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and connected to a metal walkway that ringed the sphere. Jack might have thought the walkway might be for maintenance, if it wasn’t for the sealed-off airlock chamber sitting out of place on their side of it.
    Paul didn’t waste time. After swipe-locking the door behind them, he leapt down the steps to the left and headed around the octagonal pit toward a glassed-in observation room.
    “How much money did they give you? What am I even looking at?”
    The in-room intercom piped Paul’s voice from four corners, weird acoustics making him sound like two people at once. He spoke absentmindedly, working a two-screen control panel.
    “The beginning of a new age.” He stopped abruptly, clattering keys falling silent. When he spoke again his voice was flat with realization. “You’re looking at the death of regret.” He smiled. “Huh.”
    Jack studied the construction, trying to make sense of it, and failing.
    “Where have I seen this before?”
    “Nowhere,” Paul said, busy with the monitors. “It’s proprietary.”
    Something was off about this. “Paul, are you bullshitting me? This isn’t ‘proprietary.’” Jack pointed out the viewplate. “Tell me that thing isn’t based on Will’s work.”
    Paul stopped what he was doing, formed a response, opened his mouth, changed his mind, shut it again. “Okay,” he said, and went back to his keyboard. “I won’t.”
    “That security guard told me Will used to work here.” Paul was the only person on Earth Jack trusted. If there was deception here, he would not be able to withstand it.
    “I know you hate being lied to,” Paul said, reading his mind. “But I would point out that I didn’t lie to you; I just didn’t answer your question in a timely manner. So … we cool?”
    “Why am I here?”
    “I delayed explanations until you saw the Promenade for yourself. You have to understand everything in its proper context.”
    “Don’t give me long answers to simple questions, Paul. What did Will do and how bad is it?” Paul was still tapping keys, dragging a finger across viewscreens. It didn’t look like he was getting anywhere. It kept reprimanding with error messages. “What are you doing? Do you even know what you’re doing?”
    “Yes,” Paul said, exasperated, and produced a collection of Post-it notes from his pocket. Waved them as evidence. “I know what I’m doing.” The viewscreen barped again. “I’m just,” Paul said, calmly, “trying to work. Quickly. Because in less than five minutes your security guard buddy is going to come through that door with at least three friends and change the course of human progress forever.” Paul returned to what he was doing. “For the worse, just so we’re clear.”

 
    4
    Saturday, 8 October 2016. 4:07 A . M . Riverport University, Quantum Physics Building.
    Jack had left behind the relative safety and calm of Thailand for this. Not only was he involved in the commission of at least one felony, his best friend was acting weird and Jack was already being dragged back into Will’s mess of a life. What’s more, he hadn’t even seen Will yet.
    Something hard-kicked beneath the floor. As Jack backed away from the machine, the hair on his arms tickled. Thick cords of cabling spasmed, like living things.
    “Paul—”
    “Here’s the deal,” Paul’s tinny double voice piped over the intercom. “We hired Will as a consultant on this project. It’s supposed to do that, relax. So we hired Will. And things were going pretty great. He seemed stable, not too much of that muttering-to-himself stuff, kept a reasonable focus and he ironed out kinks like nobody else on the team.”
    “But…”
    “But he became erratic.”
    “Define ‘erratic.’ Erratic like that time at Walmart, or erratic like that thing with the council planners?”
    “More like that time he found us playing with his stuff in the barn.”
    Jack closed his eyes and swore. That had been the bad one. It had been pre-medication and