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my company. Besides, he was so preter-good-looking. I could not pretend indifference.
    That night, he was full of nervous energy. He’d just returned from his latest visit to Merida’s clinic, and I could tell he needed to talk about it. He tried to sound glib. Merida, he said, was an aging flirt with dyed-black curls who kept bumping against him and lying through her teeth. Jin mimicked her bawdy come-ons to perfection. Even though I liked Dr. M., I couldn’t help but laugh.
    He said Merida had located her “neuroscience institute” in an underwater slum. She always was one to pinch a penny. Somehow she’d found dirt-cheap real estate in the ruins of a flooded city offshore from modern Frisco. He explained how, years back, tectonic activity had thrust the whole coastline deep underwater, and the friction of plates rubbing together had given birth to a trio of undersea volcanoes. Her clinic’s thick pressurized windows looked out on deep-ocean gloom and intermittent red lightning. Jin said the garish effect suited Merida’s place to a T.
    He paused while the cyberservants brought our dinners. I’d never seen edibles so daintily arranged on a plate. After they’d gone, Jin told me about Boren, one of the inmates. It turned out all of Merida’s patients were brain-damaged California protes whose health care was subsidized by Nome.Com. California was a protectorate of Nome.Com, and the subsidies were Merida’s bread and butter. Jin said the protes received basic life support and experimental cures. Sometimes the cures worked.
    Merida had implanted a molecule-sized nanomachine in Boren’s parietal cortex. On the day Jin met him, Boren declared that he could hear himself think—that the sound was mincing and painful, and that he wanted to make it stop. The two of them shared an enlightening conversation.
    Jin had a way of turning the whole episode into a farce, but his stories unsettled me. I’d never imagined Dr. M. in such a sinister light before. Jin’s silver knife and fork flashed candlelight as he narrated with urbane wit. But the look in his liquid black eyes told me he wasn’t really amused. He didn’t tell me everything. I saw his eyelid quiver.
    That’s when I noticed a pair of tiny brown scars, like a set of parentheses, centered above his eyebrows. Two pale brown incisions no larger than my fingernail. They frightened me. I said, “Surely you’re not going back to that place.”
    He took a bite of his seared plankton steak and didn’t answer.
    “What are those scars above your eyebrows, Jin?”
    His laughter sounded forced. “We’ve implanted some nanobots, pretty pet Don’t worry. They’re just surveyors. They’re designed to measure and map my cerebral energy fields. It’s the first step.”
    “Sacrée Loi! What have you done?”
    I think my words came out a shriek. He had let Dr. Merida cut his brain? Dr. M, the con artist? The barroom flirt? I couldn’t for the life of me picture little Merida as a real doctor. Certainly not a neurosurgeon. She had never behaved the least bit like a scientist. All I’d ever seen her do was try to run scams on my clients—usually without success. And Jin Sura had actually put himself under her knife?
    My kind feelings for the woman evaporated. I’d been naive. I had never imagined Dr. M. capable of real harm. I knew she was after money, but now I saw my charming little Mend in a new light. Merida was not just a fraud—she was dangerous. What injury might her quack experiments do to this vibrant young man? Unbelievable, that Jin Sura would risk his very sanity to such doubtful hands. None of his explanations made sense.
    When he lifted his crystal wineglass, I saw his hand tremble. “My father has agreed to underwrite a new line of research. Judith and I are partners.”
    “Your father? I thought you didn’t like your father. What new line of research?”
    “They’re calling it Hyperthought. He thinks he’ll make another fortune. Father knows