Jack stared at the ceiling. He couldn't sleep anymore. His body was deliciously relaxed; a slight smile gracing his face. Any man would have been smiling if he'd just been with the gorgeous Ellen Standis. She could have anyone she wanted. Why him? Pushing the question from his mind, he rolled out of bed to initiate TR. He plodded over to the office – his glass prison.

The moment he entered, those lines from the agreement about being perpetually monitored penetrated his skull like a laser. He hadn't thought of that once last night. Not for a second.

His thoughts scrambled. Had he and Ellen been filmed? Did she know? Did she care? Did she like that sort of thing? And if she did, did that turn him on or piss him off?

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Like a clone, the phrase lost power with each repetition.

He didn't bother to sit down. "Start Tabula Rasa."

"Yes, Jack."

The screen came to life in front of him. All he had to do was press enter. It felt like a black hole he would be sucked into. But did the wormhole on the other side lead to someplace wonderful or terrible? He pretended it didn't matter. He pressed enter.

The second his finger lifted from the key, the Tabula Rasa interface propelled into action. The intense flow of equations on the screen was overwhelming. Jack sat down now, compelled to watch in awe.

Jack scanned line after line of heady data. He was hooked. Why hadn't he done this sooner?

~~~

Out of the corner of his eye, Jack noticed his reflection above the dresser as he passed by. He hadn't so much as glanced in a mirror for several days. He looked like hell.

He'd become a junky, addicted to the insidious glow of the Tabula Rasa monitors. He wasn't sure when he had last showered. He was certain he hadn't left his suite in days. The room service breakfast remains beside him could have been from yesterday or the day before.

Shit, how long has it been? He felt a slight compulsion to leave his apartment to prove he could, but with an addict's reasoning, he convinced himself he needed one more day in his office. I'll sober up tomorrow, so I should indulge all I can now. He poured a cup of lukewarm coffee from a nearby carafe.

His voice scratchy from lack of sleep, he said, "Access TR."

"Accessing."

Line upon line of material flashed on the TR computer and glowed in the dark space. Jack had stopped turning the lights on in his apartment so he could see the computer's information more clearly. Words, images, and equations lasered onto the glass wall behind him and reflected in a grid across his face. Jack sat mesmerized as he witnessed the slow, steady progress of the equations toward isolating the defective genes and reintroducing the healthy ones.

It was just a computer model, but it was clearly the work of brilliant, beautiful, insightful minds. He had never seen work so pure. It was work he was incapable of doing himself. All he had done for days was sit and watch TR's genius in action.

The haze he was in reminded him of the time in college when he had smoked pot multiple times a day for several months. He had finally stopped because it turned out he needed his mind clear to succeed in his studies. But his mind didn't need to be clear now. In fact, his mind didn't need to do anything. TR was taking care of goddamn everything. Still, he couldn't force himself away. How did they do it? And, why couldn't he talk with them?