A space opened in traffic and Fisher watched passively as his van shot out into the rushing void. His hands turned the wheel – not to steer but to select a backdrop through which to travel. Fisher chose a country lane paved only in dirt with the occasional puddle filled depression. Magnolia and wild apple trees lined one side of the lane. The other opened onto vast tracts of wheat rippling in the breeze. Blue sky yawned lazily overhead. Cottony clouds shaped like a mother duck and her ducklings puffed by.

Fisher rolled down the driver’s side window and eased back in the captain’s seat to let the scene soak in. Somewhere a hawk cried. Fisher wasn’t sure what to make of his lunch meeting with Veronica. He was trying – unsuccessfully – not to think about it.

As soon as he’d left the recording, Fisher diverged half a dozen retroactive sims in an effort to explain how and why Veronica had contacted him like this. Three had returned a null result. Two converged into a single time-line, but with only an eighteen percent probability rating (too low to bother with). And the last was still wending its way through a successive layer of simulations of simulations of simulations. Fisher would probably have to kill the thread altogether. But he wanted to let it run in the background just in case it went somewhere.

Fisher’s fingers tapped idly at the wheel. He reached down to turn the radio on. The music selected itself to suit the backdrop. Jim Croce’s “I Got A Name.”

I can’t see you anymore, Fisher. The words rung hollow in the space of his skull.

As much as he might have liked otherwise, his and Veronica DeMolay’s relationship had never been of the romantic variety. But he wouldn’t quite call it strictly professional either. Fisher liked to think they were friends. But he wasn’t sure what a beautiful successful woman like her would even see in a guy like him.

They met on the job about six months ago. Fisher got a call to install some almost out of date equipment in her home, a modestly furnished but plainly expensive-as-hell apartment downtown. TOTU was always trying to pawn off shitty equipment on people so they’d have to upgrade sooner. But Fisher had told Miss DeMolay (”Veronica,” she introduced herself as) that he had some better equipment which he’d swap in at no extra cost.

Fisher had no idea why he did it. The words just came out of his mouth. He knew Pricely would have his ass in a sling for comping anybody anything. Fuck that, a voice inside him had immediately retorted. Just this one time. He wouldn’t make a habit out of it. And if things got hairy with Pricely Darling, he would file an appeal with the old codger’s wife on the grounds of improved customer service. She was usually good for that sort of thing.

Just to be on the safe side though, Fisher went down to his van, opened the almost out of date equipment’s outer casing, and began to tinker with it. Recordings broadcast back to TOTU would have him performing routine maintenance, and through a (barely) acceptable margin of human error damaging it beyond his ability in the field to repair it. He’d have to give Veronica the better equipment.

In recognition of his simple act of kindness - “customer service” she obligingly called it for the recordings – Veronica had rewarded him with copious thank you’s and hugged him goodbye on the way out. Fisher left feeling on top of the world and was even more exhilarated when he found that she’d slipped a piece of paper with her phone number on it into his pocket.

Fisher still had the slip of paper. He carried it with him. It functioned as a cipher to her third securacy level, one beyond what his status as a TOTU representative already afforded him. Fisher produced it from the invisible field of objects and information which followed him everywhere like a small cloud of bubbles. The scrap of paper had begun to yellow and curl at the edges and the ink was beginning to fade. Fisher wasn’t sure if she’d chosen this format to deliver the cipher because of it’s degradation rate, or if it was all she had handy.

Could this be what she meant about not being able to see him anymore? Had she been forced to change her access codes? It made sense if someone had been watching her. But who would it be? Based on their handful of pleasant lunch meetings, Fisher realized he really didn’t know her well enough to know if she had any enemies. How could she though? She was so nice and so pretty. Fisher stuffed the paper back into its bubble where it disappeared back into the rotating constellation arrayed around his body.

A fork in the road appeared and Fisher’s van pulled towards the left. He realized then that he hadn’t even looked at the next work order for the day. He pulled it out and the name leaped off the page: Athens DeMolay. His heart dropped into his stomach with an almost audible acidic splash.