Dave 2

Decker, and the second man from IT. Came upstairs because his manager asked him to, and lost the afternoon for it.

Nobody got his name. Dave called him up to the fourth-floor conference room, said this needed doing, and after that he was the second Dave in the room and that is what he stayed. His badge had his real name on it, printed, three inches from four people's eyes, and none of them read it.

A human in his twenties, the department's decker, junior enough that being asked for a favor by Dave was the good part of his week.

He was handed a cartridge and told it was a critical security update that needed installing. So he did what you do when your boss hands you a job: he brought it up on his own cyberdeck to read the instructions. He never got to the instructions. He went down in the chair he was sitting in. The crew then sat him up at the conference table and folded him forward over his own crossed arms, head down, hands placed, because that is what a man halfway through a long guided meditation looks like through a doorway. He was still in that position when they left the building.

What the crew knows#

• He was not being careful and he was not being careless. He opened a file his manager told him to install, on his own deck, to find out how to install it. There is no version of that where he did anything wrong.
• His badge opened the submissions floor. Vinnie wore it to lunch.
• He will be more or less fine tomorrow, which the crew did not know while they were standing over him.
• He was in the conference room, breathing, head down on his arms, for the rest of the afternoon, behind a door booked as occupied until six.

Contact#