BROOKLYN

Romy lay in bed in her apartment in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn. TheAckenbury at Large closing credits had just begun to roll when her PCA chimed.

"Are you alone?" said Zero's voice.

"Aren't I always?"

"You really need to get more of a life, Romy."

"Maybe I'm waiting for you to take off that mask."

"It's off."

"And if I were there, would I like what I saw?"

"I doubt it very much."

She laughed. "Come on - "

"Romy..." He sighed. "You don't seem to be enjoying life."

"You sound like my mother."

She and her mother still spoke three or four times a week. Her parents divorced when she was a teen -  her fault, she knew - and her mother had never remarried. But she had a job, men friends, women friends, a bridge club. In other words, a life.

So do I, Romy thought. Sort of.

She had her job at OPRR. She had her ballet - she'd spent two hours working out on the bar tonight and had the sore hips to prove it - and she had Zero and the organization. But beyond that...

Friends were a problem. Always had been. She'd had no girlfriends growing up - her wild mood swings saw to that - and still had trouble being one of the girls. As for men, she had plenty of offers, and she'd had her flings, but most of them seemed tissue thin. Nobody with a fraction of Zero's substance.

Shehad a life, damn it. Getting justice for the sims - wasn't that enough?

But it was so frustrating. She'd read up on the civil rights movements of the fifties and sixties, looking for inspiration. But that had been different. Those seeking justice then had been human, and could march in the streets to demand it. Sims weren't human, and the idea of joining a movement or even a single protest march was completely beyond them.

So people like her and Zero had to work behind the scenes.

"Were you watching?" Zero said.

"Of course."

Usually she did the early-to-bed/early-to-rise thing, but tonight she'd stayed up to see how Reverend Eckert came across; like everyone else, she had been stunned by Patrick Sullivan's sudden appearance.

"What did you think?" Zero said.

"First tell me if you knew Sullivan was going to appear."

"Not a clue. But I'm glad he did."

"So am I...I think."

"He said things that needed saying. And anyone who pushes sims closer to humans in the public consciousness does us a service. SimGen is always pushing the other way."

"But squatting on the chair and eating that banana...do you think he went too far?"

"You mean, how did he play in the bleachers?"

"Exactly."

"Well, only time will tell. But I have to admit that Patrick Sullivan has risen in my estimation."

"Why? He's still a quick-buck artist. Did you hear how many times he managed to mention his 800 number?"

"But he projects a good image, plus he's audacious and thinks well on his feet. I like that."

Romy had to admit that Zero had a point. Sullivan had come across well - more like a crusading attorney with a wild sense of humor than a zealot or opportunist.

"I still think he'll cut and run as soon as the opposition stiffens," she said. "And if what we hear about this judge assigned to the case is true, he's going to run into a brick wall next week. And then it's sayonara sims."

Zero sighed. "You're probably right. But I've learned, sometimes to my delight, sometimes to my chagrin, that people aren't always as predictable as they seem. Patterns of behavior can be misinterpreted. And tonight I thought I caught a glimpse of something in our Mr. Sullivan, a spark of stubbornness that may work to our advantage. We'll simply keep a careful eye on him and watch for developments."

"I guess we don't have much of a choice, do we."

"Unfortunately not." Zero paused, then, "Are you ready for tomorrow?"

She'd scheduled the first leg of OPRR's inspection tour of SimGen's main facility to begin at 1:00P .M.

"I suppose so. I just hope it accomplishes something. After all, you've had people in SimGen itself for years, and they haven't been able to learn much."

"That's because they're low-or mid-level employees, and because SimGen's cellular corporate structure reduces crossovers between divisions. They see only a tiny piece of the picture. That's been our problem all along. Everything about that company has been designed for maximum security. Look at where it's located: The hills protect it from ground surveillance, and a fly-over offers only a momentary glimpse. If we had access to a spy satellite we might learn something, but we don't."

"How about a hot-air balloon?"

"A couple of reporters tried that, remember? SimGen's copters buzzed them so much they damn near crashed."

"I was only kidding." Romy took a deep breath to ease the growing tension in her chest. "So it's all on me."

"You'll do fine. Even if you uncover one tidbit over the next few days, one little thing that OPRR can use to call the company's practices into question, it could lead to slowing or even stopping their assembly-line cloning of sims. If nothing else, this inspection has to shake them up a little. So far they've managed to insulate themselves from regulatory oversight. This is a first for them. They'll be nervous."

"And I've planned something that just might add a little extra rattle to their cages."

"Good. Maybe they'll slip up."

"We can only hope."

"I'll call again tomorrow night - on the secure PCA I'll have delivered to your apartment in the morning."

"Why? Are you worried about a tap?"

"Not yet, but after you begin sticking your nose into SimGen's sanctum tomorrow, I'll bet they'll want to learn everything they can about you."

Romy shook off a chill creeping over her shoulders. "Thanks. That's a pleasant thought."

"Sleep well, Romy."

"Sure."

She hung up, told the TV to turn itself off, and lay in the darkness. But sleep wouldn't come. Instead of throttling back, her mind raced along, veering in all directions.

She wondered at the turn her life had taken and if she might be courting futility. It didn't seem possible that Zero and the organization had much of a chance of denting SimGen, let alone toppling it, and yet he persisted. And so did she. But sometimes she felt like one of many Sancho Panzas helping this enigmatic Quixote tilt at windmills.

She'd have to be on her toes at SimGen tomorrow, staying alert not simply to what was going on around her, but to what was happening within her. She might encounter something that upset her and she didn't want it to set her off. She had to be the picture of professionalism.

The doctors had said her bipolar disorder was cured, but she knew better. She'd had no violent outbursts since her treatment, but that didn't mean she hadn't come close.

There'd been two Romys in the bad old days - the studious, compliant, Reasonable Romy, and the fierce, wild, Raging Romy. Raging Romy was supposedly gone, but Romy still heard echoes of her footsteps down the corridors of her mind.

She closed her eyes and fell into a dream dredged from an incident in her childhood. Romy had been an Air Force brat with an American pilot father and a German mother. They moved around a lot and it always seemed as soon as Romy just started getting used to a new place, her father would be transferred to another base in another state.

The dream involved the time when she was nine or ten and came upon a couple of the local boys throwing rocks at a lame old dog who'd dared to bark at them from its yard. But it wasn't a dog in the dream - it was a sim. Her dream rage was as fresh and hot and sudden as it had been all those years ago when she'd charged into those boys with flailing fists. That had been Raging Romy's debut. And in the dream, just as in real life, she sent one of the terrified boys running home with a bloody nose, and had the other on the ground, bashing him with a rock and screaming at him,How do you like it? How do you like it? and not stopping until someone pulled her off.

In real life he'd told his parents, who threatened Romy's folks with a lawsuit if they didn't "do something about that girl." The first of many such threats during the years to come.

And in real life the owner had come out of the house to thank her. But here in the dream, the owner came out, but it wasn't old Mrs. Moore, it was Patrick Sullivan. And there, right in front of her, he sold that old sim to a man from the university to be used in medical experiments...

Romy awoke sobbing.