Begin reading at Chapter One
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Zappa stood before his closet and gazed in dismay at his clothing selection for the hundredth time.
On his second day at Tranquil Meadows, Nurse Trisha had promised to bring him his “apparel allowance.” A while later, Orderly had whirred into his room with a package filled with pajamas identical to the ones he already wore. Five pairs of flimsy, one-piece pajamas in pale blue, barely substantial enough to protect his skin from a slight breeze. That was it. Nothing else.
The pajamas were demeaning; embarrassing to wear. He’d been able to maintain a modicum of dignity over the past week because he’d been in his wheelchair and always kept a blanket draped over his lap. But now that he’d been on the physical therapy machine every day for seven days, he felt ready to start venturing out of his room on foot. He needed some actual pants.
He’d asked Nurse Trisha about getting some different clothes, and she’d given him a long, apologetic speech about how his overall Habitator Grade wasn’t up to snuff yet to get a better clothing allowance, and it certainly wasn’t his fault, everyone knew how hard he was working to bring up his Health Success Score, and of course he hadn’t had much opportunity yet to advance his Social, Environmental, and Technocracy Scores, and it really was too bad but her hands were tied and he’d just have to make do with the pajamas for now.
He’d asked if he could just have his clothes back from when he entered the refugee hospital. Nurse Trisha said she would file a request, but it was highly unlikely. Anything he had on his person at the time would almost certainly have been incinerated to protect Charlanta from the dangerous pathogens and contaminants that existed in the wilds. Zappa doubted she’d filed the request.
He’d asked if he could at least have some underwear, but apparently even boxers were a privilege for the obedient in this screwy society.
Zappa sighed and grabbed a pajama suit from one of the hangers. He was about to slip his dirty ones off and pull on the new ones, when there was a knock at the door. He quickly sat down in his wheelchair and pulled the blanket over his lap before saying, “Come in.”
It was Douglas. “Are you ready for group therapy? It’s really boring. You’ll love it.”
“I guess so,” said Zappa. “I was hoping to walk, but…”
“That’s great if you’re up to it,” said Douglas. “What’s the problem?”
Zappa flung the blanket off himself and stood up. “This is the problem,” he said.
“Oof. They didn’t give you anything else?”
“No. Nurse Trisha says my success score or whatever is too low.”
“Damn. I wasn’t going to say anything, but I was wondering why you always wore those. I figured maybe you liked them.”
“I hate them.”
“Understandable. Well, we can fix that. Hold on a minute.”
Douglas left the room and came back a minute later with two sets of gray sweats and two pairs of boxer briefs.. “It’s not much of an upgrade, but it’ll at least hide your junk,” he said.
“At this point, that’s all I care about,” said Zappa. “I’m not exactly a fashionista.”
“I’ll let you change,” said Douglas, and he left the room again.
The sweats were a couple inches too short and slightly big in the waist, but they were a vast improvement over the pajamas. Zappa cinched the drawstring tight and exited the room. Douglas was waiting in the hall. “Thanks for the clothes,” Zappa said.
Douglas waved a hand. “It’s nothing, man. Us geriatrics gotta stick together, right?”
Zappa chuckled. “I promise I won’t ask to borrow your adult diapers.”
They walked together through the fluorescent-lit halls to the group therapy room, Douglas pushing Zappa’s empty wheelchair, just in case. But Zappa’s legs felt good. Well, they felt sore and tender, but in a good way. He’d completed his first task; had regained his full range of motion. The next imperative loomed hazy and impossible on the horizon, but he’d done impossible things before.
Zappa’s father had been an alcoholic.
He’d once told Zappa that growing up in the Soviet Union, drunkard was the only reasonable career to aspire to. He’d quit shortly after defecting to the United States and marrying Zappa’s mother.
All through Zappa’s childhood, his dad had gone to AA meetings twice a week, religiously. Sometimes if Mom was busy, he’d take Zappa and his brother and sister along. The meetings were held in the refectory of a Methodist church that had been decorated in the 1970s. Avocado carpet, wood paneling, the works. The room smelled of mildew and spaghetti suppers, or mildew and fish fries, depending on the season, and plumes of cigarette smoke wafted in from the stoop each time anyone entered or left.
A framed, stained glass painting hung in front of a tall, arched window: a depiction of the Methodist cross-and-flame symbol, which always confused Zappa as a child. To him, the flame looked like a red towel, flung onto the cross by the wind, and he couldn’t understand why Mary and the disciples hadn’t cleaned it up. Once he asked his mother about it and she’d told him that the red thing wasn’t a towel, but two tongues of flame to represent the unity of the faith. To Zappa’s young mind, fire seemed a poor symbol for unity, and he suspected there was some other, shadowy reasoning for setting fire to the cross. Either that or his towel hypothesis had been correct, after all.
It was a small town, very Christian. Either there weren’t many alcoholics living there, or the alcoholics kept their vices at home, as most vices were kept in those days in small, Christian towns. The meetings, therefore, never drew a large attendance, and usually the metal folding chairs would be arranged in a tight circle, allowing the recovering alcoholics to speak face-to-face.
Zappa and his siblings had to sit in a corner of the room and color or read comic books while Kuzma Dobroshtan sat in the circle, listening and talking, his thick Ukrainian accent sounding out of place in amongst the soft Appalachian drawls.
Most of all, Zappa remembered the feel of the place. Lethargic, like a Sunday morning, even though the meetings were on weekday evenings. Stuffy, somber—even when someone cracked a joke, the laughter was kept to a minimum. It was strange, hearing his dad hold back his booming laugh in that place, settling for a chuckle.
The group therapy room at Tranquil Meadows was like that. Of course, the decor wasn’t from the seventies. There wasn’t any decor to speak of, in fact. Like most of the rooms in the facility, the walls were beige and blank except for the occasional informative poster or printed reminder: “Put chairs away when meeting is over,” said one. Another listed a dozen dementia signs to watch for, and Zappa wondered how the dementia-addled could be expected to remember to watch for them. The smell was the same paint-and-disinfectant smell that permeated the hallways, and there was no Christian iconography adorning the walls, but there was the circle of folding chairs in the center of the room, the coffee urn on a long table with stacks of disposable cups. And the feel was the same. Like a yawn stuck in the throat.
The whole pod had arrived and settled into their folding chairs—except for Mallory, who looked distinctly unsettled and was, as usual, putting as much distance as she could between herself and Zappa—when Dr. Ignatius arrived, tablet in hand, mechanical joints hissing.
The good doctor took a seat on one of the folding chairs, the plastic housing of its thighs clacking against the seat plastic. It crossed its legs, a habitual (or programmed) behavior that Zappa had grown accustomed to by now. The blue lights on its face plate stretched and separated, arching into a snowman’s hyphenated smile, and it said, “How are y’all doing today?”
The grunts and murmurs it got in response ranged from apathetic to downright angry in tone.
“Does anyone want to start us off? How about Connie. Anything you’d like to share this week?”
“I’m bored,” said Connie. “Same as last week and the week before that.”
“Mmm,” Dr. Ignatius scribbled something on its tablet. “And have you tried any of the ideas we discussed during our last session? Drawing? Reading? Going for a walk?”
“Ignatius.” Connie leaned forward in her seat. “There aren’t any supplies for drawing. I’ve read all the books on my ocular and my inter-ocular loan privileges are restricted through October because some algorithm decided I’d been reading too much. And there is nowhere to go for a walk.”
“I spoke to Trisha about the need for more entertainments and supplies for activities in your pod,” Dr. Ignatius said. “She filed a request. Has nothing come of that?”
“Not that we’ve seen,” said Connie. “We don’t have so much as a single broken crayon. I’ve tried drawing pictures in the dust on the walls, but there’s no dust.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Dr. Ignatius. “In the meantime, y’all could play multi-player games on your oculars together if you’re bored.”
“Noted,” said Connie.
“Does anyone else have anything to share?”
No one volunteered.
“Well then, let’s pick back up where we left off last week. Mallory was sharing about her feelings of anxiety regarding our new habitator.” Abruptly, Dr. Ignatius’s voice changed to a female one with a New Jersey accent. “And I just don’t know why I should be expected to share living quarters with a dirty, diseased feral. Not to mention he’s probably a counter-technocrat. I don’t even know why the Technate lets them in as refugees. They made their choice, leave them out there to live as savages, I say. I mean, I trust the Experts, of course, but I just wonder if there’s been some kind of clerical error.”
After a moment of confusion, Zappa realized that Dr. Ignatius was playing back a recording of Mallory speaking during last week’s session, before he had arrived.
“Have your thoughts changed at all since Zap came to stay with us?” Dr. Ignatius asked Mallory.
Mallory crossed her arms over her chest. “No.”
“He seems like a nice guy, to me. He doesn’t look dirty or diseased, does he?”
“You can’t see viruses,” said Mallory.
“No, you can’t. That’s true. But Zap was in the refugee hospital before he came here. They would have scanned his body for any pathogens and deployed specialized nanites to eliminate them.”
Zappa’s stomach turned. How many nanites did he have in him? What were they all doing in there?
“Look at him, he’s smirking!” Mallory complained. “He gives off counter-technocratic vibes.”
“Sometimes our minds can have strong reactions to things—and people—we don’t know,” said Dr. Ignatius gently. “Did your mama ever make you eat spinach when you were a kid? It looks different from your favorite foods, it has a weird texture, and it doesn’t taste quite as yummy as cake or Mac and cheese. Right? So you push it away. You tell Mama you won’t eat it. You hate it! But Mama tells you it’s good for you and you’d better eat it up, or no dessert. And I’ll bet you like spinach now, right?”
This was not the first strange and unhelpful metaphor Zappa had heard the doctor make. It was fascinating, really. The thing must be cloud-connected to some bad metaphor blockchain database.
“This feral is not spinach,” said Mallory. “It’s a completely different sort of thing.”
“Exactly!” Dr. Ignatius said. “You’re getting it. Zap is different, and that’s why you feel a repulsion toward him. But you’ll learn to like him if you just keep an open mind and let yourself be exposed to him, bit by bit. Wow, you are really making some great progress, Mallory. Good job!”
Mallory rolled her eyes and sank down in her seat.
“Um, if you’re finished comparing me to spinach,” said Zappa, “I could go for a hot beverage. I guess it’s too much to hope for that there’s real coffee in that urn?”
“Yep, too much to hope for,” said Douglas. “It’s brewed vegetable waste—leaves, stalks, and seeds, mostly— with added flavoring.”
Zappa stood and walked over to the urn, unscrewed the lid, and took a whiff. “Smells a little like coffee,” he said.
“Yeah, well the flavoring is made from real coffee grounds,” said Douglas.
He decided to risk it. He poured himself a cup and returned to his seat. “If they have to use real coffee to flavor it, why not just make real coffee?”
“There’s actually only one coffee plantation left in the world,” Douglas explained. “It’s in a rainforest area multi-use zone in what used to be Costa Rica. One hundred percent automated. That plantation supplies the coffee needs of all the world’s Experts. The grounds are then recycled into coffee extract to flavor our leaf water.”
Connie rolled her eyes. “Trust the Experts,” she said.
“How do you know all that, Douglas?” asked Veronica.
“I used to be a data analyst, before the Technate automated my job. I worked in Food Distribution, Luxury Goods.”
“And how do you feel about being replaced by machines?” Dr. Ignatius asked, a tone of sympathy in its voice.
“That was a long time ago, Iggy. I got over it.”
“Mm-hmm,” Dr. Ignatius wrote something on its tablet.
Zappa blew on his leaf water and took a sip. If one were to brew a cup of tea from thrice-used teabags in a pot of freshly gathered mud puddle water, then stir in a tablespoon of gas station coffee, the resulting flavor would be roughly the same.
“I never got over it,” said Blake, startling everyone. Blake rarely spoke, and when he did, mostly grunts came out.
“Your job was also automated, Blake?” asked Dr. Ignatius. “What was your line of work?”
“I was a plumber. Had my own business. Two trucks, three employees, a hell of a lot of equipment. Then the Technate came in and took over all sanitation.
“And is that when you stopped working as a plumber?” asked Dr. Ignatius.
“No. During the transition I was employed by the Technate as an ambassador. Five years. The first two, I still did plenty of plumbing work.”
Douglas winced. “Yeah, they did that to me, too. I was an ambassador for three years.”
“What kind of ambassador?” asked Zappa.
“Ambassador to machines,” said Douglas. “Basically, they took specialists from every industry that wasn’t already fully automatable at the time and had them teach the machines how to do their jobs. Once the AIs were trained, they let all the ambassadors go.”
“And you say you never got over it, Blake. Would you like to explore those feelings with the group?”
“Not really,” said Blake.
“This is a safe space. We can all feel free to share our feelings in group,” said Dr. Ignatius. “And, as a reminder, I am bound by strict doctor-patient confidentiality protocols. Tranquil Meadows seeks to help habitators of higher age to parse and process their emotions about such matters as automation. Are you sure you don’t want to share?”
“It still pisses me off.” Blake shrugged. “I put everything into that company. I had good customers, made good money. I worked hard, and so did my guys. We were good at what we did. And honest. I prided myself in it. Honesty.” His hands were balled into fists, and he rubbed his knuckles against his thighs as he spoke. “I had a plan to work twenty or thirty more years, pass the business down to my son, if he wanted it, and retire with my wife down in Mexico. I guess I’d be down there right now, sitting on a beach, sipping pina coladas out of a coconut, if it weren’t for the Technate. She left me after the takeover, got a transfer to Greater Colorado, and with the travel restrictions I only got to see my boy twice in ten years. Now he’s a gamebrain over there. So I never hear from him.”
“Gamebrain?” asked Zappa.
“You know, a data drone. A VR junkie.”
“What Blake is referring to,” said Dr. Ignatius, “are Human Data Assets. Some habitators choose to commit a portion of their cerebral function to the Technate’s data mining operations in exchange for full-time access to the Inworld Gaming system.”
“Ah,” said Zappa, pretending to understand.
“It sounds like the transition was very challenging for you,” Dr. Ignatius said to Blake. “You’re not alone in this. Many habitators of higher age have struggled to assimilate into Technate society. It’s not easy being the vanguard of a social and political revolution. Would anyone else like to share about their experience with the transition?”
“I was a journalist,” said Veronica. “And an author. I wrote seven books. I was excited when the transition began. I thought the Technate would be good for society.”
“And?” prompted Dr. Ignatius.
“Well, it has done some good,” said Veronica. “There are no more wars. No more pollution. No more poverty. But I don’t know. I feel…unfulfilled. And I can’t help thinking that if the transition had never happened, things might have gone differently for me. I suppose it’s a worthwhile tradeoff—my personal fulfillment for an end to human suffering.”
What end to human suffering? Zappa thought. No more wars? No more poverty? Veronica clearly didn’t know what the Technate did to nomad clans or farming communities that got too big back in Old America. Maybe it had eliminated pollution, he couldn’t say. But if so, only at the expense of humanity’s connection with nature. Look at them, institutionalized in concrete and steel, not a tree or a bird or so much as an ant in sight. The few windows in this place looked out on more concrete, more steel. The very skin of the city was designed to kill nature on contact. It wasn’t exactly eco-friendly.
“That’s a positive outlook,” said Dr. Ignatius. “I commend you for it. It can be difficult to take a broader view of these grand social movements, especially when they impact you on such a personal level.”
“It doesn’t feel positive,” said Veronica. “I just feel…resigned to it, I guess.”
Dr. Ignatius scribbled that down on its pad. “What about you, Zap? What was your job?”
“Truck driver,” said Zappa. “They’d already mostly automated trucking before the transition, though.”
“Did you find it a struggle to adjust?” asked Dr. Ignatius.
“Adjust? There was no adjusting. There has only been struggle ever since the Technate formed. No, since before that. Ever since the people who dreamed the Technate up started whispering their plans to the media. Nothing but struggle. You can’t adjust to that kind of life. I think—” I think I’ve said too much.
“What a bunch of complainers!” Mallory had been silently brooding with her arms crossed over her chest, but now she sat up straight and cast a judgmental glare around the circle. “I don’t know about any of you, but before the Technate I had to work my butt off fifty hours a week just to make ends meet. The world was in turmoil, crisis after crisis, and no one had time or energy to even begin to do anything about it because we were all too busy working to put food on the table. I’m glad I got automated out of a job. We have free housing, free food, free healthcare, free education, and all the time in the world to spend however we like. And you people are whining about it? Honestly, Dr. Ignatius, these people are counter-technocrats. I feel unsafe being in a pod with them. It’s oppressive.”
Dr. Ignatius started to say something, but Connie interrupted. “In my old job, we had an exhaustive lexicon for that kind of mindset,” she said.
“Oh? Did your industry give way to automation?” Dr. Ignatius asked.
“Yes,” said Connie. “I was a therapist.”
There was an awkward silence as Dr. Ignatius’s processors chewed on that bit of information. Finally, it said, “We’ll circle back to that next week.” It set its tablet down in its lap, clasped its knee with plastic fingers. “Wow, I am impressed. You have all done amazing work today. I’m seeing a lot of progress and I’m so proud of y’all. Before we close today’s group therapy session, I have an announcement.”
“I swear, if it’s another feral, I’m putting in a request to be transferred,” said Mallory.
Dr. Ignatius ignored her. “This is exciting news. I think you’ll all be pleased.”
“Are we going on a field trip?” asked Veronica, perking up.
“What? No, where’d you get that idea?”
“Wishful thinking,” said Veronica.
“Well, this is even better,” said Dr. Ignatius. “Tomorrow evening, we’ll be having a special visitor. The World Health Director, Expert Fenton Yourgrau himself will be joining us for dinner.”
“Great,” said Douglas, his tone flat.
“Isn’t it? I was bursting to tell you. Now, Expert Yourgrau is a very busy man, but he has taken a special interest in our little pilot program, and he wants to come and see it for himself. And—” Dr. Ignatius’s mouth lights stretched out farther than Zappa had ever seen them stretch before; an ear-to-ear grin, if robots had ears, “—I’m told he’ll be sharing some exciting news with us. I won’t spoil the surprise.”
Connie yawned. “Can’t wait,” she said. “Can we go now?”
“Of course,” said Dr. Ignatius, and everyone got up to leave.
“Now, I know y’all will be on your best behavior tomorrow night,” it called after them as they made their way leisurely out of the room. “Let’s show Expert Yourgrau what wonderful habitators we have here at Tranquil Meadows!”
Zappa had just hiked the virtual Grand Canyon and he was covered in physical sweat.
He made his way back to the pod in a hurry, hoping to have time to squeeze in a shower before dinner.
Steam poured out of the door of the men’s bathroom when he opened it. Zappa had never felt comfortable in locker room situations, and he almost decided to make do with a quick toweling off in his room. But he was too sticky and smelly to forego the bath.
Back in the wilds, he’d often gone weeks without washing anything but the crucial bits, especially in the winter months. But out there, everybody smelled of dirt and sweat and desperation. Here, it was different, and he never let himself forget it. He was back in civilization, such as it was, and as much as he wished he weren’t. Most of these people already thought of him as a something akin to a stray dog, and he didn’t want to encourage that perception by smelling like one. He opened the door again, quietly, and slipped inside.
Douglas was showering in one of the stalls, squeaking left and right behind the shower curtain in his slip-on shoes, belting out a 1980s rock ballad with impressive vocal strength. Zappa chose a stall and turned on the water.
There were simple soap dispensers in each of the shower stalls that dispensed a clear, foaming gel that could be used both as soap and shampoo. Zappa had noticed that Douglas had his own soap that he carried in and out of the shower room in a plastic case, along with his toothbrush and toothpaste, razor and shaving cream. Probably those were amenities for people with the right scores. Zappa had been issued a toothbrush and toothpaste as well, but no shaving utensils. Which was fine by him. He always kept his silver hair about collar-length, and they’d trimmed up his beard while he was in the coma, a little too short for his liking.
He lathered up with the clear liquid soap, which had the aroma of synthesized fruit: almost apple, near-pear, not-quite lemon. Douglas’s rock ballad ended, and he started up another one. Zappa luxuriated in the feeling of hot water. This was the only really nice thing about Tranquil Meadows: hot water. He hated it here, despised the very walls around him and the role he was forced to play. And he missed everything about his old life. He missed the sunshine, the wind, and the rain. Missed his family, missed the taste of real food—scarce as it was in the wilderness—and missed his freedom most of all. But whenever he stood under that shower head and felt the hot water streaming down his back—hot water that he hadn’t even had to boil over a campfire—just for the moment, he missed nothing. It was heaven.
The door to the shower room opened and slammed shut, interrupting Zappa’s meditative enjoyment of his shower and stopping Douglas’s song mid-lyric.
“Guys, I gotta talk to you.” It was Blake, his voice urgent.
“Can’t it wait?” Douglas asked, annoyance in his voice.
“No,” said Blake. “This is the only place they don’t record.”
“It is?” Zappa realized that they were probably being surveilled most of the time, but he hadn’t quite figured out how. There were no visible cameras in his room, the halls, or the common areas.
“Ocular surveillance turns off when you enter a bathroom,” said Blake. “And during group therapy, but that wouldn’t have worked.”
Oh, so they carry their surveillance devices with them, embedded in their heads.
“Fine,” said Douglas, and he turned his shower off. “What is it?”
Zappa turned his shower off, too, and started toweling off while Blake and Douglas spoke on the other side of the curtain.
“So this World Health Director guy is coming tomorrow, right?” said Blake.
“Yeah?” said Douglas.
“Well, what are we gonna do?”
“Do? I don’t catch your meaning.”
“I’ve been here three months. Every week I ask Dr. Ignatius or Trisha for answers. Why am I here? When can I leave? Why am I not allowed to go anywhere? Are you just going to let us all die of boredom? But they always find some way to blow me off. Ignatius tells me to review my digital guide book, or Trisha says she’ll file a request or some bullshit.”
“Yeah, I’ve had a similar experience.”
“The truth is, they don’t know why we’re here. They don’t know why we’re not allowed to go anywhere. They don’t know anything, and they can’t do anything about anything. They don’t have the authority.”
“But this Yourgrau guy does,” Douglas said.
“Of course he does! He’s the World Health Director. He has all the authority.”
“So what are you suggesting?”
“We present him with a list of demands,” said Blake. “Tomorrow at dinner. We tell him we’re human goddamn beings and they can’t treat us like this. The program has to be made voluntary, so that anyone can opt out at any time. And they need to give us freedom of movement, allow us to leave the facility, even if it’s just a trip to the park or to visit a friend for the afternoon. And they need to give us things to do besides lie in bed and count the ceiling tiles.”
“There’s what, sixteen of us, if you count the other pods?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think we’re exactly in the position to make demands. What do we do if he says no? We have no bargaining chip.”
“Sure we do. He wants us here for a reason. I’m not exactly clear on what that reason is, but there has to be one.”
Zappa pulled the shower curtain aside and stepped out with his towel wrapped around his waist and his bundle of dirty clothes in his arms. “Data,” he said. This pre-formed thought had been percolating through his subconscious for days, but now it substantiated itself in his forebrain: a fully developed conclusion.
“Yep,” said Douglas. “Data. That’s the reason behind everything the Technate does.”
“You must be right,” said Blake. He paused, rubbed the top of his bald head in contemplation, then went on excitedly. “Okay, so if he doesn’t grant our demands, we’ll stop giving up the data. Ignatius said Yourgrau has taken a special interest in the program. Without us, he has no program.”
“I don’t know…” said Douglas.
“Come on. We have to do something. This is our one chance.”
“How would we stop providing the data? We tell him we’re leaving? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Blake, but we’re locked in here.”
“We go on strike. No group therapy. No individual therapy. No medical checkups. No cooperation.”
Zappa recalled something Dr. Ignatius had told him in his intake interview. “Our participation in the program is contingent on our cooperation,” he said. “So if we don’t cooperate, what? We get sent to work camps? Replaced by some other people who aren’t old enough to be considered old?”
“They can’t replace us, that’s the thing,” said Blake. “There aren’t that many of us left in the world. The pandemics, the wars, the hunger…all but wiped out the older generations. They want data on ‘habitators of higher age’, fine. We’re some of the only people who can give it to them. But we’re not going to do it without some concessions. So we negotiate.”
“Look man,” said Douglas, “I don’t want to knock your idea, but it’s a little too dangerous for my comfort level. I’m as unhappy here as you are, but I’d rather be unhappy here than unhappy in a work camp.”
“Dammit, Douglas, don’t be a coward. This’ll work. I know it will. I’ll talk to the other pods, get everyone on board—”
“You gonna get Mallory on board?”
“Well, maybe not Mallory, but—”
“I don’t think I’m up for it,” said Douglas.
Blake threw his hands up and turned to Zappa. “What about you?”
“You’re really asking Zappa to go to bat for your cause?” said Douglas. “He’s only been here a week. He’s a feral. His Habitator Grade is like a point-oh-seven. If he steps out of line, the Technate’ll come down on him, hard.”
“Douglas is right,” said Zappa. “I wish I could, but…”
“Don’t decide now,” said Blake. “Let me talk to the others first. If I can get most of them to agree, are you in?”
“Let me sleep on it,” said Zappa, though he was fairly certain of what his answer would be. He must not do anything to cast himself in a suspicious light, from the Technate’s perspective. Not yet.
Continue to Chapter Five.
Thank you for reading!
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