Do I want Terra Spiker to go to prison? The question makes me a little uncomfortable. She has sure as hell broken the law. Many laws.

It’s time for school. It’s Saturday, but I slacked off all week and I need to catch up. It won’t take long; it never does. I click on the window for the online high school. I replaced the generic logo of the school with a picture of a guy sleeping. Which I guess says what I feel about it.

On my screen I get a video feed of a lecture on the Manhattan Project. Ancient history about the first atomic bomb.

The reading for this unit is on the right side of the screen in a window. There are numerous links in the text that open audio or video or text.

The lecturer drones into my headphones. I click on a link that shows a loop of an atomic bomb exploding.

A request for chat pops up. It’s a kid I know online. He, she, or it goes by the name FerryRat7734.

FerryRat7734: What’s vertical?

SnakePlissken: You could just say, “What’s up?”

I don’t know if FerryRat actually meant to write FurryRat. I don’t ask questions of people I meet online. I figure they have a right to be whoever or whatever they want to be.

My online name is SnakePlissken. There’s a reason for that. It’s the only character I’ve ever come across who shares my last name. Plissken. Google just the word “Plissken” and that’s who you come up with. I don’t appear in Google. I am invisible. That’s deliberate.

FerryRat7734: Is it just me or are they teaching us how to make an atomic bomb?

SnakePlissken: The science is easy enough. The engineering’s a bitch.

FerryRat7734: So can you do me a favor? Send me your notes on the next week’s lectures?

SnakePlissken: You going on vacay?

FerryRat7734: I wish. I have a procedure.

I sit back. The teacher is droning on. A second dialog box opens up with someone saying “How do you spell Openhimer?” I should answer that question, not ask FerryRat one of my own. I can sense I’m opening a can of worms. But how do you not follow up on something like that?

SnakePlissken: What procedure?

FerryRat7734: You don’t want to know. Trust me.

I say that’s not true, although it is. And I repeat the question.

Lung transplant. FerryRat has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease. Lung transplant is the final, desperation move.

SnakePlissken: Damn.

FerryRat7734: Exactly. So take notes, okay? I’m not dead yet.

SnakePlissken: Will do.

What else am I going to say? Someone tells you they’re dying, what do you say? You say yes, I’ll take notes.

It dawns on me for the first time that a lot of these online students that I know only by their handles, only from pop-up chat boxes, may be sick in one way or another.

It embarrasses me that I’ve never even considered this before.

“Slightly self-absorbed are you, Solo?” I mutter.

I sit through the rest of the lecture and then the natural history lesson after that.

Then I have work. Today I’m helping to prep visitors’ suites for a conference. We have those about once a month. A bunch of Big Brains and Even Bigger Bucks fly in and we wine and dine and lecture them about the wonders of biotech and what a great investment Spiker is.

I’m distributing cut flowers to the rooms, checking the minibars, that kind of thing. Then I’ve got to fill in for the coffee cart guy for a few hours while he attends a wedding in Monterey.

I don’t have to do this kind of work. Terra would let me stay here, keep a low profile, whatever. But the grunt work gives me access, and access is what I’m after.

When I’m done, I get into the system, mask my identity, and start looking around for cystic fibrosis. Because as full of crap as Terra might be, and as much of a criminal as she might be, Spiker does do some amazing work.

There are lots of hits for CF. The company has done some research on it. But all files have been moved. They’ve all been transferred to Project 88715.

I Google “genetic diseases” and get a list.

Back to the Spiker database. I search for hemophilia. Many files. It seems we may be close to a gene-based cure. Transferred to Project 88715.

Neurofibromatosis. Ditto.

Sickle cell disease. Ditto.

Tay-Sachs disease. Ditto.

Not every genetic disease, but a lot. Too many for it to be some kind of fluke. Half a dozen major genetic diseases that Spiker has worked on have been suddenly transferred to Project 88715.

Why transfer all this info about genetic diseases to some ridiculous classroom software project?

I know the budget for all of Project 88715 is twelve million dollars. That’s a lot of money, but it’s not a lot of money at Spiker. At Spiker, anything under a billion is loose change.

I pull up the log entries—the brief descriptions—for CF and hemophilia and the rest. Rough addition in my head: The total budget is over twenty-eight billion dollars.

Billion. With a “B.”

Twenty-eight billion dollars’ worth is suddenly under the aegis of a twelve-million-dollar project?

That’s like saying your local grocery store chain will be managed by the kids selling lemonade on the street corner.

Terra Spiker’s up to something. I don’t know exactly what yet.

But I will find out.

– 12 –

“Mmmmm. Caviar,” Aislin says.

It’s one of her phrases.

It’s late afternoon, and Solo has just entered my room. He’s holding Aislin’s shoulder bag.