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blurred and went out of focus . . . and Teresa thought she saw an image, the ghost of a human form. A woman's bald head, blunt features, and clear blue eyes stared straight out of the information matrix. At her.
    Soft Stone!
    Startled, Teresa sat straight, but stopped herself from calling a coworker over. She leaned closer to the barrier of the screen, her heart pounding. Her throat went dry. “Hello?”
    From behind the milky wall of the network, the bald woman's image smiled at her—then flickered and vanished, like a fish going back underwater, to be replaced by swirling data again.
    Teresa saw nothing, no lingering shadow of the apparition. What did it mean? Clusters of numbers floated before her, shifting patterns that held no significance.
    Like this useless job, an irrelevant rearrangement and secondary interpretation of information. It was a waste of her time, a waste of her life and abilities. Soft Stone must be so disappointed in her.
    Angry at herself, Teresa dumped the numbers and spent the rest of her workday searching along her own paths, finding the works of great philosophers, studying thought-provoking passages. This was what she wanted to do.
    Ignoring the assignment her employers had given her, she found new postulates, random expressions posted by more recent thinkers who considered themselves great sages. Sometimes the concepts were moving and timeless; some postings were mere drivel, typo-filled rantings that the would-be philosophers hadn't even bothered to proofread.
    Engrossed in the search for meaning, Teresa occupied herself for hours. It was just like what she had enjoyed so much in the Falling Leaves library. . . .
    Unfortunately, her employers did not appreciate her new passion, and Teresa didn't manage to keep that particular job very long.

7
    Eduard's first regular job outside of the Falling Leaves had been high up on the outside of the mirrored skyscrapers. Wearing a mag-lock harness that attached him to support struts between windows, he hung far above the pavement. The swirling crowds and hovervehicles far below looked like colored pixels on a grid of the city.
    Having fun, Eduard spent his days with a repair kit, zipping up and down one structure after another, sealing windows, patching cracks, strengthening blocks that showed signs of wear. Dangling so high made him feel
alive,
in stark contrast with his safe and calm childhood. For a while, he had felt happy and fulfilled . . . until his restlessness kicked in again.
    His work partner, a lanky and unambitious man named Olaf Pitervald, had big-knuckled hands and scarecrowish arms and legs. His freckled skin flushed easily, and his pale hair was a colorless mass that covered his pink scalp. He had worked this job for years and never planned to change.
    By himself, Eduard could cover the side of a skyscraper faster than the two of them could do it together, but Olaf liked to hang beside him in his harness. The lanky man spent more time in conversation than actually doing his job. “We get paid the same, no matter how hard we work.”
    While Eduard diligently used his polysteel compound to patch chinks, Olaf would spy through the windows, hoping to catch sight of attractive female bodies. Safely anonymous, he made catcalls, emboldened because he knew the women could never hear his words through the glass. He was single, probably because he'd never found the nerve to date.
    Olaf pushed his face close to the glass, where a buxom teal-haired woman sat in a lobby area directing visitors. “How do you like that one, eh?”
    Eduard had no idea whether a woman or a man inhabited the receptionist's body. Some corporations simply rented sexy female bodies to act as living artwork in the reception areas; then they hired pleasant and competent employees to swap into those beautiful bodies during the workday. Before important meetings, some executives might even hopscotch with their secretaries, always careful to hide their ID patches, so they could