Book 5: Chapter 51: Accusation
Bill
September 2343
Sol System
Ireceived an acknowledgment of my knock and popped into what I expected to be Charles’s personal VR. Instead, I found myself in an office, with a wall of monitors. All metaphor, of course, in VR. But the office seemed, I dunno, kind of flat. Gray. No decorations, no accessories. I wondered what had happened to the office I’d been in last time, with the globes of the moon, Venus, Earth, and Mars hanging proudly at front and center. Maybe this was for me specifically.
Charles was nervous, refusing to meet my eye. I suspected he knew why I was here. I tried for small talk. “Any progress since I was last here? News?”
He hesitated, then replied, “Bill, we’ve never been good at this kind of situation. Let’s just get it out in the open, okay? Tell me why you’re here.”
“You know why, Charles.”
“Yes, but I’m not going to just blurt it out. You first.”
I sighed and looked down at my hands for a moment. Interesting that tics like that survived not only VR and replication, but also several centuries of not being human. However, we still were human at the core, all of us. And fallible.