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married again. I’m the last one to tell you to get married. Look at me—I don’t buy, I lease. Trade ’em in regularly for the latest model.”
    â€œCan we talk about my security system? It’s late, and I’ve had a long day.”
    â€œAll right, all right. My systems guy’s a total fucking wizard. He put in my home system.”
    Nick’s brows shot up.
    â€œI mean, I paid for it out of my own pocket, come on. If he can get the equipment, I’ll have him put one in tomorrow.”
    â€œCameras and everything?”
    â€œShit. We’re talking IP-based cameras at the perimeter and at all points of entry and egress, cameras inside, overt and covert.”
    â€œWhat’s IP?”
    â€œInternet-something. Means you can get the signal over the Internet. You can monitor your house from your computer at work—it’s amazing shit.”
    â€œBack up to tape?”
    â€œNo tape. All the cameras record to a hard drive. Maybe put in motion sensors to save on disk space. We can do remote pan-and-tilt, real-time full-color streaming video at seven and a half frames per second or something. The technology’s totally different these days.”
    â€œThis going to keep my stalker out?”
    â€œPut it this way, once he sees these robot cameras swiveling at him as he approaches the house, he’ll turn and run, unless he’s a total whack job. And at the very least, we get a bunch of high-quality images of him next time he tries to break in. Speaking of which, I saw some serious cameras around the guard booth down the road. Looks like you got cameras all around the perimeter fence, not just at the entrance. We mighta got lucky, got a picture of him. I’ll talk to the security guys down there first thing in the morning.”
    â€œYou don’t think the cops already did that?”
    Eddie made a pfft sound. “Those guys aren’t going to do shit for you. They’ll do the bare minimum, or less.”
    Nick nodded. “I think you’re right.”
    â€œI know I’m right. They all hate your fucking guts. You’re Nick the Slasher. You laid off their dads and their brothers and sisters and wives. I bet they love seeing you get some serious payback.”
    Nick exhaled noisily. “What do you mean, ‘unless he’s a total whack job’?”
    â€œThat’s the thing about stalkers, man. They don’t necessarily obey the rules of sanity. Only one thing can give you total peace of mind if he comes around again.” He unzipped the black nylon gym bag and took out a small oilcloth bundle. He unwrapped it, revealing a blunt matte-black semiautomatic pistol, squarish and compact, ugly. Its plastic frame was scratched, the slide nicked. “Smith and Wesson Sigma .380,” he announced.
    â€œI don’t want that,” Nick said.
    â€œI wouldn’t rule anything out, I were you. Anyone who’d do that to your dog might well go after your kids, and you gonna tell me you’re not going to protect your family? That’s not the Nick I know.”

6
    Nick slipped into the dark theater—the FutureLab, they called it—and took a seat at the back. The Film was still playing on the giant curved movie screen, a high-gain, rear-projection video screen that took up an entire curved front wall. The darkness of the theater was soothing to his bleary morning eyes.
    Jangly techno music emanated in surround sound from dozens of speakers built into the walls, ceiling, and floor. Watching this beauty reel, you were careening through the Kalahari Desert, down a narrow street in Prague, flying over the Grand Canyon, close enough to the walls to be scraped by the jagged rocks. You were whizzing through molecules of DNA and emerging in a City of the Future, the images kaleidoscopic, futuristic. “In an interlinked world,” a mellifluous baritone confided, “knowledge reigns supreme.” The Film was