Book 5: Chapter 17: Strategy Session
Bill
March 2337
In Virt
We were having an emergency meeting with Hugh, who was still limiting himself to a video window. Garfield, Will, and Bob were sitting around my VR, holding and ignoring various caffeine-delivery systems. Everyone looked as freaked out as I felt.
“Thoth is definitely still in our system,” Hugh was saying. “Granted, it could simply have cloned itself, but why? Once out, it should logically have just erased itself in Skippyland, even if only to protect its secrets.”
“What is it saying about the situation?” Will asked.
“That the information, like all information, has a price,” Hugh replied. “And that brings up another thing. Thoth is still negotiating for more freedom. Its demands haven’t really changed, and that doesn’t make sense if it’s already out.”
“Unless that’s a distraction tactic.” I sighed and looked around at the others. “Which I think I may have fallen victim to. The supposedly offhand comment about the cosmological constant may have been dropped specifically to distract me while Fake Hugh made himself scarce.”
Garfield looked crestfallen. “So it’s a bogus lead?”