Read The Rule of Thoughts for Free Online Page A

And he was trembling, his blood racing.
    Maybe he was still getting used to being a human. Everything was different. Starker. More real. More frightening. He felt it all, in a way that he never had in his old life. Or did it just seem that way in the heat of the moment?
    Authorities came, helped him up, questioned him. For a few minutes he thought he would be accused of some crime, but the VidFeeds clearly showed he’d had nothing to do with the woman jumping. They asked him why she had raised her arm, what she’d said to him, why Michael had been with her. But he just kept saying he didn’t know, that he’d followed her out of curiosity, which was true. He cooperated until finallythey let him go back to his seat. The situation seemed simple enough to them: the lady was crazy.
    Michael was still trembling as he sat. There was just too much to think about.
    Kaine, no longer a servant to his programmer. He needed help—Michael needed him. Three days. Being reprimanded for disobeying, as if he were the Tangent’s child. And the woman—was she really like Michael? A former Tangent? Seeing a person take her own life—the incident reminded him far too much of when he’d taken the plunge from the Golden Gate Bridge with a girl named Tanya. Another lifetime ago.
    Scared, he wrapped his arms around himself and leaned his head back against the window. Soon the train began moving again and gradually picked up speed until they were racing along the tracks.

    Michael felt much better by the time he arrived in Sarah’s city. He was so overwhelmed by all that had happened that he’d forced himself to focus on only one thing: locating his friend. He would find her, convince her of the truth about him, then ask her what he should do. She’d know. Sarah was smart. Somehow, she’d know.
    Before he could find Sarah, though, he had to get himself situated. It took a few hours. Cab ride to a hotel; check-in with cash credits and a false name; food; last-minute scan ofhis new Net identity and then comparison of the data he’d stolen from Lifeblood to the maps of the area. All the while, he debated: should he contact Sarah, let her know he was coming? He kept going back and forth. On the one hand, it might lessen the shock, prepare her a bit. But on the other, he was terrified that for some crazy reason she’d tell him not to come. Or think he was some crackpot and disconnect. Or worse, block him.
    He kept coming back to the same decision: he’d take his chances and confront her. He wanted to look into her eyes when he told her—even with his stranger’s eyes, which she’d never seen before. He was sure it was the one way to convince her. She’d be thrown off guard by how he looked, but that was normal for first meetings outside the Sleep. People usually created Auras in the Sleep that looked different from their actual selves, no matter what they claimed. But as soon as he recited everything they’d gone through on the Path and with Kaine, she’d know it was him. And in person she wouldn’t be able to block him.
    And so it was that he found himself on Sarah’s front porch, afternoon fading to evening, the air crisp and cool. She lived in a suburb outside the city proper. Her family obviously had money—not only did they own a house, it was a big one. With a porch . As a city kid, Michael had always thought porches were things you’d only find in a VirtNet fantasy world. But what did he know?
    He knocked on the door, his pulse quickening with each rap of his knuckles.
    A few seconds went by, and they seemed to take aneternity. Then he heard footsteps. The lockpad started to beep and his heart leaped. He was tempted to turn and make a run for it, catapult himself down the stairs and hightail it around the corner of the house before anyone saw him. But the moment passed. The lock disengaged and the door opened.
    A woman stood there, maybe fifty years old, blond hair, her plain but pretty face just starting to wrinkle with age.