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  That was a sign of power and knowledge that few would be able to match. Maybe the government could. The Watch program was able to lead the police to criminals before they did anything, it was said. The law required them to wait for a crime to be committed though, before an arrest could be made. It was a failsafe in the system. One put there to keep innocent people from being taken in for looking like they might be guilty of something.

  Lewis had just gotten unlucky, given that. The dark skinned man hadn’t done anything, except act like a normal person. In fact there was nothing he’d done that Mason wouldn’t have, if the situation had been reversed.

  Sounds of washing came from the other room, so he got up, and moved to the economy kitchen section of the front room. It was a combined thing, which was handy. He had his food station set up there, and while there was a stove and microwave built in, he’d rarely used them. The printer put things together well enough most of the time. It wasn’t gourmet food, but that was down to his own preferences. He could have programmed in almost anything. It cost money to buy different recipes, but he could afford it, if experimenting was too much work. Really, he’d made up about half of his own, even though it took a while to get things right that way. Some of them were probably too gross to give to a guest.

  In the end he ran out a few pizza slices each, with veggie toppings. Sam didn’t eat meat, except chicken. Not that Mason had ever noticed. He would, but most days didn’t, since printing your own food meant starting from vegetable matter bases in the main. On a high end printer, like his, that pretty much didn’t matter. It built food from the nano level up, which meant he could take cellulose and turn it into passable meat product without too much effort. Some, but that was all about getting the mouth feel right.

  After about fifteen minutes he had the pizza ready, which came out hot, and had run up a few pieces of Italian cream cake, for dessert. He nearly served it with non-alcoholic beer, but then switched to lemonade. After all, he wanted his head to be clear for whatever was coming next. That kind of thing wasn’t strong, but the good ones had a bit of a kick put in them, for all they claimed not to. That might have been psychological, but regardless he didn’t want to risk it at the moment.

  It might not be reality, but he’d lived half of his life in VR, which meant he was adaptable to new situations, in theory. If the police were corrupt, or just had poor policies, then that could be managed. The trick would just be in getting things done without running into them any more than he had to. Really, they’d never been a problem for him, personally.

  Mason had a fold out table that set into the wall, nestled into the elbow created by the bar between the kitchen and living room areas. The dining chairs were right under it, and trying not to look like a total heathen, he got the real plates out, along with forks for the cake. What he ended up with wasn’t exactly a high dining situation, but it looked decent, he thought.

  Passable, considering Sam was just some guy he knew, and there had been no particular plans for him to be hosting the man. Woman? He still didn’t really know.

  That changed, a moment later, when Sam finally got out of the bathroom. She was shorter looking, and dressed in a light white shirt that showed bumps at the top. Her legs were smooth, shown off by the shorts she had on, and her entire body was, at least on the exposed surfaces, a dusty black. That included her face, which threw him off for a few seconds.

  “Pizza okay? Vegetarian.” Mason didn’t let himself act shocked as the woman moved into the space. She was clearly a bit wary.

  Probably afraid that he really would fanboy out, now that he saw who was actually standing there. It was pretty certain, after all.

  Lexi, freaking, Horn.

  Though she looked a bit funny, with the imbed on. It was definitely her however. Looking shorter than he would have figured. About five-six. It was right, for her, but wrong for Sam, who had always been about five-nine. Then te had always worn boots. Probably with lifts in them.

  She smiled, her teeth gleaming compared to the dusky skin. The pale blue eyes were like ice now, since the stark white was gone from around them. There had been some kind of prosthesis too, over the nose to change the shape. There had to have been, or he would have seen through the act sooner.

  “Hey, my favorite. Smells good, too. Did you choose the design yourself?” It was the polite thing to say, if someone made food for you on a printer. Asking if they made the selection personally.

  He shrugged.

  “I did the work on it, from scratch. So if you don’t like it, you’re obligated to lie and say it’s wonderful, anyway, now that you know. Being an actress, I expect quality work that way, too. None of that strained smiling thing as you try not to spit it out.” Mason gestured to one of the chairs, not trying to seat her, or anything.

  It wasn’t the eighteen hundreds, and this was just his buddy, Sam. Not a date.

  Besides, even if it was, he’d already banged her like he said. More than once. The fact that for the first time in his life he was with a woman that he’d had sex with in VR, suddenly hit him. That would probably be pretty weird, for her. He was actually comfortable enough seeing Lexi Horn at his table, Mason realized, even if it were real. The fact was, it just didn’t seem that way.

  Poor Sam was suddenly face to face with some perv that had done things in bed with her that she was probably saving for people she actually liked. That had to be confusing.

  Sam nodded, almost as if answering his thoughts. She wasn’t though, just looking at the food carefully. After she settled, there was a single, tentative bite, followed by a smile that seemed pretty realistic.

  “It’s good. I was afraid for a second that I’d be spending the next hour choking, and trying to hide bits of food in the planters.” That got a look around and a mournful headshake. “Which I see you don’t have. You need a woman’s touch around here, you know that?”

  Mason took a bite of his own food. It really was good, even if he had come up with the design for it. The basic template was identical for each slice, but he’d arranged the plates so they’d look a bit different. The crust was crispy on the bottom, without being burnt, and the molten cheese floated perfectly on the warm, but not blistering, sauce layer.

  Sam, across from him, looked down at the food shyly. It was nearly coy, and not what his buddy should have been doing. They weren’t on a fucking date. She was there to try and recruit him or something. It was like she thought that batting her eyes at him would make it so his cock took over and do the thinking for him.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  “I really don’t.” He ate a few more small, delicate bites, not wanting to smear things all over himself. He still had his nice jacket on, after all. “Need a woman’s touch. VR is more than enough for me that way.”

  After all, if he wanted more than that, he could print a woman out. A robot who wouldn’t be half the hassle of a real one.

  Almost as if agreeing with that, dusty black faced Sam, his pal, nodded.

  “Fine. Let’s get down to business then?”

  Chapter three

  The idea that they had business outside of a slice of four layer Italian cream cake each was news to Mason Sims. Taking a bite, even though he was starting to feel a bit too full, thanks to the Slimtrix he’d taken that morning. It would leave him feeling bloated and in pain if he pushed it too far, but two small pieces of pizza and half the cake wouldn’t do that to him.

  Sure, that meant he ate like a little kid most days, not finishing his dinner in order to get at the dessert, but it kept him from getting fat anyway. If he needed more vitamins, he could add it to his ice cream the next day.

  Which wasn’t actually a bad idea.

  If he designed the frozen treat to include encapsulated vitamins, making a lipid shell for what was essentially a multi-tab, it could be used to replace the fat. It would still taste the same, but when it digested would actually be more than simple junk food. It wasn’t a completely new idea, but most food prin
ters wouldn’t be able to handle what was needed. It was too close to nano assembly that way.

  Which just meant the trick would be to make the lipid balls and sell them as a component to be used on less advanced pieces of equipment. That might not work very well, if people didn’t care about being healthy, but hey, it was still a good enough idea to be worth running up.

  Setting his fork down, the composite plastic shining gold, Mason locked eyes with the actress. She was pretty, even without makeup, he noticed. Her skin was perfect, and while a bit bland at the moment, he was smart enough to know that real people didn’t look like virts all the time. He certainly didn’t, but that didn’t keep Sam from looking back.

  Then she took a single bite of pizza, not being finished yet either.

  “I know that there’s a lot to cover. I just don’t know where to start now. It’s different for everyone. Some people see the kind of thing we did tonight and just shut down. I don’t think that’s the kind of man you are, Mason. I know it, in fact. We ran psychological profiles on you already. So, why don’t you tell me? What do you think we should do about it?”

  It was his turn to stall, which he did with the brisk lemonade drink. It was pretty tart, since that was the way he liked it, but not so much that his guest couldn’t drink it.

  “Do about what? The police? The government? What could we do? Lodge a complaint and point out the weakness in their system? Maybe run some simulations showing they’d be safer, and hurt fewer people, if they changed a few of their techniques? It’s not a horrible plan, but will they listen?” He knew the answer. You didn’t change the government. It just responded to threats.

  Anyone that had played around in VR long enough knew that one. Normally by the time they were in their early teens. The pattern was always there. If the government was involved, and you ran into a problem with them, you had to hide what you were doing, or try to. Otherwise they’d stop you, even if what your in-game goal was had to be done. Being right wasn’t enough to get their cooperation if it challenged their current way of doing things.

  “You want to stop aliens from invading? Not if it means running that red light.” The words just popped out, and the girl that was his friend, or had claimed to be, grinned happily.

  “Exactly that. Trust me, we’ve tried, more than once, to do that. It works out, by the way. What you just guessed at with the simulations? They could improve their performance by dropping less than seven percent of their current techniques. The police in particular, but the courts, too. The problem comes in because the system won’t allow them to change things in general. The more we point out the problem, the harder they fight to keep things the way they’ve always been.”

  “Yeah. We haven’t even mentioned politicians, yet.” He smiled back, and ate more cake for a bit. “Those are some people that love to be in control.”

  “I know. So… We, my organization, have a plan. Two of them, actually. The first part…” Sam wiped her long hair, which was pulled back into a loose ponytail at the moment, rather than being up under her funny hat. “Can I tell you about that later? Better, I’ll let John do it. He’s… Well, I can go into all that later, if you don’t freak out about the second part.”

  She glanced around at the apartment, and shook her head a little.

  Mason didn’t get it yet.

  “Okay. Tell me the secret. I can see that things need to change, I guess. I still can’t believe that mess tonight.”

  Instead of doing that, Sam, the young looking woman, stood up and started pacing. Her bare feet tracing out twelve steps to the far wall, spun in place and did it again. Several times. Finally she took a deep breath, and stood there, well out of arms reach.

  Seeming very tense. It showed in her shoulders and how rigid her spine was.

  “You see… The idea to get to know you, that wasn’t done on accident.”

  “Nooo.” Sarcasm dripped from the word as he played it up. “You mean that famous actresses don’t always dress up like they’re gen-neutral, and befriend random average guys on the street? I’m crushed. I really am, Sam. I mean, it did cross my mind that you wanted me for my sparkling conversation at one or two points, but… Now I don’t know.” It was tempting to suggest that the woman had been after him for his body, which wasn’t that bad, but better could be had in VR, which was what most people did anymore when they wanted that kind of thing. Not all of them, but enough that no one would think he was strange only choosing to do that.

  It was safer, less effort, and cleaner. Thanks to virt-sex, the level of sexually passed diseases had gone way down, over the last thirty years or so.

  His actress buddy waved at him.

  “Well, you do give good conversation, I have to admit that. It’s, understand, you were picked out by an AI that spent nearly a hundred years experiential finding the right person. You weren’t the only choice that met our needs, just the best combination of factors in one place.”

  “Ah. I see. You want my secret pizza recipe? That, and the right to make auto-bikes like mine?” It wouldn’t be that.

  The food was good, but the bike was just barely passable. The power transfer was too inefficient. The calculations that he’d run said that an average person should be able to hit forty-seven miles per hour, and maintain it. So far the best he’d come up with for that was about thirty, and doing that took work that most couldn’t keep doing all the time.

  In short, it was nice looking, but a piece of crap, compared to what could be made. He’d just been busy, trying to come up with good nano level disassembly.

  Wincing, he sighed.

  Sam didn’t ask what had been figured out, either.

  “Yeah. You have to know that you won’t be allowed to bring that out, don’t you? If you try to monetize the plans, the government will lock it up. The only way to make a real change would be for everyone to be able to just run one of those things up, to use at home.”

  “I see. So you want me to just give away my best work? It really isn’t that easy. You and your people get that, right?”

  There was a long pause. It drew out, with more pacing for a while. Mason filled it with eating, but had to stop about five bites later, only half the cake gone. He was getting too full. Too much more and it would become painful, even if he hadn’t had that much.

  Sam waited, after he stood to clear his plate. He left Sam’s, since she hadn’t eaten much, even for a thin woman. It could be that his food designs sucked, but it wasn’t the case. So he dumped the extra food into the hopper near the sink and put the scraped plate, and silverware into the wash unit. It was half filled with water already, since it had drained and cleaned itself after the last time he’d used the thing. It was silver and hummed lightly, sound being used to scrub it all for him.

  It worked away and the water bubbled and boiled, even if it wasn’t all that hot.

  The entire time Mason did that, Sam walked back and forth. Using quick movements to get it done, seeming agitated.

  He could see why, because it was clear that Sam was there to try and get him to do an info dump onto the net, instead of sensibly selling his new and unique design. Which was probably the right thing to do. After all, every time anyone came out with a disassembly unit, or even a complex materials sorter that didn’t work on the smallest of levels, the government shut it down.

  That was kind of why he wanted one. Instead of dumping the remains of the cake and the last slice of pizza to rot and break down somewhere, with his new unit Mason could have put the remains of the meal in the device. Then the thing would have reduced the material to its individual molecules, and stored them for later.

  He already had a good printer that would be able to use that kind of material. The only real difference was that, by being slightly intrepid, Mason, or anyone with the right disassembly unit, could just fill the hopper on the machine and have working material to do anything.

  Printing a car cost about ten thousand dollars at the moment, or would for him. It would cost a wh
ole lot more than that if he hadn’t been able to do most of the design work himself. There were power expenses though, as well as the materials that had to be covered. If you didn’t have your own copyright you had to pay for that part, too. In something the size and complexity of a vehicle that would run to about fifty different payments to get the rights for it all. Small ones, but they added up.

  The same thing with a good disassembler could be done for about two hundred dollars.

  Really though, Sam and her people had a set of problems they didn’t seem to have plans for. Mason had worked on the idea, if only as a mental exercise.

  Still, he waited, not wanting to push the woman.

  When she stopped, she seemed troubled.

  “I know that it’s a lot of money to lose. We need this though. Destabilizing the economy is a risk, but if we don’t do it, the government will keep getting worse.”

  Mason moved back to the table and plunked down, then started tapping the top of the thing. It was a nice white composite color. Cream really. He hit it several times with his knuckles.

  “Money isn’t the problem, Sam. I’m not that shallow or greedy. Think about it for a bit, will you?”

  “I don’t get you.”

  “I know. It can be hard to see it all. It’s… Okay, if I dump a good disassembler onto the market, even for free, the government will be able to stop it instantly. Every printer and assembly unit is required to send a message to the Watch system with each object made. That pizza recipe was logged for each slice made. The cake and lemonade, too. If I want new plates, the same thing happens.” It made sense to him, but Sam made a face at him.

  “So?”

  “Do you think the Feds do that for their health? If you tried to print an auto-gun, what would happen?”