The bartender was a young kid with slicked-back hair and a tan. "So how's it going?"

Ralph eased the cramps in his shoulders. "Well, I got to tell you, it's been a bitch of a day, but I'm hoping that it'll get better."

The bartender nodded sympathetically. "Maybe a drink would help?"

Ralph grinned. "I didn't come in here for a prayer meeting."

"What'll it be?"

Ralph didn't hesitate. "Scotch and a beer back."

"You want the Jap or the real stuff?"

Ralph had intended to go with Japanese, but then he changed his mind. "Give me the real stuff. Dewars if you've got it."

"We don't have no beer on tap."

"Never mind, nothing's perfect. Give me a bottle of Himmler Light."

The bartender placed Ralph's drinks in front of him and then pointed to the CM logo on the front of his overalls. "You work for them?"

Ralph nodded. "Sure do."

"You must be doing okay then?"

Ralph grimaced. "Tell me about it."

The bartender seemed genuinely interested. "You work on the feelies?"

Ralph sighed. "It ain't as glamorous as you might think. It's really only a job."

The bartender smiled knowingly. "Yeah, I bet."

Ralph warmed slightly, basking in the third-hand celebrityhood. "Well, you know, every job does have its moments."

The bartender tapped the side of his nose. "You ever meet Connie Starr?"

Ralph laughed. "Stood next to her in an elevator once, but most of the time they keep the stars away from the likes of me."

"So what do you do? Technician or something?"

"Right. I actually work in the client end of the operation, with what we call the stiffs."

"Stiffs?"

"The ones who've signed on for life. The rich folks who just lay there, dreaming they're James Bond or Genghis Khan for the rest of their days. Me and my partner take care of six hundred of them."

"That sounds like some job."

Ralph shook his head. "It's mainly automated. There isn't that much to do. Thank God for the union, that's what I say."

The bartender moved away to serve another customer but came back to Ralph when he was through. Like most people, he was fascinated by the idea of the feelies. "That's got to be the life, though. Spending all of your time living out a fantasy."

Ralph had a thought. Okay, so he wasn't going to blow the whistle on CM. Nobody said that he couldn't start a grassroots rumor. "To tell the truth, we've been having a bit of trouble lately with the longtimers."

The bartender immediately looked interested. "Trouble?"

Ralph looked around to see that no one else was listening, then leaned forward conspiratorially and lowered his voice. "They've been dying on us."

The bartender didn't seem to know if he believed Ralph or not. "Dying?"

"Just passing away."

"I never heard about that."

"Of course you didn't. It's a very closely guarded secret."

"Why are they dying?"

"Nobody knows. It might be a glitch in the equipment, although those Germans don't usually screw up, or it could be that, after a couple of years in a feelie, they just give up and die. It may be that human beings just ain't designed to live like a cactus."

The bartender was shaking his head. "That's pretty freaky. How many have died so far?"

"Not many yet, but I'm afraid it's only the start."

The bartender poured Ralph a shot on the house. "It's one time that I'm glad I'm poor."

Ralph drained the free drink. "Amen to that."

"What are they going to do about it? They can't just let people die."

"Can't they? So far, all they've been doing is keeping it quiet."

"That's terrible."

Ralph sipped his beer. "That's big corporations for you. They just don't give a damn."

"THERE HAVE BEEN, FOR WANT OF A better word, rumors."

Kingsley Deutsch stood at the end of the absurdly long conference table. His stance was dramatic, as was the pause that he left for his opening statement to sink in.

"In fact, the rumors that are circulating in this corporation have reached totally unacceptable levels, levels that can only indicate that morale is approaching a state of instability. Instability at any time is something, gentlemen, that we simply cannot afford. We cannot afford it at any time, but we particularly cannot afford it right now."

The special emergency meeting was being held in the penthouse boardroom, the highest pinnacle of power in Combined Media. The boardroom itself was designed to embody, reflect, and amplify that power. The vast panoramic window behind Deutsch looked out over an expanse of city that stretched out almost to the horizon. The sky was a deep blue with streaks of wispy, pale clouds, planes came and went, and the light of the towers and streets were just starting to come alive.

Outside, everything seemed so normal. In the boardroom, there was a feeling of isolation, almost a sense of impending doom. The pair of huge marble neo-Assyrian godheads that flanked the window and supported the vaulted cathedral ceiling glared angrily down from behind Deutsch at the men and women assembled there as though silently demanding explanations. Deutsch himself looked as though he was also about to demand explanations. Kingsley Deutsch wasn't a tall man, but he made up for what he lacked in stature by unrelenting energy. More than once he had been described in the media as Napoleonic. Like Bonaparte, his dress was deliberately understated. His black conservative suit may have been infinitely forgettable, even if it had cost more than three thousand dollars, but there was no forgetting his face. He was not a handsome man, but there were few faces outside of a handful of mass murderers and psychopaths that showed such will and determination. His chin jutted in permanent belligerence; his small blue eyes, beneath knitted, almost invisible brows, were penetrating to the point of being scary. The only touch of vanity was the way in which he compensated for his thinning gray hair with a deep, even tan that seemed to be the main reason behind weekends spent at his tax haven, a Haitian chateau just outside Port au Prince.

"I have called this special meeting because I have an announcement to make that I believe may be of historic proportions."

Kingsley Deutsch didn't mince words. He was a megalomaniac, certainly, but he was an absolutely successful megalomaniac, and if he said historic proportions, he meant historic proportions. Historic as in history, not historic as in a fifteen-second sound bite on the next day's news shows. The men and women who had been summoned to the penthouse stood transfixed, and the pause before he continued was a form of torture. The torture, however, wasn't about to stop.

"Before the announcement, though, I think we have to spend a little time taking stock of the situation that currently exists within this enterprise of ours. There is little point attempting to advance into history if we cannot summon even the confidence to face tomorrow. I said that this corporation was beset by rumor. Your comments please."

The frightening blue eyes scanned the assembled men and women. There were just ten of them, so small an assembly that they were dwarfed by the overwhelming conference table that was almost thirty feet of dark mahogany polished to the finish of glass. For ten people, however, they wielded a great deal of power. They were the ten department heads, the ten top people in the whole of Combined Media. Between then, they commanded almost, although not quite, as much power as Deutsch himself. And yet, they said nothing. The meeting itself already had them off balance. It had been the end of the working day when they had been summoned without warning to Deutsch's presence: "The penthouse. Immediately."

Deutsch looked around once more and half smiled. Behind him, hanging over the city, a skyboard advertising Pepsi Cola had lit up. He focused on Madison Renfield.