heets, whiteboard-output, memos and
conversation reports for any of ten thousand hot keywords, querying him for
deeper detail on trivial, half-remembered bullshit sessions with the V/DT's user
experience engineers. His comm buzzed and blipped at all hours, and his payoff
was dependent on his prompt response. They were running him ragged.

Four hours in the police station gave Art ample opportunity to catch up on the
backlog of finicky queries. Since the accident, he'd been distracted and tardy,
and had begun to invent his responses, since it all seemed so trivial to him
anyway.

Fede had sent him about a thousand nagging notes reminding him to generate a new
key and phone with the fingerprint. Christ. Fede had been with McKinsey for most
of his adult life, and he was superparanoid about being exposed and disgraced in
their ranks. Art's experience with the other McKinsey people around the office
suggested that the notion of any of those overpaid buzzword-slingers sniffing
their traffic was about as likely as a lightning strike. Heaving a dramatic sigh
for his own benefit, he began the lengthy process of generating enough
randomness to seed the key, mashing the keyboard, whispering nonsense syllables,
and pointing the comm's camera lens at arbitrary corners of the police station.
After ten minutes of crypto-Tourette's, the comm announced that he'd been
sufficiently random and prompted him for a passphrase. Jesus. What a pain in the
ass. He struggled to recall all the words to the theme song from a CBC sitcom
he'd watched as a kid, and then his comm went into a full-on churn as it
laboriously re-ciphered all of his stored files with the new key, leaving Art to
login while he waited.

Trepan: Afternoon!

Colonelonic: Hey, Trepan. How's it going?

Trepan: Foul. I'm stuck at a copshop in London with my thumb up my ass. I got
mugged.

Colonelonic: Yikes! You OK?

Ballgravy: Shit!

Trepan: Oh, I'm fine -- just bored. They didn't hurt me. I commed 999 while they
were running their game and showed it to them when they got ready to do the
deed, so they took off.

##Colonelonic laughs

Ballgravy: Britain==ass. Lon-dong.

Colonelonic: Sweet!

Trepan: Thanks. Now if the cops would only finish the paperwork...

Colonelonic: What are you doing in London, anyway?

Ballgravy: Ass ass ass

Colonelonic: Shut up, Bgravy

Ballgravy: Blow me

Trepan: What's wrong with you, Ballgravy? We're having a grown-up conversation