“Blanco really got a lawyer,” Timothy Stratton mused out loud.

“And a pretty good one too,” Alison Stroud, one of the members of CyberBionic’s legal department replied. “I went to law school with Katherine Katz, she’s one tough cookie.”

“What did they come up with that they want to change in the deal?” Tim asked.

“Just including Katherine’s fees,” Alison replied. “Everyone over here is in agreement that the company should pay it too.”

“I don’t know,” Tim said.

“Tim, just pay the legal fees. Your yearend bonus will be huge even if you had to pay another 100000 credits, especially if you’re correct about the potential of these two new programs,” Alison retorted. Tim smiled. “Should I tell you how profitable I’ve heard your division is?”

“That won’t be necessary,” Tim replied laughing. “I’ve heard those rumors too. I’ll agree to paying the legal fees even though that could have been another day in Tahiti.”

“Oh please! Rumor has it that you’re already spending all of October there.”

“I’ll be there the first two weeks of November too,” Tim replied with an even bigger smile on his face.

“You’re making me jealous. I’m only getting three weeks in Hawaii during July after spending a week with the in laws,” Alison said. Both laughed.

“You could come with me and my wife,” Tim said.

“My wife wouldn’t like that, so I’ll pass,” Alison replied good naturally. “Anyway, approve the updated contract so I can send it to Katherine.”

“Done,” Tim said a minute later.

“And I’ve sent Katherine copies for her and Ms. Blanco,” Alison said. “Thanks Tim. Enjoy your vacation.”

“Thanks Alison. Enjoy yours too!” Tim replied before disconnecting the call. He sent a message to his assistant to send Zoe the needed permissions for her Allegro and MR as well as the updated software. After giving it a moment’s thought, Tim sent a second message ordering his assistant to send Zoe a copy of the corporate MR tutorial.

*

“Wow! They move fast,” Zoe told Sonya the next afternoon as her copy of the contract, download links for the corporate ICE, a link for a tutorial, a deposit notification from her account, and firmware updates for her frame came in all at once. The nurse had come into work early to spend some time talking with Zoe.

“Who moves fast?” Sonya asked.

“CyberBionic,” Zoe answered. She explained the deal she had made with the corporation.

“Well, I’m going to clock in and see if the bosses need me to do anything before I start making my rounds. I’ll see you later,” Sonya said as she stood and stretched. Zoe had discovered that Claire’s clinic was quite busy and usually had several patients always staying.

“See ya!” Zoe replied as she activated the firmware upgrade while the nurse left. The world faded away.

*

“That sucked,” Zoe said as she came to.

She rubbed her temples and closed her eyes as her Allegro’s boot screen appeared before her. Zoe opened her eyes as the boot screen was still visible with them closed. She immediately noticed her widgets were missing after her Allegro was fully booted up. No sooner had she started to wonder what time it was, the time appeared filling her vision. Just as soon as she started thinking about returning the time to its previous widget, then it appeared in the corner of her vision along with the date and weather.

“That’s fast,” Zoe muttered. She started thinking about her other widgets and they appeared in their proper places. A message notification alerted Zoe to a new message from Timothy Stratton’s assistant.

No sooner had she dismissed the notice, the message opened before her, and the notifications’ setting returned to the chime she had set them as before instead of the default visual notification. Zoe smiled. She loved the new speed her Allegro had in doing what she wanted. The message stated that there were no corporate versions of the prank daemons Zoe used, but she now had higher level corporate versions of her ICE and other daemons. All advertisements not from CyberBionic or one of their closest allied corporations would be blocked by default. It seemed only top management and the ultra-wealthy could get away with not seeing any ads. Updated versions of her ad blockers would handle the rest if she insisted on blocking all ads. The message also advised Zoe to take the MR tutorial before attempting to use Mixed Reality since MR could be very distracting and to have fun.

*

“Zoe, are you going to eat?” Sonya asked. Zoe blinked and focused on the nurse, who had brought her dinner.

“Sorry. I’ve been doing the Mixed Reality tutorial,” Zoe said. “Thanks for bringing me supper.”

“You’re welcome. You get lasagna and sweet peppermint tea tonight,” Sonya said. “Is the tutorial interesting?”

“Yeah. Don’t you guys use MR some?”

“We do. Doctor Brown more than the rest of us since she uses it to practice surgery before doing the procedure,” Sonya replied. “I’ll be back in a bit to get the dishes.”

“I could just have the NurseBot take them to the kitchen,” Zoe offered.

“It’s a robotic nurse, not a maid. It won’t do menial tasks like that since it wasn’t programmed for them,” Sonya said.

“Oh. I didn’t know that” Zoe replied looking thoughtful at the robot.

“Don’t think about changing its code either!” Sonya warned. “That’ll break the warranty and tick off Zane and Claire.”

“Yeah, I totally wasn’t thinking about doing that,” Zoe protested.

“Uh huh. I saw the way you were looking at the NurseBot,” Sonya laughed.

“Alright! I promise I won’t change anything,” Zoe replied joining Sonya in laughing.

“Ok. I’ll be back,” Sonya said as she exited the room.

Zoe glanced at the NurseBot and shook her head. She started eating and restarted the tutorial.

*

Zoe activated the Mixed Reality mode at midnight. She didn’t notice any difference and started to think about a bouncy ball appearing in her right hand. This was something the tutorial had stated would be good MR training. Before she finished the thought, a glowing green ball appeared in her hand. Zoe tossed it at the wall, and it bounced back. She caught it.

“Neat!” Zoe exclaimed. She played with her digital ball for a few minutes and then grew bored. She activated Code View as the tutorial called the ability to see the code in every object or system. “Shit!”

She was nearly overwhelmed by scrolling 1s and 0s on everything that she could see. Zoe turned Code View back off and blinked a few times.

“Code View is worthless to me because it’s all binary!”