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2593-30

"Well," Baron Tremaine said, "I do have a few questions before I can say I have everything I need."

"Ask them," William replied.

"First, there was nothing in that file you accessed, yet you acted like you found what you were looking for."

"I can't explain it, I know I have the number, that's what I saw in the file, but even now, I don't remember what it was."

"It seems to indicate your implant was tampered with. I'll need to schedule a technician to take a look at it."

"Don't bother," Eric said, "I'll deal with it myself."

"Sir, with all due respect, there are procedures to follow, if his implant was somehow hacked, there might have been more done to it than simply removing your number."

"That isn't your call to make, Mister Tremaine, the issue of what happened to his implant is a family matter, and my family will handle it ourselves."

"Very well, I have amended the report to reflect that. My second question is that you never explain how you knew you'd find him in an open field."

"Eric has agoraphobia," William said, before Eric could do anything.

The dog was silent for a moment, his eyes moving as he read something.

"It's a fear of open spaces," William explained.

"Ah," the dog glanced at Eric then focused on William again. "I have never come across anything regarding that condition in any file relating to Mister Orr."

"I've kept it hidden," Eric said. It wasn't like he could deny it anymore.

"And what made you think the kidnapper might be aware of that?"

"Something Xavier said before he was fired, about how Eric reacted when his dad let go of him. I didn't think anything then, and not even when I found out about it myself, but after I heard how the search was being focused on cities and any building where they might be hiding Eric, it came back to me, and though Xavier might have realized it too, and since he worked with Vanguard to blow up the array, it was possible he told them, considering no one knew about it, it was the perfect place to hide him."

"And you were incapable of telling Orr Security because a command Mister Orr gave you."

William nodded.

"Mister Orr, you realize that such a personality modification is highly suspect, and should Mister Fenian ever contest it, we could find ourselves-"

"I agreed to it," William cut him off harshly. "I gave him full access to my personality. If you need it, I'll give you a copy of the contract."

"Still, you couldn't have expected him to do something this drastic."

"You kidding? I was hoping he'd wipe me entirely. Compared to that, this is nothing. It took some getting used to, still does, but at least I was there to help rescue him."

"Is there anything else?" Eric asked.

The dog's eyes moved for a moment. "No, I have everything I think the investigation board will need. If not, I know how to reach Mister Fenian."

"If you need to talk to him again, you do it in person, and with me there." Eric leveled his gaze on the dog as he looked about to say something. He simply nodded and left.

"What do you think they're going to do?" William asked.

"Well, you rescued me, so they aren't going to leave you hanging. If they do I'm going to have a talk with each one of them and make them see things my way."

'Uncle, I need full privacy in this room, from you too.' Eric.

"I did break a few laws doing it. There's been a few reports of the ship being sighted in the Ameritech skies. A bunch of amateur Satellite chasers if I got that right."

Eric nodded. "They've lodged a complaint. As did Soromis for the flier you took over the field. I didn't realize how protective of their wheat they were. Accused you of corporate espionage."

'I've turned off all sensors in the room. I'm withdrawing now.' Uncle.

"Didn't they hear about your rescue? The capture of your kidnapper?"

"They don't care. They filed a lawsuit against you, us, even Halibury."

"Why them?"

"That's where you're from. They don't want to risk any culpable party."

"But I haven't set foot there in over thirty years. By Halibury law, if I ever decide to go there to visit my extended family I'm going to have to go through a vetting program. I might as well not be a citizen anymore."

"Lawyers don't care. They'd rather aim too wide than too narrow. Trust me, we don't like them anymore than you do, but they're a vital part of any corporation. The bottom line is that I'm not going to let anything happen to you, neither is anyone in my family. Whatever fine are levied against you, I'll pay, if no one beats me to it. Any lawsuits our lawyers will handle. You didn't damage anything, so I don't see that anything will stick."

William relaxed.

"You didn't need me to cancel the order to give your deposition," Eric said.

"I know. But do you have any idea how hard it was to get thing to happen without being able to tell anyone? Your security force could have found you in a fraction of the time if they'd known. That phobia's been running your life."

"I know. Spending those hours under an open sky wasn't fun." Eric sighed. "I have to thank you. All that time you spent getting me to function in zero-G helped me keep my head. I don't want to think what kind of basket case I'd turn into without it."

"I'm glad I could help." William was silent, and Eric gave him the time he needed to ask the question he knew was coming.

"Eric, Who's that uncle of yours, and how did he hack my implant?"

"He isn't an uncle, he's just Uncle. He's an AI. He's as old as the corporation is. My guess is that when you accessed that file, you allowed a program in, it erased my number from your memory, either after a fix amount of time, or once you received a specific command."

"Look, AIs aren't real. They're something story creators made up a long time ago. And scientists have been trying to make them for almost as long, but they can't do it, getting a program to actually think on its own just takes too much power."

"Yeah, well, it happened at least once. And that's how he was able to hack you. I doubt there's anything he can't do when it comes to electronic systems."

"Doesn't that scare you?"

Eric shook his head. "He's family. He looks after our interests. And he's a pretty mellow guy. He's supposed to have been based on an ancestor of mine, the one who started the company, way back before the war. I would have loved to meet him, he must have been a pretty fun guy, to be able to run a company and still be able to take it easy."

"I don't understand how you can take this so lightly. You're telling me there's a machine out there that can affect me."

"Will, think about it. All the machines that have been created can affect us."

"Yes, but they don't think."

"What does that have to do with it?"

"What if it decides it needs to get rid of us? It could just wipe us out."

"Uncle would never do that."

"How do you know?"

"I told you, he's family. Look, you seem to think he's the only one who could blow us up. I'll remind you the war was started by us, not machines. Uncle was around back then, and he did everything he could to prevent it. We, living people, are the ones who almost destroyed ourselves."

"Maybe I need to get him to make me forget about all this."

Eric chuckled. "Good luck getting him to do it. I've only known him to affect people directly twice, and every time, it was to save people."

"The pirates and me."

Eric nodded. "And only with the pirates did he do something drastic. And once it passed, there were no lingering effects. He didn't even extract information from them. He believes this world is ours, and his job is to help us do the best we can at it."

"You know, working for you isn't as easy on me as I thought it would be."

"You think these last few years have been easy on me? All I ever wanted was the boring job of running a ship, and fucking the crew. Pirates, Sabotage? Kidnapping? I never signed up for that. Once this is all over, I'm looking forward to a nice uneventful trip to Titan, taking my sons to the park there, maybe an alpine forest this time, give them a sense of what cold weather can be like." He stood and stretched. "Come on, I have a room in the medical wing. Let's go fuck."