“That’s okay!” Lorenzetti continued. “I’m not interested in lamps. We are not performing in a circus after all. On the contrary, our task is to stay in the shade. When you, dear Emily, start working with me, I’ll explain the rules to you in detail. Will six hundred thousand credits a year be sufficient for you?”

The girl’s eyes dilated. “Six hundred thousand? Legally?”

“Yes. Absolutely legally.”

“Of course it will!” She took a squint at Andrew for a second. “Well, on condition that we fulfill our mission first, that I’ll be free and the planet will not freeze or melt in the meantime. What will I have to do?”

“I’ll explain later. So, once again: do you accept?”

“Yes!”

“Excellent. In this case, my friends, let’s get down to your problem first. You were interested in some secret documents, weren’t you? Something about a refuge for the government?”

“Yes,” answered Andrew.

“What for?”

“I want to find out if the President told the truth about consequences of the planet’s core braking.”

“To what end?”

“To know what future awaits us. And to get ready.”

Lorenzetti laughed again. “To know the future? Do you think the President or any other mortal beings know God’s ways? And how can you get ready for what you have no idea about? My opinion is as follows: if the planet is fated to destruction, it will be destroyed. I’ll give you a simpler example: if you are fated to get smashed up in a road accident, you won’t drown in a swamp! Do you think you are able to change the march of time?”

If Andrew hadn’t known who he was talking to, he would have decided that this was an orthodox priest.

“I’m willing to try.”

The hacker laughed haughtily. “I pity you, but I won’t impose my opinion on you. One day you will realize your fundamental mistake. Follow me!”

Going through the open doors, he stopped in the middle of the next room. This room was twice as small. There were no windows in it, but it was lit up brightly by built-in lamps on the ceiling.

“This is my home office,” Lorenzetti said proudly as he spread his arms. “No sounds penetrate here from outside. An ideal place for work, isn’t it?”

Barkov glanced back. The doors shut behind them. This side of them seemed to be made of a white material equal to the material of the walls. No gap shown between the door panels. Were it not for a pair of metal door handles, one could have thought that the wall itself closed.

Is it a trap?

“A strange office,” Andrew said trying not to manifest his uneasiness. “Where are the tables and chairs?”

“I don’t use them as I prefer to work in the standing position. But I’ll let you sit down.” He raised his voice. “Computer! Lift two chairs!”

A part of the floor moved apart before his feet. From the square opening, two light brown spheres resembling large balls of wool emerged. Coming abreast with the floor surface, the spheres rolled to the wall on the left. Meanwhile, the floor closed.

Having stopped at the wall, the balls flattened. A hollow appeared on one side of them while the other side stretched up and bent. This resulted in two armchairs.

“Self-moving transformers,” Lorenzetti explained. “They can take the form of a table, a sofa, a carpet or, as in this case, an armchair. Have a seat!”

Andrew had seen advertisements of such goods, but had never bought them because of their high price. Lippo has lots of money. With his kind of work, it’s natural that he’d earn big fees. But what else might Lippo be involved in? What if legal work for various companies is just a cover, and Lippo is an ordinary crook with extraordinary abilities? If I wasn’t going to leave my job, it would be interesting to conduct an investigation.

He and Emily went to the armchairs and sat down.

“Is it comfortable?” the hacker asked with a pleased smile looking at the girl.

“Yes,” she said.

“If the seat is too hard, I can make is softer. If it’s too soft, vice versa. What would you like?”

“Nothing. Everything is absolutely perfect,” Emily said with some irony.

“That’s great. Let’s get down to business then. Here’s the globe!”

The planet appeared in the air in front of Lorenzetti. Its lower part floated several centimeters above the floor and the top almost reached the ceiling. The Earth looked like an absolutely real object. The sphere started spinning slowly. When the waters of the Atlantic Ocean passed by and the shores of the North America showed up, the sphere stopped. The hacker’s face was directly opposite Washington DC.

“Bull’s-eye!” he exclaimed with satisfaction.

Barkov knew that such realistic images could be created not in the air but directly in a viewer’s mind by a new game computer that cost more than fifty thousand credits. I wonder if this man pays taxes.

“Are you going to play a geography game with us?”

Lorenzetti looked at Andrew with astonishment. “Do you think it’s a game?”

“Of course.”

“You are mistaken. This is how our planet looks at the moment. The image is transmitted from satellites that remained intact after the asteroid attack. We are online!”

Andrew smiled wryly. Yes, he knew the government had devices such as this, with the ability to transmit images and sounds to a human brain in real time. The devices could be controlled by their owners who were able to select game modes and give commands mentally without lifting a hand or even stirring a finger.. But holographic representations like this one were beyond the means of anyone outside the government; only gamers with thick wallets could afford something that even resembled the real thing. “Give me a break!”

The hacker’s face became stern, almost angry. “I guess you have no idea who you have come to see. All right, I’ll prove it to you. Let’s start not with the President but with your mother. Is she home now?”

Andrew bristled at the mention of his mother – and Lippo’s threatening tone.

“Why do you want to know that?”

“I want you to make sure that this isn’t a recording of past events or an imitation of the present ones, but a reality. Is your mother’s address 1237, Southwest Street, Miami?”

Barkov nodded unwillingly. Really, Lorenzetti had studied his dossier thoroughly!

The globe turned down, then started to scale up. The North Pole disappeared somewhere under the ceiling and the South Pole, under the floor. The western and eastern parts went into the walls. The image shielded the part of the room that was behind it. It seemed that the planet’s surface was approaching quickly, not scaling up. Wind whistled in Andrew’s ears. Although he had the wits to understand that there was no danger, he felt a unpleasant chill in his stomach and a desire to back up.

Soon he recognized the Biscayne Bay outlines, the network of streets leading from the seashore to the center and, finally, the gray roof of his mother’s house. He could even see branches of trees around the house swinging from the wind.

“I’m switching to the street viewing mode,” Lorenzetti announced.

The point of view changed. A part of the room they were in turned into the street. This time the image was a bit dim. In some places of the image there were gaps where the opposite wall of Lorenzetti’s room could be seen. Nevertheless, Andrew easily recognized his mother’s house, three coconut trees growing in front of it and the garbage can lying on the road with some black bags of garbage and cola cans spilled out around it. He instantly remembered the burglars’ Cadillac that had run down the garbage can.

“That’s it! It’s her home!” Emily blurted out.

Andrew’s brain spun as he realized, Of course this guy has a brain e-vision system just like the government – he was probably the one who helped develop it! He was starting to understand why Lorenzetti was treated like such a highly secret government asset.

“It is her house!” Lippo claimed with triumph. “But that’s not all. Let’s switch to the premises viewing mode!”

The house scaled up and the spectators “entered’ the closed front door.

Nellie Barkov was collecting things scattered around the house and putting them into a cardboard box.

“Mom!” Andrew shouted as he jumped up.

Lorenzetti smirked. “Don’t shout, she can’t hear you. But we can hear her!”

The shuffling of the woman’s feet and remote voices that came seemingly from her old e-vision could be heard.

“That’s impossible,” Andrew murmured. Now his heart raced. No one could penetrate any private premise. First, it was illegal: the International Primal Privacy Act, enacted by the President years ago, ensured total privacy within any private residence. It had been a keynote in his campaign, as assurance to the world that eliminating borders and creating a World Government would allow all citizens to retain their privacy, not give it up in the process. Second, since Andrew worked in dangerous missions and he or his family could be a target for revenge, Andrew had installed an insulating shield on his mother’s home. It was a shield impenetrable by electronic interference to ensure his mother’s safety. Even an electronic bug placed in her house would set off an alarm on Andrew’s monitor. So… no way was this video feed from inside his mother’s house real – it was surely a hoax.

Raising his hand, Andrew looked at his mindphone ring on the fourth finger and commanded, “Connect with Mom!”

The old bracelet on Nellie’s wrist started to flicker. The call melody was heard. The woman stood straight, looked at the bracelet and pressed the button, smiling. “Listening, Son!”

Andrew’s skin crawled as he heard her voice. “Mom, are you at home now?”

“Yes, I am cleaning up. And where are you?”

“Not far off. I’m doing… business.”

Her voice became anxious at once. “Do you have any news? Have you tried to free Housman?”

“Not yet. I can’t discuss it at the moment. I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”

“Okay.” She paused. “Don’t forget to have dinner, Son!”

“I’m not hungry, don’t worry. Bye!”

Andrew disconnected. Nellie looked at the bracelet thoughtfully for a few seconds, then sighed and continued tiding up.

“Have I removed your doubts?” Lorenzetti asked.

Still shocked, Barkov nodded. Lippo couldn’t have modeled Andrew’s conversation with his mother beforehand. The big question was how had he managed to transfer video and audio from a house where there was not a single video camera and a total electronic shield?

“Fine! The next stop is the residence of the President of the United States of the World, Washington DC. You’ll be able to eavesdrop on everything said in that house as well. God help us!”

Lippo closed his eyes, crossed himself slowly and in a sweeping manner. Then he opened his eyes and looked intently in front of him.

The picture changed at once – Barkov felt as if he flew up through the mother’s house roof and soared into the sky.