[CHAPTER 1001]

"...Houston, this is Odyssey. Go ahead..."

James Lovell

E.A.R.T.H

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'After closing statements from both parties...and after the jury have made their decision...the Judge will pass their verdict. In this case, it's pretty obvious what's going to happen. To be honest I'm surprised that this has been going on as long as it has...'

Harry Eisenhower's aid, a curt woman called Maddison, learnt over to whisper the message into his ear. The businessman had grown bored of the court case nearly three hours earlier. The only reason he was there at all was for formality. Mrs Lovell had wavered in dropping their death-glare from her respective booths on the opposite side of the hall.

Rubbing at the stubble on his chin, Harry's mind was elsewhere. To be precise, it was busy planning ahead to his presentation this afternoon.

Sat at the back of the room, the GOKIA chairman took a moment to compare his company's own legal team with the Lovell families'. There wasn't much else to do as one lawyer droned on against the other. At this point in the case it was a simple matter of stating the various list of arguments in support of and against the Lovell families' accusations.

The sound of the Jury shuffled out to discuss the case woke Eisenhower from his light snooze. Scratching at his thin hair, he glanced at his watch as if to hide the fact he'd fallen asleep. The Jury were gone for nearly a whole hour discussing the final outcome of the court battle. During this time Harry managed to slip out for a coffee. Though, he paid twice the price he was expecting. Being in London did that to prices.

Only once the jury had returned and settled in their seats did the judge once more take her position. She was a few decades younger than Harry would have assumed. Bulky formal clothes and a large gown made the petite lady look smaller than she was. She maintained a firm gaze sweeping across the courtroom. It might have been intimidating if not for the decorative grey wig.

Harry slipped his softscreen away with a sigh just as the judge began her firm announcement. The next level of CandyCompress would have to wait.

'Well. The jury verdict stands in agreement, alongside my own postulations, and so I can pass the court ruling. This states that the GOKIA corporation is not responsible for the death of James Lovell. Nor did they breach any regulation regarding misinformation.' The young woman turned her attention to the Lovell family. 'However, we are considering Mr and Mrs Lovell for perverting the course of justice.'

There was a moment of silence during which Harry had to hold back a snigger.

'Thus finishes this case. A full write-up will follow, if those heading the legal teams can meet with Mr Broody afterwards. Dismissed.'

The judge purposefully left her bench and the trial was officially over.

Finally thought Harry to himself. How many months had this case been dragging on for? Sure, it wasn't like GOKIA didn't have the money to spend on court fees, but it had been a trivial waste of time. He'd talked to the GOKIA legal team that morning just to thank them for their time. As they left them from the front, Harry gave the small team a curt nod as they exited neatly.

Eisenhower turned to his aid sat beside him, 'I'm guessing you found that as boring as I did.'

Maddison sighed, closing the lid of her laptop with some finality. By no means a young lady, the experienced aid brushed her hair to the side and shrugged noncommittally. She had noticed Harry running through the slides of his afternoon presentation on his softscreen obsessively for the past hour. The chairman of GOKIA was clearly nervous with his thoughts preoccupied. Maddison noted the behaviour with some interest.

It was only once Harry got outside the courtroom that he could connect to secure satellite internet and thus his office network. The busy London street parted around the rotund man as he ambled across the pavement. As per usual, a whole heap of messages came through demanding Harry's attention. The top most email was from Yana, marked in red for high importance.

'Shit. Shittity shit shit.'

Muttering under his breath, the businessman scan-read the message. A red double-decker bus beeped in the background as it tried to make a turn onto a side street. Sirens blared into the distance, bouncing off the glass panels of a new row of skyscrapers along the north bank. Harry was too immersed in his softscreen to pick out the picturesque London skyline.

The GOKIA chairman was calling Yana without even catching a breath.

'Sir?' Maddison interrupted, in the process of waving down a taxi. Harry shooed her away, turning his back to the busy traffic as he waited for the connection to go through. A bubble of stress punctured his large stomach. Eyeing the white Portland limestone architecture, the dialing tones rang in contrast to the buzz of electric cars in the background.

'Harry.' Yana was expecting his call and picked up instantly. The Czech lady sounded tired and as she stated bluntly, 'We have an issue.'

'This isn't about the immersion set-up, right? I need everything go-'

Eisenhower jumped the gun, his thoughts more concerned with his upcoming presentation than any immediate worries that the computer programmer was suggesting.

'Listen Harry!' Yana cut through in exasperation, 'Listen! Richard...uh...he got bottled again.'

Harry swore. Rubbing at his balding head in frustration, the wailing of sirens in the background and the afternoon traffic did little to distract him from the conversation. He wasn't sure if he was angry at the young man getting kicked out of the simulation again…or simply frustrated that Yana was suggesting that bottling was a serious issue. The team had been given plenty of time to iron-out any problems with Neuralink over the past month of testing!

'Booples is good.' Yana continued in her strange European accent, 'We are ready and the uplink has been tested...but Richard...Something's not right. Harry I am being serious.'

'I know.' Harry sighed, 'Fine. Can you explain exactly what the issue is?'

'You.' Yana snapped back suddenly, 'You are the issue! This is too much work for Richard! The Neuralink is not made for long stints. Yes?'

'So it's my fault he got bottled? How's that work?' Harry retorted, tugging at his tie to more easily grab a breath of air. Sweat was beading on the rolls of skin on the back of his neck.

'Well. No. Not yours. It's...it's like something is forcing him out! I think there is something wrong with the HORIZON program. It's like it randomly starts fighting to kick him out!'

'You're the one who built HORIZON!' Harry replied, chewing at the words. 'But how is Richard? He's still up for-'

'Sir. The taxi is waiting.' Eisenhower's aid chimed in. Maddison kept a straight face, even as the chairman of GOKIA narrowed his eyes. For a moment there was a stand-off between the middle-aged man and his aged aid before, with a grunt, Harry ducked into the electric black cab. It was a tight fit in the back as he shuffled over, letting Maddison take the seat next to him. Without waiting for confirmation, the driver lifted the clutch and the cab joined the mass of traffic along Ludgate Hill.

'Yana.' Harry called through the softscreen once his seat belt was fastened over his large stomach. 'Yana are you still...ah seriously?'

The computer programmer had already hung up. Mumbling profanities to himself, Harry resorted to loaded his office email and started sifting through the remainder of his messages. Knowing Yana, she'd got grumpy and cut the call short in a tantrum. He'd ring up Mark in an hour or so to get a full report. As long as Richard was well enough to run a small demonstration of the immersion set-up, that's all that mattered.

The drive across London was a short up to Euston Road. Most people took the tube and the zero-emissions zone kept everything but buses and taxis out of zone one. Stepping out of the taxi and Harry was already scanning the deals advertised in the windows of nearby coffee shops. The man, admittedly still overweight even with his new exercise routine, usually ate when he was nervous. He shooed Maddison away when she requested a short visit across to St Pancras to meet a family friend.

Only after wolfing down his lunch did Harry grab a watery coffee. On a whim, the GOKIA chairman walked over to Gorden square. Finding a bench not inhabited by the local grey squirrels (or any students for that matter), he sat down and took a sip of his drink.

It was only then that he decided to call up Kelly Osman. The senator, Harry's only favourable contact with any significant status in the UN, had ignored his last couple of emails with a solitary professionalism.

The dialing tone droned on for nearly a minute before the sharp americanized accent of the politician replied. As per usual, the video feed was disabled.

'Harry.' She greeted flatly, 'I wasn't expecting your call.'

'Bullshit.' Eisenhower returned like-for-like, though he was unable to stop the dry humour creeping into his voice, 'You've been ignoring me. What's up? You in London for this meeting?'

'No.'

'What do you mean no?' Harry phrased carefully, wiping at his mouth.

There as a long pause. Harry took a moment to sip his coffee and watch the students from Gower Street stroll across the grass. Pigeons pecked at the ground in the warm summer heat.

'No, I'm not coming. It's a small-fry exhibition you're putting on. Hey, you remember back nearly half a year ago when I said the UN have their minds set on their spectre plan...well nothing's changed. I get what you're doing but it's not going to work. The uploading scheme only gained interest because it helped towards overpopulation.'

'I'm working on something similar.' Harry admitted. 'Jobs.'

There was a sigh from the other end of the conversation, wherever Kelly currently was she sounded tired. The dark senator had a habit of jumping between countries and could be either of the two hemispheres right now.

'I like your enthusiasm. But it's not going to work. You have to admit it Harry...you're a Brittanic company. We live in a post-sustainability crisis world where everyone is looking inwards with an innate fear of technology. You're science fiction rather than science fact. This thing you're putting on is for space junkies rather than politicians...'

She trailed off. It was almost as if Kelly had become aware of just how cutting her remarks were.

'Look. I don't mean to be harsh but you need to focus. GOKIA makes computer games...Not whatever you keep dreaming it up to be. Stick to what you do best.'

'Maybe you're right.' Harry sighed, taking another sip of his coffee, 'But it's worth a shot.'

'Whatever you say big guy…Have a break alright?'

'Pfff. See ya.' Harry said his goodbyes and cut the line. Given that Kelly was a university flatmate of his back when him and Corey were still a thing, the senator had a sentimental side. If anything, it just pissed Harry off. How ironic was it that he was sat in the very same spot they'd colluded on essays and shared cheap street-food a lifetime earlier.

Rubbing at the bags under his eyes, Harry took a moment to appreciate the warm sun dappling the London Planes. The huge trees had been planted to help filter pollution from the city ever since the industrial revolution. Humanity didn't know what it was getting itself into back then. Smog was the only concern, not the utter waste of resources that industrialization really was. Blue signs over London announced where the great thinkers of the nineteenth and twentieth century had lived. Each in what were now worn limestone-faced office blocks. Harry could only wonder what the likes of Brunel would think as society imploded. It was an interesting thought-experiment as he sipped at his coffee.

Harry rang Mark a few minutes later. Eyeing a number of young couples cutting across the park to lessons, he couldn't help but sigh. With his mind wandering back to consider his younger years, Mark had to shout down the line to grab his attention. Harry hadn't even realized he'd zoned out.

'Oh...Yeah. Mark! How are things?'

'Ha the normal. We're running the sims on the new Neuralink performance. I think it will present a challenge for as long as SONY keep pushing back the software update on their latest headset...'

Checking his watch, Harry continued the conversation on the go. Strolling east through the urban muddle that was London. Mark filled-in the GOKIA chairman regarding what had happened with Richard. Given the programmers love of small-talk, he then continued to babble on about the immersion setup Booples needing an update, team two running behind schedule, and that Richard seemed pretty keen for the demonstration later.

'But Richard is alright?' Harry clarified, 'Yana was a bit worried about something?'

'Uh...He might have been left a little confused what with the bottling yesterday.' Mark explained slowly, ensuring he picked his words carefully. 'After today, I want him to take a few weeks off. We don't know the long-term effects this is having.'

'Uhh. He's not going to like that.'

'Sucks to be him.' Mark replied humorlessly.

Harry wrapped the conversation up quickly, thanking Mark for his help before pocketing his softscreen. With some time to spare, he wandered over to Islington via a quick detour to the canal. London was a busy place and Harry had to take into account pedestrian traffic on his walk to the Britannic conference centre. Even with his new routine of morning runs and a low-fat diet, Harry was panting by the time he met his aid waiting outside Sutton Hall.

'Thanks uh…'

'Maddison.' She filled in once more, shaking her head once Harry had passed. The well-dressed aged woman put Harry's absent-mindedness down to nerves, although the man had a reputation of being bad with names. She brushed a few crumbs off her blaiser before following him into the conference room.

It was nearly an hour later that Harry Eisenhower found himself on centre stage looking over collection of seated businessman and woman. Many were secretaries or involved with certain minor politicians within Britannica. Maddison pointed out the people to impress; namely a young man from the UN global development sector and an Amazonian lady who, if swayed, might be open to such technology expanding into the Americas. Given that GOKIA was one of the most well-known companies in the world, Harry had expected more to show up.

With his softscreen hidden on the lectern in front of him, Harry cleared his throat.

'Thanks everyone. I'm Harry Eisenhower, chairman of GOKIA, and will be demonstrating a new technology our cutting-edge gaming company has been working on…'

However, even with such a well-organised presentation, the real work was going on behind the scenes. Richard didn't hear the introductory speech. He was over two-hundred kilometers to the south and still on Jersey. He rubbed at his eyes wearily, all too aware of how little sleep he got last night. Jean, the only person left in the office yesterday afternoon, had sent him home early. Nobody else had been there to help when Richard had once more been bottled out of HORIZON.

Normally it wouldn't have been a big deal. But this time it was different. This time, Richard had a ringing in his ears and a constant worry at the back of his mind whispering bi-direction uplink over and over again.

The next morning dawned bright and early for the immerser and (potentially) part-time space welder. Richard found himself curled up in his duvet on the floor of his small bedroom. The curtains had been left open along with the windows, sunlight streaming onto his face. Richard blinked himself away, yawning with a stretch.

Something didn't feel right.

Ignoring that fact that he was still dressed, Richard headed into the bathroom and splashed himself a few times with cold tap water. Steadying his hands, he foamed up some bar soap and shaved slowly, studying himself in the mirror as he did so. Tired bloodshot eyes stared back.

Richard winced as he dried off his chin. For some reason he'd lost all hand-eye coordination, slicing thin paper-cuts across his cheeks rather than the smooth shave he'd normally expect. Rubbing at his ears tiredly and even they felt wrong. It was as if they should have been positioned so low on his head. Something really didn't feel right.

After a cold breakfast of orange juice and bran flakes, Richard caught the bus into St Helier as normal. He couldn't help but feel a disattachment as he flashed his travel card and grabbed a seat. With his head spinning, Richard almost felt drunk as he hopped off at the industrial state corner and walked into the GOKIA headquarters.

'I didn't know purple was your colour.' Susan greeted him at reception, winking as she slipped over his keycard. Richard blushed, looking down over himself to find that he was indeed wearing one of Harry's fleeces. It was two sizes too big but bright purple in colour.

Richard faked a shiver, 'I was feeling cold.' He lied.

Susan smiled, watching him leave. She could see from the man's timetable he was booked into medical check-up for that morning. Richard weaved his way towards the elevator, treading on his toes almost as if he was creeping across the foyer. Having worked with computer programmers for a few months now, Susan shrugged off the weird behaviour as something statically more common for computer nerds.

Mark was the one to greet Richard when he stumbled into Yana's office. The Asian man had been on holiday for the past two weeks, and was noticeably a bit more portly than usual. His ready smile dropped upon seeing the young welder nearly fall into his chair. Richard pulled his legs up onto the seat next to him, spinning slightly from the changing centre of mass.

'Morning.' Richard added at last, eyes flicking between Mark and Jean watching him with small frowns.

'You look like shit.' Mark leant against the table, studying the young man. 'Jean offhandedly...Excuse the pun...mentioned that you got bottled again yesterday? Correct?'

Richard nodded. Was it just him or did it always smell of oranges down here?

'Well you're going to the nurse right now.'

'It's not booked until eleven! Honestly, I'm fine!' Richard argued. He felt the need to snarl but stopped himself a moment before he started to bear his teeth.

He suddenly became aware of the reaction.

The blood drained from Richard's face.

'Hey. Hey what's up? You look like you've seen a ghost?'

In truth, Richard was internally freaking out over a very different matter. The strange sense of smell, depersonalisation on his bus-ride in, and even waking up sleeping on the floor...it all started to make sense. The man stared at his hands, trying to ground himself in the sudden realisation. Counting his fingers back and forth, the immerser failed to notice the growing worry painted across Mark's face. Richard the man thought not Bagheera as he tried to shake himself into his own body.

'Sorry.' The Richard replied at last, adjusting himself to sit in the chair like a normal human being. 'This...uh…'

He was about to say bottling but quickly realized that although he might have been terrified at the lasting implications of the computer glitches, he was more terrified about never being able to see his brother again. With startling speed a whole heap of arguments and counter-arguments whistled through the young man's head. Just how important were the risks when being immersed inside of HORIZON was so great?

Richard faked another shiver to try and play the illness-off as one purely physical, rather than a result of the mental battle raging on inside of himself. No. If anybody ever found out he was having mental side-effects they'd never let inside again. His newly-kindled relationship with his brother would be over before Richard could even say Bagheera.

'Sorry.' The young man apologized, 'I don't think I've woken up fully yet.'

'Well time to get chipper. You think you're up for this welding thing this afternoon?' Mark asked, 'After your medical check-up of course?'

'Hell yeah.' Richard replied with a grin, even as something at the back of his brain fretted about the risk of another bottling. He'd done enough of his own research to know that the Neuralink connection worked both ways. For all intensive purposes, during immersion Richard was effectively adding his brain to the HORIZON hardware. The computer and his brain became one system, with coding firing through his neurons in a way thought impossible beyond their small research group.

After a boring morning of helping Jean run a few errands on following up a cabling order, Richard couldn't get outside fast enough on his lunch break. With his hands in his pockets, and the over-sized purple fleece unbearably warm, the young man took a stroll around the industrial estate to catch the sea breeze blowing in from the west. The medical check-up had gone as expected, what with a few blatant lies and a blood-pressure test.

When Yana finally synchronized clocks with Harry for the upcoming immersion demonstration, Richard had already been waiting impatiently for nearly an hour. Running through the actions in his brain, the man had to remind himself of his true profession. He might have avoided picking up a MIG welder for a couple of months, but Richard had been working the trade for so many years that the process of attaching the ground clamp and setting up the gas flow was second nature. The motions were muscle memory.

In space things were a little different.

First of all, there was a distinct lack of air. Richard would have to monitor oxygen and argon flow simultaneously to maintain the flame without creating a fireball - all the while piloting a strange four-appendaged robotic worker over two-hundred kilometres above his head. In fact, Richard was looking forward to the robot part the most. Much like his time spent with James inside HORIZON, the immersion set-up with Booples created an near-perfect version of reality for him to work inside.

Having already tested out the LEONOV-4 numerous times, Richard couldn't wait to once more play around in manual robot currently in perpetual freefall around the earth. It was everything his human body wasn't - sleek, highly maneuverable, dexterous...and floating in orbit of course! There was some underlying childish glee in thinking he'd technically be working in space.

'Booples is warming up.' Yana confirmed as Richard began to slip on the haptic feedback suit. He'd spent so many hours inside the rubbery wet-suit like material that the suit now fitted his noticeably skinnier form perfectly. Feeling the comfortable tightness of the fabric and thousands of microscopic electrodes for simulated touch and temperature, the immerser let his muscles loosen. A bubble of excitement burst in his stomach.

'Better get you in.' Yana grumbled, leaning back in her office chair with a chunky laptop on her lap. With her feet raised to rest on a number of plastic containers, she looked as every bit as tired as she was.

Richard had learnt how to wiggle himself into the harness of the immersion equipment Booples with a combination of ease of skill. However, Yana still had to plug-in the headset to the server bank, along with the various leads from the treadmill and haptic feedback suit. It left Richard hanging in what looked like a spider's web.

Yana scratched at her eyes, triple-checking the digital readout from the Neuralink which was in the process of warming up. Fixated with the worrisome problem of random bottlings, she needed all the data she could. It was as if the sudden disconnections were sourced from something inside HORIZON rather than any hardware issues in their Jersey supercomputer. Yana scratched her chin in thought. There was no explanation as to why the random ejections were happening.

Richard already had his headset pulled down over his eyes and couldn't see the half-Czech's worried expression. She hummed to herself lightly as before declaring,

'Right! Go for launch.'

Richard barely heard the announcement. Instantly all sensations of the outside world shrunk into the black void of the SONY loading screen. He was shot down the barrel of a multicoloured canon into star-studded space, before being dragged through a psychedelic wave of panic and hypnagogia.

The awareness of his new body arrived slowly.

LEO-11 was active.

The man blinked. Or at least he tried to. The cameras of the LEONOV-4 were constantly running images into his mind showing metallic claws floating before his face. With practiced ease he settled into the four-legged robotic form, currently hanging limply from the edge of the B73 section of the "Shackleton Circuit" orbital ring. Gleaming solar-panels made up the space before him and the earth hung below, a shimmering blue marble which consumed his attention.

For a few seconds Richard just floated there.

'Hey bud. Harry wants you in in fifteen.' Mark's curt tone cut through the speaker. For LEO-11, the voice sounded from inside the hardware of his CPU unit positioned somewhere in his chest. It was a strangely hollow sound as he tested out each of his limbs in turn. Next came the dexterous monkey-like tail used to manage roll, pitch, and yaw for the sleek feline machine.

'Cool.' LEO-11 responded, already feeling on his back for the welding gas canisters stored there. The torch equipment was actually built into his right front limb and could be controlled at will. Slowly but surely, LEO-11 maneuvered over the exterior of the orbital ring.

The "Shackleton Circuit" was a thin construction barely ten metres wide which was being joined in sections. Each unit was composed of an elongate cylinder of steel which had to be welded in place with perfect precision to ensure an air-tight seal. LEO-11 ran through the procedure in the back of his mind. The sleek feline robot scrambled from section B73 to the next section B74 which was still incomplete.

The sun illuminated the matt-black paint of the LEONOV's metallic body. The exposure time of LEO-11's lenses changed automatically, dimming the sight of the earth spinning below. Clouds billowed like raggeded sheets of tissue over rough Atlantic seas.

'Ok Mark I'm in place.' Richard confirmed.

'Cheers Rich. Feel free to start on.'

'Thanks.' The immerser responded. It was a strange experience replying whilst in control of the LEONOV. Richard thought the words through the Neuralink connection and into the computer system, all too aware that his robotic body lacked anything capable of speech.

'I'll get cracking.' And with that, LEO-11 found the correct place to start a seam and fired up the flame on one his disposable arms. B75 cylinder waited alongside the end of the B74 waiting to be attached.

Mark acted as CAPCOM for the entire time, relaying to Richard the moment filming started. Another LEONOV-4 machine, this time directed remotely by Jean, acted as the camera. Mark watched from a screen in Jersey with interest the welding process. Now and then he'd ask Richard to adjust his position to ensure the best picture.

The earth hung below omnipresent, often drawing LEO-11's attention away from his job attaching B75. It didn't take long and already, due to his speed creating faultless seams between the forty-foot long compartments, he moved on to B76. Richard had been an experienced and fairly gifted welder amongst his peers. The extra dexterity of the LEONOV made the chore a feat of precision and art.

Only Yana, still sat in the back room of her office, was keeping track of the livestream from London. The computer programmer had one eye on Booples whirling away contentedly and the other on her laptop screen. The video-feed displayed a rather overweight Harry squeezed behind a pedestal. The businessman was discussing with wide hand gestures the application of the very machine she was monitoring. Booples purred happily.

In the background a quickly bodged computer script was running a filter-search algorithm churning through bottling crash reports. Yana, sweeping away a fringe of red hair to watch the livestream, didn't notice the error that popped up.

Missing number

A small window at the bottom of her laptop screen flashed the message every few seconds.

Missing number

In London, Harry was fully immersed in his talk. When it finally came to his concluding remarks, he didn't want to leave the stage.

'And there we are folks.' He announced when it came to the final slide of his presentation. Eisenhower was impressed, not for the engagement of the small audience, but for the skills Richard had demonstrated. One man had assembled two sections in forty minutes! It was something which had taken remotely supervised systems in orbit over four days.'

'I'll be around for questions in the break after the following talk.'

The small congregation of around forty professionals clapped respectively and Harry descended off the stage. He took his seat quietly as another speaker took his place. Madisson gave him a thumbs up.

When it came to the coffee break, the chairman of GOKIA was neatly pulled into a number of conversations. Many were in regard of the expansion of GOKIA into space technologies. It was something Eisenhower brushed off as a small exchange for using Britannica as the home country for his business. A younger intern chatted for a few minutes on the immersion technology, and Harry handed his business card out to a few older professionals which had showed some interest.

He had to excuse himself from one dull conversation to snatch up the last of the provided biscuits.

To be fair, Harry was expecting more enthusiasm. The lack of response was down-heartening. Scratching at his balding hair, he tried to understand why the demonstration had failed to draw any of the big players. The ESA representative hadn't even glanced at him, nor had the Scottish Space Systems chairman, or anyone else from the Eurozone.

Standing glumly with a coffee in one hand and his fifth biscuit in the other, Harry tried to hold back a sigh. Madisson hung by his side, sipping a chamomile tea as she studied the small crowd. Harry ignored her mostly, lost in his own musings, before she cleared her throat. Turning to his aid, the businessman paused upon seeing the well-dressed figure step forward. The man wore a loose checkered-shirt tucked into tight trousers, although a mass of grey hair and tufty side-burns ruined the look. Smiling a professional smile with only a small degree of warmth, it took Harry a moment to recognize the figure.

'Dr Heath?' Harry asked incongruously, taking a moment to tuck his shift back in. 'You've aged.'

'Could say the same about you.' The academic grimaced, eyeing Harry's significant fat reserves and the rolls of skin marking his receding hairline. 'But please, call my Tyler.'

'Sure.' Harry adjusted his tie with chubby fingers, 'You still based at UCL then? Didn't think space science conferences were your sort of thing?'

'Ah. Well. I got an email pop up that some talks were on. It was lucky that I saw your name on the list.'

'I guess you wanted to scold me again for dropping off of the PhD programme?' Harry grinned sheepishly, getting a long sideways look from Madisson. It had been an old joke between the businessman and the researcher in quantum computing twenty years ago. Now the humour ran cold.

'Actually, I wanted to ask you a few questions about HORIZON.'

'Oh?' Harry put down his empty coffee cup on a spare chair, 'Interested by the demonstration were you?'

'Not exactly.' Tyler tilted his head slightly, scratched at some white stubble on his chin. He was an elderly man at this point with only pride keeping his back straight. Tyler had the perpetual scowl of an academic, beady eyes, and a bad taste in shirts.

'Sorry if this is a little blunt. But you were involved with the exDEV team following your masters. Now you run the only legal AI on the globe. I wanted some advice.'

Harry stood in stunned silence. Tyler had been known with his respective London university as a very stubborn man who did everything himself. His single-mindedness was one of the main reasons that artificial intelligence was born in the first place. The GOKIA chairman regained his composure only a second later.

'exDEV was shut down years ago.' The large man huffed, before playing with his tie.

The academic scratched at his mass of grey hair.

'If that was true, we wouldn't be having this conversation.' Tyler grimaced.

Maddison had been following the conversation closely. She had known Harry's history as a student at UCL in the computer science department, but hadn't realized he was involved with the first true artificial intelligence. Given that Harry dropped out of his PhD to later found GOKIA, it kind of made sense.

Once more the softscreen in Maddison's blazer pocket buzzed. She plucked out the small device and thumbed open the lock screen. Eight messages glared with high priority alert. Each was from Yana and had the same subject line,

REPLY ASAP - Missing No.

'Harry?' She interrupted at last, 'We have a problem…'

END

This chapter came out a lot later than first anticipated as I am moving house and starting a new job. I also got distracted writing a fluffy oneshot 'The QWERTY Complex' as some of you may have seen. From this point on, updates should be back to weekly/fortnightly. If delays are expected I'll leave the comment at the top of my profile.

I touched on a few odd terms in this chapter of EOrRRoR, with the only real jargon being CAPCOM - which is basically a shorthand for 'capsule communicator' and is the person through which information is relayed in NASA manned missions. The Robot LEONOV-4 is named after the first person to walk in space, Alexei Leonov, as well as the shorthand 'LEO' matching the cat theme portrayed in this fic. For those that have read my other fanfiction 'BLACKOUT', the Shackleton Circuit constructed in this story (as well as references to the spectre scheme) acts as an alternative history to the BLACKOUT timeline.

As always, a huge thankyou to those of you that have recently followed and favourited! Thanks also to Johnathan-Mandrake for the review (hopefully you've recovered from the crash). Look out for another chapter in the coming weeks. Enjoy!