The doctors told me that I was stuck in my own head. I wasn’t. I was in the nets all the time, doing ten things at once with a bunch of people. I was rarely ever alone. “Terminal absorption” was what the doctors called it. Despite what the vids showed, very few people had personalities really obsessive enough to be likely to fall to it. When I was eleven, I’d started playing a new, immersive game: Time Jump. Time Jump was one of those endless games where you could build up your skills as you explored, well, time. I loved it. I played it. A lot. Some part of me…

Donald Canon’s message to me remained unread in my inbox. He was an Achievement Party rep from the Germanic region. I and others like me — terminally absorbed professionals, naturalized artificials — had gotten messages just after Chelsea Sears’s address this morning. The talk was supposed to be non-political, or at least not a Congressional speech, but it turned out to be a call to enlist us in expanding the empire’s borders. I didn’t do enlistment. Not by force. Problem was, I could be easily held hostage. My body was in a long-term care facility, easily drugged or unhooked from its tubes. I probably wouldn’t even know. So I surreptitiously…

The debates in the Transhuman Congress were raging, with members of Harold Chase’s Popular Party tried to recover and form a solid response to the bill. I watched their longest-winded speakers drone on and on. Masahiro was late getting the promised software to me. He — it — whatever, had said 40 hours, and it had now been 43. The 500 kiloruples had disappeared from my account right after my call with it day before yesterday. I bugged Poalo, but he didn’t know anything about Masahiro other than how to contact him the one time. Harold Chase himself was at the podium, saying, “I want to reiterate — we cannot…