Sublimation(73)

“He’s—like a TV show techbro asshole,” you admit. “He’s fine. I can deal with him.”

She laughs. “Yes! Exactly! You see what I had to put up with? I’m so sorry you have to inherit him from me.”

“Why’d you recommend me for your job?”

The smile fades from Megan’s face. You wonder if you asked that question too early in the conversation.

“I recommended you because I knew that it would be a sensitive position with a lot of visibility, which Drew would try to influence. So, I wanted someone I could trust, taking over for me. Someone who I could feel alright about working with, in the future, rather than going through one of Thorsson’s cronies. And that was either you, Katarina Callow, or Jose whats-his-last-name, you know—”

“Tall Jose, not short Jose.”

“Yes, that one. But I recommended you because—you’re still here on a visa.”

“Did you want to give him blackmail material?”

You stand.

“I don’t know if you realize this, but you’ve made it so I can’t say no to Drew. I can’t disagree with him. I can’t argue with him. I’m doing all this press for something I’m not allowed to look at, and I can’t push back on it, because”—you gesture vaguely, weakly—“citizenship.”

Megan doesn’t know what you and your instance have been working for. And you don’t want to tell her about them now, not here. Not while you’re arguing. But she knows that you’re here on a visa. She’s frowning a little now.

“YJ, if he tries anything, I’ll just hire you. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would weigh on your mind so much. I did want him to think he could control you, a bit. But if he tries anything, I want you to know that I’ve got your back. Okay?”

The wind leaves your sails. You sit back down.

“Okay,” you echo.

She clasps her hands together.

“So. What else? Wait—maybe we start from something else. What do you know,” she says.

You look down at your feet. You need to buy new shoes. It feels like there’s always something wearing out. You look up, you take a sip of water, and then you tell Megan the rest. You tell her about how Drew didn’t warn you away from twenty-six until you actually went to look for the underlying documentation. You tell her how you know that the Mitosis project encompasses more than the separation technology. And you tell her that you’re pretty sure that the funding is coming from the federal government, through some program or other, and that you’d like her to confirm if that’s the case.

She nods. She looks out her window, and then back at you.

“Yes. Here’s the parts that I can tell you,” she says.

Condensco had been a medium-sized late-stage start-up that had been looking for a way to prevent instancing from occurring. Instancing tech had historically been expensive and hard to iterate on. Condensco had received a sponsorship by the U.S. federal government for researching ways to disentangle instances. The catch was that Condensco, and any successor organization, was required to comply with the guidelines established by the IIS, was subject to their limited-but-sacrosanct oversight, and was required to turn over any particularly novel invention for prior approval before public sale. But this was a self-reported standard. When Drew and Megan had acquired Condensco, the requirements shifted to Mergebreak. Any of the Condensco-related projects that were funded by the IIS were technically IIS projects, so only employees with clearance could access them. And so, yes, Mitosis was government-backed, and YJ wouldn’t get access to the full suite of information until he was cleared.

“And everything else—I can’t tell you, yet,” Megan says. “Especially not while we’re—at my job. But since you already know about it.”

“Why’d you take this job, anyway?”

“It seemed like a good career opportunity,” Megan says. She’s back to giving you non-answers. You asked too quickly. She glances at her phone.

“I’ve got a meeting soon. But this was good. It’s nice to get it all out into the open.”

“Sure, yeah,” you say. You stand.

She smiles at you. You think it’s supposed to be sympathetic.

“Do you talk to your instance, much?”

Why is everyone so obsessed with your instance, recently?

“Sometimes,” you say. “I talked with him the other day.”

“I can’t imagine what it’s like.”

“It’s a pretty common experience,” you say. “A lot of people have instances. They say that projected outward, the number of instances will overtake the number of non-instanced people by 2130, barring mass changes to human psychology or public perception of instantiation.”

“Yes, but still—it’s hard to imagine, from the inside.”

You shrug. You adjust your pants before taking out your phone and pretending to check the train times. You glance back at her.

“Thanks, Megan,” you say. She smiles at you again.

“YJ,” she says, “I’ve never lied to you. I want you to have the information to make informed decisions. That’s the difference between me and Drew. And I’ll tell you one more thing I probably shouldn’t be telling you: I recommended you because I thought you’d make the best replacement for Drew, if he was removed.”