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“Oh,” she said, laughing softly, “You have a bit of—” she brushed at the corner of her lip.

“Ah,” he nodded, wiping his mouth with the napkin she’d provided with the drink. “Thanks.” He blushed.

“So,” she said, sighing audibly. Getting
down to business, now,
Ramone thought remorsefully.
Here it comes.
She took a sip of her drink and studied him with blue eyes that sparkled beneath the track lighting overhead. “How was work?”

“It was fine, thank you.”
Where is this going?
he wondered, feeling the knot in his stomach swelling.

“Is it easier or more difficult to keep going?”

“It’s never been easy.” He shifted in his seat and pushed his glasses up. “I’d say everything’s been worse for the past six years, wouldn’t you?”

She cleared her throat, leaned forward and said quietly, “Ramone, I looked you up. I should have done it when you first came to me, but then you shared your work, and that was all I could see.”

He nodded. Where was she going with this? So what if she knew his past. Would that really change anything? “And? Have I done something unforgivable?”

“I guess that depends on who you talk to. I’m only thirty-six. I still remember what it was like before.”

Before.
It was always before. Before he ruined everything. Before the hundreds of terrorist attacks on American soil. Before the technological explosion. How often he’d thought these very same things,
I, too, remember what it was like before. Do you think I can even live with myself?

I must. I must go on.

His anxiety was forgotten. He slid to the edge of his chair and whispered, “I’m undoing it, Blythe. It was never intended to be this. I’m just a cog. You
must
believe me. It was supposed to be something quite different. What
I
made didn’t have this application. No one even knows it was me!” He waved his hands in a frustrated gestured. “I forget it was me, sometimes, it’s gotten so out of hand. That’s why I came to you this time.” Abruptly he remembered to speak abstractly, to only hint at what he meant. He leaned back and glanced around, wondering if the Editors were paying attention, wherever it was they hid.   

At the table across the aisle from them, a boy no older than eighteen, reached toward his female companion suddenly and spilled his drink. They both swore, standing, then burst into laughter simultaneously. 

Ramone turned his gaze back to Blythe.

She tucked the strand of loose hair behind her ear. Ramone noticed her hands—delicate yet full of purpose, moving deliberately as though they could hold back the flood of damage all his work had unintentionally done. She paused, then slid her fingers around the large cappuccino mug, which made them appear ridiculously small. From where he sat, he could see a tiny hangnail on one finger. The half-moons beneath her nails were pinkish-white and, for a moment, they seemed to Ramone to be real moons, rising as though from the saddle of a mountainous horizon. Something was beautiful about them. He blinked away the fantasy as a longing filled his chest. He swallowed and focused on her accusation, averting his eyes and his thoughts from how her hands would feel on his skin. Her eyes drilled holes into his face.

“Someone is culpable, Ramone,” she said, in a firm no-nonsense voice. Funny how quickly she became the lawyer.

What little confidence he’d mustered on the way in crumpled; he felt like a fool. “I’m not denying that. I’m here, aren’t I? I’m changing it.” He lowered his gaze, feeling all the years of self-denigration come crashing down on his shoulders.

“You should have told me.”

He nodded. There was nothing he could say.

She went on quietly, almost gently. “You know, omissions are forms of lies.”

Lowering his eyes, he noticed the image on her slate. It was him. On her slate. An encyclopedia entry and a picture of him, ten years younger. His hair was totally black then. His eyes bright, his smile naive.

Something about that made his shoulders firm and his back straighten. He was the only one who could undo what had been done. “Put it behind you and help me now, Blythe. I need you for this. Let’s not speak of it anymore. Let’s go forward.” He kept his eyes averted, knowing his face was red and mottled in frustration and embarrassment.
Oh how I hate speaking to people,
he thought, closing his eyes and seeking equilibrium.

“I’m your lawyer, Ramone. I need you to be honest. You can’t keep these things from me—it’s unfair, and it could be dangerous. This very nearly interfered with what we’re doing. It could have derailed us.” She touched his hand lightly till he looked at her and she pulled her fingers away.

When she said us, did she mean the patent, or did she mean . . . something else?
His hand tingled where her cool fingers had been. He stared at her for a long time without saying anything.

Lightning,
he thought, feeling electricity spark between them. If he’d been an Editor and if he’d been watching, he would have played a song right then. He’d have forgotten all about the strange conversation that had just taken place—he wouldn’t have even noticed all the things they didn’t say.

Chapter 3

Ghosteye bit his lip
. That look,
he thought,
she’d been repulsed by him for just a moment.
Ramone saw it, but Ghosteye could tell the man didn’t know what it meant. Even so, he reacted to it, his confidence visibly wavering as he sat across from the lawyer. 

Ghosteye deciphered it, putting everything together quickly as he edited, fingers punching keys, his gaze moving back and forth between the different screens running several programs and feeding him input from various cameras.
There is electricity, he thought, but when they’re apart, she forgets what he looks like. Gets comfortable with the thought of him, but the reality of him
. . .
It was a classic problem. Happened all the time. Occasionally it was strong enough to undo a romance, but Ghosteye had faith in this one. There was another factor working on them—respect. The lawyer’s head was full of ideas about Ramone. She admired him. She wanted to be inside his mind.

That was another thing Ghosteye could see when he watched them together. She was a woman with a cool disposition, but her big, wide eyes gave everything away. After she overcame the discomfort of being in the same space as Ramone, her eyes devoured him. Ghosteye smirked, feeling he had the upper hand because he knew what Blythe thought of Ramone and yet Ramone couldn’t see it.

He shrugged, applying a quiet song to the scene with a slow-pounding kick drum and a throbbing bass guitar to give the moment a pent-up feel, a sexual undercurrent.

Ghosteye always had the upper hand. It was nothing, really. He had a vantage point. The casts in his feeds were lost in the woods, bumbling through their lives while he gave those lives a much-needed poignancy.

Not for the first time he wondered to himself if any of his stars ever found his creations and if they did, did they appreciate all his work? Would Ramone go home and see what a sympathetic story Ghosteye made of him? But, well, of course he knew the answer to that. 

*****

Marci was beginning to hate them.

Who did they think they were, stringing her along all this time? Stewart laughed when she threw her slate into the couch cushions and buried her face in the pillows.

“Don’t you know, sweetheart? You can’t hurry love, you’ll just have to wait.”

“Thanks, that really helps. I didn’t see you taking off once you started watching it,” she said, the pillow muffling her voice.

“I prefer to be in the feeds, rather than watching them,” he said, taking his shirt off.

“So, you’re going to strip for me?”

“I’m going to go for a run, then shower. Want to come?”

“Which part? The shower, hell yeah, the run, not so much.”

“Lazy.”

“We could be famous, Stewart, let’s do something epic. I could get it out of my system. Stop watching, start living.”

Stewart tilted his head, looking thoughtful. “They say the Editors are more interested in people who
do
things than the people who spend all their time watching the feeds.”

“The irony.”

“Is that irony?”

“No idea. I’m studying business not English. I said it without thinking.” She couldn’t stop watching Stewart’s muscles beneath his smooth skin as he leaned over and put on his shoes. She sat up, suddenly feeling awake. He continued to speak, though she’d stopped paying attention. Suddenly he was standing in front of the armchair watching her.

“Marci,” he said, looking at her expectantly. “Marci?”

“What?” she answered, shaking her head.

“You were just staring at me like I’m a porterhouse. I’m not, just so you know.”

“I wasn’t.”

He nodded, “You were. I’m a man, Marci. Not a slab of meat.”

She blushed. “Oh please, like you don’t want every eye on you.”

With a shrug, he walked to the front door and paused. “Maybe so, but not yours. You can’t have this.” He indicated his body with a sweeping gesture as though it were hewn from rock. It was nice. She had to admit.

She laughed. “I wouldn’t have it anyway.”

He shook his head and opened the door. “Good. But I know we’re both lying.” Before she could answer, he was gone.

Nothing had happened between Ramone and Blythe. Now they’d go home to their respective partners and the rest of their night would be dull and boring. She retrieved her slate. There must be something to watch. Another affair could be happening that very minute. Some stubborn woman somewhere could be meeting her match—the man who would turn her to putty no matter how hard she resisted him, while he’d willingly give up all his vices just to sleep with her.

*****

It was a temptation he wasn’t used to—the urge to check the feeds for himself to see if he’d been picked up, sliced, and redistributed. He wanted to see if he lost his cool. Driving home after his meeting at the coffee shop with Blythe and trying to remember, his memory was blank.

Was it a sign of lost composure that he hardly remembered what he said to her? Did something set him off?

He ran his hand through his hair and relaxed his jaw. He knew many younger people thrived on the knowledge that someone was watching their every move like some sort of stalker—it wasn’t just a concept now. It was real. He’d not had a good night with Sue in five years. At first, he was ashamed to admit, it was sickeningly exciting. But now. Now it just felt like they were always trying to perform for someone else. And neither of them had the courage to check, to find out for sure if they were being broadcast on one of the adult feeds.

Not knowing was better. Or was it?

He sighed. His knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. For a brief moment he imagined turning sharply and ending his life wrapped around a telephone pole.

No. There was still hope. The thing he’d created could undo the eight years of damage that started when he foolishly developed the nanocamera. Don’t hate yourself, Ramone, he thought. The purpose of the nanocameras was good.

He had thought eight years ago that if he could make a small enough video camera, a link to the optic nerve would be possible, giving sight to hundreds of thousands of people. Nanocameras possessed several usages, he knew. Any tool held potential for questionable applications. He just never imagined the bulk of them. 

Almost by accident, he developed something more capable than an eye. His mind was illuminated, electric, the ideas coming one after another in rapid succession. His hands seemed to belong to someone else; his mind saw all the connections in all the right places. Something about it reminded him of the few times he sneaked marijuana as a teenager—when the silliest thing meant everything. For a little while he thought he’d done something wonderful, world-changing.

Working on company time—that had been a mistake, he thought with a deep exhalation. He relaxed his jaw again when he realized it was clenched in frustration. A mistake he swore not to make again.

*****

Dinner that evening with Sue was brief. She sensed his mood and when her inquiries about his day were answered in a sullen fashion, she fell into silence. He smiled at her weakly, wishing he could be better than he was, to comfort her, tell her what was happening. Over the past few years, honest conversation turned into something that required many veils to protect it from the watching eyes of strangers. 

“You look radiant,” he said, in an effort to be complimentary and conversational.

“At least one of us does,” she said with a little smile.

“Better you than me.” He put his fork down, the pasta only half finished.

“And why’s that?”

“We both know I married up.” He gave her a half-smile that suggested he was feeling more amiable than he actually was.

“Tell me more.” 

“Is that a new pair of earrings?” Light refracted in the tiny strands of diamonds dangling against her neck. The curve of her collarbone was so familiar. If only he could touch it again without a million eyes watching him.

She blushed and a hand reflexively went to her earlobe, covering the diamonds. “I thought you’d never notice.” Her smile was self-conscious.

“Where’d you get them?”

“They were my mother’s,” she said quickly, though there was a halting quality to the phrase.

“I don’t remember seeing them. Your mother must have had better taste than I ever gave her credit for.” He tilted his head to one side, considering it, then his thoughts danced away. She stood suddenly, gathering a few dishes and heading for the sink.  

He retired to his office after helping with the dishes and began to work on the prototype. The nanocameras responded to the electromagnetic fields in humans—which was how they moved around the living creature. His new machine would camouflage the signatures, essentially erasing them. It was like mosquito repellant. Ramone would veritably cease to exist.

He stared at the slate on his desk, imagining the intricacies—wiring, processors, tiny parts and how they’d fit together. The blank white screen of an empty text document helped him see it. In his mind he forged robotic arms to piece the object together in a precise way that would be impossible for his flabby fingers.

He visualized the robotic hands constructing the prototype. All this helped him work out problems from the ground up. He couldn’t build it on his own for a number of reasons: the eyes of the company were everywhere, and contracts protecting the rights of private citizens meant nothing. The corporation respected no one. They’d see what he was doing if he built it in real-space. They’d guess its uses and stop at nothing to take it.