falls. "Oh," she says. "You? Doing a personal Restoration?"

  "Yes. A friend of mine. She's an Ocular employee."

  "Yes, I'm familiar with Ms. Atherton. Wasn't she the one that got us into bed with Huven? I mean..." Diana leans forward. "...literally?"

  Saul stares at her incredulously. "I didn't hear about that."

  "Hm. Sorry." She waves her hand. "Must have just been a rumor. But why did you take her case?"

  Saul swallows. "Well... she is a friend of mine. And... I sensed some hostility from her husband, John, during my courtesy visit."

  "You could have left all that to regional, Saul," Diana says.

  "I realize that," Saul says. He doesn't like the vibe he's getting from this meeting now. "Regardless, there was a highly unusual incident during the Restoration. Something I'd never seen before."

  "Oh?"

  "While we were running, Calvin was showing some off behavior. Henry Gates and I — Henry's the local tech — asked Calvin to elaborate on a process that was taking some time. A distant fragmented backup. And he... basically refused."

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Diana cocks her head, curious. "He refused?"

  "Yep. We were running a full Restoration, too. All the bells and whistles. Anyway, that's not the weirdest part." He shifts in his seat, his voice lowering conspiratorially. "Katerina somehow left behind a small pool of blood in the pod."

  Diana stares at him, blankly.

  "But the weirdest part about that," Saul continues, "was that we didn't even know about the blood till we were doing our post checks. I don't think we would've seen it at all, had we not been poring over the logs for the earlier issue."

  "I don't understand," says Diana. "Blood wasn't visible in the pod?"

  "No," says Saul. He leans forward. "It was reclaimed as soon as Katerina stepped out, with no notification of extraneous material. A complex post-matter analysis confirmed it, though. And there was a one-to-one mass balance for the actual payload — we checked this about five times." He wrung his hands. "No indication that anything was reclaimed. For something as significant as forty milliliters of human organic material? Literally swept under the rug? Something went wrong."

  Diana nods. "Did you discuss this reclamation issue with Calvin?"

  "I asked Henry to run some more analysis before I brought it up with... our mutual friend." Saul lowers his voice. "I don't want to assume malicious intent, but this is an egregious error. One that I'm personally concerned about."

  Diana nods. She takes a deep breath in. Saul watches her think. The room appears to get darker, clouds thickening in the distance.

  "I want this kept under wraps," she finally says. "Don't bring it up outside of Restore chief execs. Let Henry know that too. And definitely don't bring this up with Katerina. We'll get more information before we proceed."

  "Are you sure?" says Saul. "Shouldn't Katerina be—"

  "No," says Diana. "I know Kat too, Saul. She's entrusted with all sorts of company secrets, but she's got a slippery tongue when it comes to personal stuff." She glances out the window briefly, then back to Saul. "I don't want this incident affecting her work, and I definitely don't want it affecting ours. This is an internal engineering matter until further notice. I'll handle the PR from here."

  Saul sighs. "Understood," he says, and gets up to leave. "Thanks again for seeing me."

  "Of course, Saul," says Diana. "And get some rest. You look like a ghost. Ask Victor to cover the Zeus case."

  "With pleasure," Saul grumbles.

  Saul plops himself down on the couch in his apartment, drink in hand. Outside, the sky is darkening even further. The sun is finally setting, and the streetlights begin to switch themselves on. Long curtains cast shadows across the spacious living room, sparsely furnished. Saul kicks his legs up on his coffee table, leans back, and lets out a heavy sigh.

  Diana's right. He really does need rest. A long weekend. Very long. Maybe he should go out and get some air this weekend. Go on a hike somewhere in the mountains. Maybe even somewhere exotic, like Norway, or Kathmandu. Or the Caribbean.

  He finds that he's uninterested in porting anywhere, though. He doesn't even feel like leaving his neighborhood. At the very least, he should stay on the Peninsula. There's so much here that he hasn't explored. Maybe he should stroll the neighborhood. Hell, maybe he should try to meet his neighbors.

  Maybe tomorrow, though. The takeout is already half devoured, and its remains are scattered across the table. Saul had been ravenous. Now, he's idly sipping on a whiskey and soda, not really sure what to do next.

  He wants to work.

  Just not at his job.

  He looks across the room, to a desk he's set up near the windows. An antique computer workstation, with endless shelves and cubbies stocked with hardware — wires, circuit boards, components, notebooks full of sketches. Behind two medium-sized monitors is a sleek computer shell and a network modem, silently humming.

  Saul is a tinkerer at heart, an engineer. In his twenties, he worked on robotics and old-school machine learning. He and his team had been really good in competitions. He misses those days. He'd met a lot of interesting people, nerds with endless energy and creativity and really good ideas. Working with limited compute, micro- and nano-systems, intense physical constraints. It was a great foot in the door back when the AI takeover of software was reaching its breaking point. Being a hardware guy, working on the machinery that AI didn't have the hands to touch.

  But the AIs end up designing almost everything nowadays. They'd figured out room-temperature superconductors and quantum computing, two things without which porting could not exist, and then accelerating their own abilities. They are machines that learn how to teach other machines, and teach those machines, again and again. They can come up with their own problems to solve, until all that's left of the actual engineering takes place inside a mysterious invisible n-dimensional matrix of infinite capability and godlike grace.

  So Saul tinkers, whenever he has the time. But even that time seems to be slipping away from him more and more easily. He's not young anymore, he doesn't have the flexibility, and he's lost a lot of connections outside Ocular. He is stuck fast to his job, to his career. He can't stay up all night building robots with friends anymore, well into the morning. Even if he could, he doesn't even have the type of friends that are willing to do that. They all have lives — jobs of their own, families, diets, exercise routines, and sleep schedules. They're all boring now. Adults.

  Saul looks from his computer terminal back to the drink in his hand. He's an adult now, too, isn't he? A grown man, with company stock, a bushy beard and a bit of a belly. And he should be grateful.

  His job is stressful; he doesn't deny that. Though lately it's weighed him down more than usual. He's getting tired of the runaround, of the multitasking, of the massive scale that his department operates on. He'd started out in Ocular doing the kind of stuff that Henry Gates does, assembling and maintaining basic local porting systems. He'd wanted to stay there, on the ground floor, but Restore had needed people, and he had just a little bit more charisma than the average engineer. Just enough. Just enough that they put him in a customer-facing role. And he is good at it. And it pays ever so much better.

  He just doesn't see where to go from here. He certainly doesn't want to go up. But where can he go? He's only in his 40s. Can he get away with retiring now?

  But this life is still really good. He still has his robots. He has himself. He doesn't have that special someone, though. He's never really looked for her. He does go on dates every so often, but they always underwhelm him. A family is out of the question, especially with his job's intensity. Although, Diana somehow manages it. Maybe that mixed family helps. Seems like a handful though.

  He thinks back to that meeting with Diana. He'd sensed such an uncharacteristic brittleness from her — almost outright hostility — when they'd discussed Katerina's Restoration. What had she said regarding Huven? Something about being in bed with them? Huven is a partner of Ocular's, one that supplies a lot of their parts, and they'd been triangulating with Borgdesign on getting porting systems into orbit. Katerina had been integral in making that triangle happen. That was one of her strengths, bringing people together like that. Connecting people in disparate fields and getting them to find common ground, mutual understanding, a shared purpose.

  Saul finds Katerina utterly fascinating. He finds Diana's distrust of her fascinating as well. And he finds Diana's desire to gatekeep the vital information about Katerina's Restoration the most fascinating thing of all. If he was Katerina... wouldn't he want to know? Shouldn't she, if anyone, be concerned about her own missing blood?

  He stands up, grabbing his phone off the coffee table. Diana be damned. He's going to talk to Katerina, no matter the consequences. No matter what Diana thinks. Or, for that matter, John.

  To his surprise, he's already received a message, sent not through the Ocular chat service, but to his personal number. One word: Coffee?