Bits of Catalyst by E. M. Foner

Author:E. M. Foner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Foner Books

Eleven

“It’s Mouser,” Sarah announced after the door slid open. “Are we going to play a game?”

“I just dropped by to give your mother an early warning,” Mouser said. “Do you have a minute, Rayne?”

“That sounds serious,” Rayne said as she got up from the couch and handed the controller to her daughter. “You play my turn.”

“I’m going to crush you, little girl,” Hercules said in the evil voice of a villain he’d once played, and then he was too busy to talk as the avatar Sarah had taken over from her mother raced ahead through the ancient ruins on the large screen.

“Is that Shadow’s game?” Mouser asked. “I thought he and Nigel were planning to do it all on visors.”

“The visor makes my neck tired, so I asked him for a screen version,” Sarah said, showing no signs of slowing down as she effortlessly multi-tasked. “It turned out that the original game from Bits he’s been modifying was designed for two dimensions. He said it’s always easy to crush 3D data for video—it’s going the other way that takes serious processing power.”

“Don’t you have the youth-sized visor? It’s lighter than the adult one, and your head is still growing, so your eyes are closer together than an adult’s.”

“I loaned it to a boy in my class who’d never seen one and he broke it. Boys break everything.”

“I know there are some left in the stock that Flower set me up with so I’ll bring you another one,” Mouser said. “And remember that some boys who break things grow up to be men who fix things.”

“It’s embarrassing enough that she’s better than me without you holding a conversation with her at the same time,” Hercules said, then grimaced as Sarah’s point total jumped when she extracted a clay oil lamp from the dirt. “I permanently lost the ability to multi-task when I turned thirty.”

“We’ll talk in the kitchen,” Rayne said. She turned to Mouser. “Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea?”

“A glass of water would be fine,” the mayor replied. “I’ve just come from a long meeting with the brain trust and I’m parched.”

“Kruik, Snap, and the Zerakovas?”

“And the new Farling, who’s acronym I can’t remember. We must have talked for three hours, and I still didn’t understand what he was doing there. When I asked him outright, he said that he was volunteering his time and we should appreciate the sacrifice.”

“G32FX,” Rayne said as she filled a glass with tap water. “I leased him a spot in the bazaar to set up a dating agency based on genetics, of all things. I can’t keep up with inter-species relations, but I get the impression from the Zarents who I deal with that they believe they owe M793qK a great debt. Any Farling he recommends is royalty in their book.”

“If G-whatever has opened a business, he must be settling in for the long haul,” Mouser said. “Maybe I was wrong to be suspicious.”

“He did fix our GoGo addiction epidemic in less than a day.

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