Rosie Castro was dark, thin, exotic-looking, and sarcastic; she wore baggy cargo shorts and a T-shirt tight across her large breasts, which read YOU WISH. Independent and rebellious, Rosie had been a Shakespearean scholar at Harvard before she decided, in her words, that "Shakespeare is fucking dead. For fucking centuries. There is nothing new to say. What's the point?" She transferred to MIT, became a protйgйe of Robert Kim, working on natural language programming. It turned out she was brilliant at it. And these days natural language programs were starting to involve distributed processing. Because it turned out people evaluate a sentence in several ways simultaneously, while it is being spoken; they don't wait until it is finished but rather they form expectations of what is coming. That's a perfect situation for distributed processing, which can work on a problem at several points simultaneously. I said, "Still wearing those T-shirts, Rosie." At MediaTronics, we'd had some trouble about the way she dressed.

"Hey. Keeps the boys awake," she said, shrugging.

"Actually, we ignore them." I turned to David Brooks, stiff, formal, obsessively neat, and almost bald at twenty-eight. He blinked behind thick glasses. "They're not that good, anyway," he said. Rosie stuck her tongue out at him.

David was an engineer, and he had an engineer's bluntness and lack of social skills. He was also full of contradictions; although he fussed over every detail of his work and appearance, on weekends he raced a dirt bike, often coming back covered in mud. He shook my hand enthusiastically. "I'm very glad you're here, Jack."

I said, "Somebody's going to have to tell me why you're all so glad to see me." Rosie said, "Well, it's because you know more about the multi-agent algorithms that-"

"I'm going to show him around first," Ricky said, interrupting. "Then we'll talk."

"Why?" Rosie said. "You want it to be a surprise?"

"Hell of a surprise," David said.

"No, not at all," Ricky said, giving them a hard look. "I just want Jack to have some background first. I want to go over that with him."

David looked at his watch. "Well, how much time do you think that will take? Because I figure we've got-"

"I said, Let me show him around, for Christ's sake!" Ricky was almost snarling. I was surprised; I'd never seen him lose his temper before. But apparently they had:

"Okay, okay, Ricky."

"Hey, you're the boss, Ricky."

"That's right, I am," Ricky said, still visibly angry. "And by the way, your break ended ten minutes ago. So let's get back to work." He looked into the adjoining game room. "Where are the others?"

"Fixing the perimeter sensors."

"You mean they're outside?"

"No, no. They're in the utility room. Bobby thinks there's a calibration problem with the sensor units."

"Great. Did anybody tell Vince?"

"No. It's software: Bobby's taking care of it."

It was at that point that my cell phone beeped. I was surprised, pulled it out of my pocket. I turned to the others. "Cell phones work?"

"Yeah," Ricky said, "we're wired here." He went back to his argument with David and Rosie. I stepped into the corridor and got my messages. There was only one, from the hospital, about Julia. "We understand you are Ms. Forman's husband, and if you could call us please as soon as possible…" Then an extension for a Dr. Rana. I dialed back at once. The switchboard put me through. "ICU."

I asked for Dr. Rana, and waited until he came on. I said, "This is Jack Forman. Julia Forman's husband."

"Oh yes, Mr. Forman." A pleasant, melodic voice. "Thank you for calling back. I understand you accompanied your wife to the hospital last night. Yes? Well then you know the seriousness of her injuries, or should I say her potential injuries. We really do feel that she needs to have a thorough workup for cervical fracture, and for subdural hematoma, and she needs a pelvic fracture workup as well."

"Yes," I said. "That's what I was told last night. Is there a problem?"

"Actually, there is. Your wife is refusing treatment."

"She is?"

"Last night, she allowed us to take X-rays and to set the fractures in her wrist. We've explained to her that X-rays are limited in what we can see, and that it is quite important for her to have an MRI, but she is refusing that."

I said, "Why?"

"She says she doesn't need it."

"Of course she needs it," I said.

"Yes, she does, Mr. Forman," Rana said. "I don't want to alarm you but the concern with pelvic fracture is massive hemorrhaging into the abdomen and, well, bleeding to death. It can happen very quickly, and-"

"What do you want me to do?"

"We'd like you to talk to her."

"Of course. Put her on."

"Unfortunately, she's gone for some additional X-rays just now. Is there a number where you can be reached? Your cell phone? All right. One other thing, Mr. Forman, we weren't able to take a psychiatric history from your wife…"

"Why is that?"

"She refuses to talk about it. I'm referring to drugs, any history of behavioral disorders, that kind of thing. Can you shed any light in that area?"

"I'll try…"

"I don't want to alarm you, but your wife has been, well, a bit on the irrational side. At times, almost delusional."

"She's been under a lot of stress lately," I said.

"Yes, I am sure that contributes," Dr. Rana said smoothly. "And she has suffered a severe head injury, which we need to investigate further. I don't want to alarm you, but frankly it was the opinion of the psychiatric consult that your wife was suffering from a bipolar disorder, or a drug disorder, or both."

"I see…"

"And of course such questions naturally arise in the context of a single-car automobile accident…"

He meant that the accident might be a suicide attempt. I didn't think that was likely. "I have no knowledge of my wife taking drugs," I said. "But I have been concerned about her behavior for, oh, a few weeks now."

Ricky came over, and stood by me impatiently. I put my hand over the phone. "It's about Julia." He nodded, and glanced at his watch. Raised his eyebrows. I thought it was pretty odd, that he would push me when I was talking to the hospital about my wife-and his immediate superior. The doctor rambled on for a while, and I did my best to answer his questions, but the fact was I didn't have any information that could help him. He said he would have Julia call when she got back, and I said I would wait for the call. I flipped the phone closed. Ricky said, "Okay, fine. Sorry to rush you, Jack, but… you know, I've got a lot to show you."

"Is there a time problem?" I said.

"I don't know. Maybe."

I started to ask what he meant by that, but he was already leading me forward, walking quickly. We left the residential area, passing through another glass door, and down another passageway. This passage, I noticed, was tightly sealed. We walked along a glass walkway suspended above the floor. The glass had little perforations, and beneath was a series of vacuum ducts for suction. By now I was growing accustomed to the constant hiss of the air handlers. Midway down the corridor was another pair of glass doors. We had to go through them one at a time. They parted as we went through, and closed behind us. Continuing on, I again had the distinct feeling of being in a prison, of going through a succession of barred gates, going deeper and deeper into something.

It might be all high-tech and shiny glass walls-but it was still a prison.