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turned to face them. The muscles in his face flexed. It showed his age. Joe regretted his haste.
    Amman looked at Joe. "That sounds like every taxi driver in New York city." He spoke English fluently with a heavy Persian accent. "Anyone you know?" Joe expression changed to a grimace. He thought of a hundred reasons he shouldn't have said that. Amman asked, "So Joe, should I ask you that too? How did you get these? Is it legal? Did you build them yourself?" All eyes turned to Joe. "They're probably not totally legal, but they've gotta exist to be illegal right?" Joe grinned. He was proud of his clever logic. He hoped his insight would change the mood. Amman stared at Joe with a straight face. "How did you get the one thing that everybody wants but are impossible to build? Where did you steal them from?" "My aunt asked me to look at them." Joe's hopeful smile was fading fast. "That's why they were hidden in your cell phone? That's why you don't even know how to turn them on?" Amman's face had changed. He looked angry. "Who asked you anyway?" A venomous look began to creep over Joe's face. The two men glared at each other. Lucy's eyebrows were raised. Mark looked nervous. "What shocks have you tried? Any luck?" He looked nervously between the two men. Joe decided it wasn't worth the risk of seeding the religious army of Amman's choice. He turned and walked to the other side of the shop. I need coffee, he told himself. Amman turned to Mark. "I think you were wrong," Amman said matter- of-factly. "I did the math on voltage not harmful to the host, and I believe few nanites in a living being would be reached this way. I tried many patterns of signal with plain DC current but no reaction occurred. Most non-vacuum nanite plans I found on the net use ultrasound to talk. I need an audio transmitter and microphone to continue. I found a program that might work with some changes." A stone-faced Lucy dropped a white plastic bag on the table. "One used ultrasound paddle." She turned to Amman, but spoke loudly enough for Joe to hear. "Bought with cash for the extra paranoid." Amman looked at her as if she had sprouted horns. Joe turned his head from the coffee machine and smiled. He suspected Amman was not used to being admonished by strange women. Welcome to Long Island. Joe listened to Mark discussing the poor choice of molecular bonds in a set of theoretical plans Amman had found on the Internet. Lucy strolled over to coffee machine as the discussion accelerated into long strings of letters and numbers. "Joe you have to cool it. He's in now. Don't make him crazier." She grabbed her mug from the nearby sink. Joe curled his upper lip inward to indicate he understood. He poured water into the top of the dirty coffee machine and whispered, "We're screwed! He's going to turn around and kill us all with this stuff." Joe lowered his eyebrows. "I understand some simple physics and chem, but I can't keep an eye on him. Even Mark doesn't understand half of what he says." "Maybe we need to tell your aunt," Lucy suggested. The suggestion clearly stressed Joe out. "No way, Lucy. You had to hear the way this guy told my aunt to shut them off. She would definitely be fired, and then nobody would have a job. My pops still can't find work, and I can't help him." "Which guy?" Lucy paused. "Oh, right, you told me about him. That guy with the southern accent," Her face lit up. "Why don't we mix it up? We need to bring someone else in." Joe could hear Mark babbling in the background. Joe and Lucy stared at each other. "How about Kento? Errr, I mean Bob?" Joe suggested. "Are you sure he would be cool with it?" Lucy asked. "I haven't talked to him in a while." "Lucy, are you kidding? That guy could talk to me for two hours about one 2099 comic." Lucy shrugged. "There have been lots of references to nanites in 2099." "He's a processor designer, right?" Lucy asked. "Last I checked a laid off one. Nothing going on in chips at his pay." Joe shu?ed to the nearest