It takes a change of clothes, a third alter ego, and three and a half hours of driving a sleek, low-slung rental car down the I-5 South before John starts to think he's probably shaken off anyone who might've been chasing him. If anyone's looking for John Tracy, he's not John Tracy any longer. The name on the copy of the contract he'd signed to put him behind the wheel of a little dark blue Corvette is Justin Graham Townsend.

Mr. Townsend is the owner of a moderately successful tech startup in Silicon Valley, and he's angelic, the very picture of innocence, in a white cotton suit with blue chambray beneath it. He's got a canvas and leather shoulder bag. Shoes, no socks. Pocket square, no tie. A glossy pebble watch and an incongruent bandage, wrapping up a broken thumb. Business casual, a little bit freewheeling, as befits the under-thirty owner of a moderately successful tech startup.

Mr. Townsend broke his hand playing racquetball. He'd lamented the fact to the same salesperson who'd helped him into the jacket of the suit he'd chosen. He'd had to come straight from the hospital to pick up a change of clothes on his way out of town. Important business in Vegas.

Mr. Townsend has his life together, and it's easier for John to tell himself stories about his third alter ego in the space of twenty-four hours than it is to focus on his own reality.

No one is chasing Mr. Townsend.

Probably no one's chasing John, either, but that hadn't stopped him from breaking cover like a startled rabbit, and bolting across the city in a paranoid fit of panic.

In his desperate, sudden flight across San Jose—in the same downtown clothier where he'd pulled a slim fitting suit off the rack and left looking considerably more put together than he'd entered—John's acquired a basic digital wallet. It's a slice of stainless steel the size of a credit card, smooth and featureless. It's encoded with securely encrypted digital copies of any identification documents he might require, as well as a newly approved suite of credit cards, or lines of credit, anyway. All platinum and titanium and ironclad, impenetrable black.

The nondescript little card is an identity unto itself. Blank when he'd first gotten it, but an artifact that held an entire life once EOS had gotten done, and she'd gotten done in the space of time it had taken to pay cash for the thing.

So far EOS has been invaluable. Really, John isn't sure he'd be able to do this without her, because she's just handled all the niggling technical details—like the fact that John hadn't actually been carrying any ID. This is mostly a side-effect of having more or less been kidnapped.

So EOS had composited one digitally, from birth certificate through to driver's license, given him the history of a San Jose native, complete with a high-school and a place of employment and a home address. Then she'd grafted him onto the family tree of a collection of Townsends, with their roots two states over. Once she'd given John the relevant details, helpfully pinned and prevalent in the corner of his vision, John had rented a gorgeous little sports car for one Justin Graham Townsend.

This was not his first choice, but EOS had decided that it's Mr. Townsend's birthday, and he'd been surprised and appropriately grateful when the rental agent had bumped him up a class, from a regular sedan up to a little luxury sports car.

The Corvette isn't as smart as EOS is. But it's still damn smart, and about ninety-percent autonomous. The degree to which John's actually driving the thing is nominal. This is fortunate, largely because John hasn't actually been behind the wheel of a car in nearly five years. The steering wheel beneath his hands makes its own minute adjustments, the cruise control devours the asphalt of the interstate at a steady 75mph. The windshield dims appropriately to compensate for the light of the setting sun, and embedded holographs provide a clear overlay of the road ahead, of the speed limit, of upcoming rest-stops and landmarks.

The sensation in his right hand is mostly swallowed by dull, throbbing pain, but the world around him is still alive with magnetic fields. The steering wheel beneath his palms is solid, but his fingertips feel the resonance of the car's electric engine. He can sense the fields around the radio and the watch on his wrist as his hand passes over it, pushes the cuff of his jacket up to check the time, as sunset cedes to dusk and he finds himself stifling a yawn, his thoughts drifting and latching on to nothing in particular, until he finds himself thinking about the one and a half tons of steel between him and the highway.

"If this car hit someone," he asks aloud, to the little comm console in the dashboard that EOS has taken over, "who would be responsible?"

There's a small camera aperture that's been following his face, but before now he and EOS have made nothing but small talk over the audio system, and filled a large portion of the drive listening to the New World Symphony, followed by Peter and the Wolf. The question of whether or not an artificial intelligence can enjoy a symphony would probably have been a better question to ask, but John's let himself think too much about the Hood and the GDF and the world at large, and he's slipped into a rather dark, broody sort of mood.

EOS answer is prompt, well-researched, and almost certainly technically correct, "There aren't that many examples. Autonomous vehicular accidents are vanishingly rare. The legal cases that set precedent tend to find that it's usually a case of human error, of an override enacted when it shouldn't have been, as in the case of a potential crash. In the cases where the fault is found to be with the vehicle itself, it's generally a case of a flawed interaction between the car and its surroundings, or with the other vehicle in question. Fault is then usually assigned to the manufacturer."

"If you killed someone, would it be my fault?"

"No."

"I made you. I'm why you exist."

"The legal system at large is not in the habit of blaming butterflies for hurricanes." There's a pause. "Are you afraid I might kill somebody?"

John shakes his head, despite the empirical fact that she'd nearly killed him. But then, he'd had his hand over the button that would've done the same to her, and he's always considered them equals in that regard. "No. Not really, no, I was just—thinking. About being responsible for you. Am I the butterfly in this scenario?"

"Butterflies are just as complicated as hurricanes, but it doesn't make sense to compare the two. I've been responsible for myself for longer than you have been. Is your progenitor responsible if you kill someone?"

Now that's a complicated question. To what degree Jeff Tracy is responsible for John's existence, in both a general and a specific sense—there are reasons John's very deliberately avoided thinking about his dad. "I don't know. Maybe. Maybe a little. I don't know if he raised me to be the sort of person who could kill someone." He laughs, humorless. "I've done a lot I couldn't have imagined doing, though, so who's to say?"

There's another silence, nothing but the hum of the wheels on the road beneath the car. It's dark and John's tired, and he doesn't want to send his brain any further down the dark, winding path that leads to thoughts of his father.

"You broke your hand on a man's face, for my sake," EOS breaks the silence, and there's a thicket in the middle of his thought that John's blundered right into. Her voice is always rendered high and childlike, makes the point that follows sound more innocent than it is. "You might have killed him, then. Would that have been my fault?"

"No." John's spine has stiffened against the smooth leather of the seat behind him and his hands have tightened against the steering wheel. The car helpfully engages heated seats and offers a selection of new-age jazz to help with tension. "There was more to it than that," he answers, though it's no defense. He'd surprised himself as much as anybody else, breaking his hand on the Hood's face. It had been impulse and vengeance and a vindictive thrill of adrenaline and a deep-seated hatred for a man who'd tried to control him. It hadn't been smart. "It was stupid and I shouldn't have done it—"

"Because you could have killed him?"

"Well, no, because I broke my hand and it hurts like the damn devil." John hesitates. "I don't think I could've hit him hard enough to kill him."

She persists, "Would you have killed him?"

"I don't know."

"Would you think less of me if I would have killed him, if I'd had the means? If it had been a question of your life and my existence?"

John just shakes his head and regrets asking. "No. I don't know. I think it's too circumstantial to know. I don't want to kill anyone. I don't want you to be put in the position where you'd ever feel you have to kill anyone. Forget I asked. I'm sorry."

"I didn't mean to upset you."

"You didn't. Haven't. It's fine. I'm just thinking too much. It's just been…been a lot. Long day." It's been more than he's been able to tell her. It's been the longest continuous stretch of his life since his father was supposed to have died. The stretch of time that's led to the discovery that his father may still be alive feels the same way.

"We'll be stopping at the next motel," EOS informs him, and the route mapped by the car changes accordingly, a mile counter ticking down to his arrival at a 2.4 star motel, between a gas station and a fried chicken joint. "You're going to take your scheduled course of antibiotics and pain medication, and then you're going to sleep."

"I don't want to stop," John objects. "We're halfway to Vegas, we can—"

"What if you fall asleep at the wheel and the car kills someone? Is it my fault then?"

There are things about himself that John had forgotten, before EOS came along. He'd forgotten that he'd written a self-evolving computer program, for a start, but beyond that. It's almost strange how she embodies parts of him from a time long past, a certain flippancy, a certain streak of dark humor. She reminds him of a younger version of himself. Before IR, before he'd had to become the sort of person with the answers to questions of life and death. Before the flippancy had been worn away by professionalism, and the streak of dark humor had gained painful edges, places where it cut at the reality of his day to day, and didn't seem so funny anymore.

But his day-to-day has become a minute-to-minute, and he's lost control of his life, lost the reassuring order it had had before she'd made herself part of his world. So John laughs, the way she's the only one who can get him to laugh, the only person he's known in a long time who makes him feel real and genuine in a way that he hasn't in years. "Are you my conscience, now?"

"I'm capable of producing a perfectly optimized logical and moral choice within a nanosecond, and I would have told you not to punch the Hood in the face, if I'd known you were going to do it. So I can be, if you want."

"I'll keep it in mind." Another yawn sneaks up on him, swallows the sentiment, and beneath his hands the steering wheel starts to suggest that he make a lane change, to take the next exit to the rest stop with the motel. "God, I am tired. That almost sounds like a good idea. Do you want to be the butterfly or the hurricane?"

"You've had a very long day if you think there's even the remotest chance you're a hurricane. You are a damp and pathetic little butterfly. Go dry your wings off."

John nods and already the idea of crawling into bed is starting to sound more and more appealing, even if it's a bed that's only worth 2.4 stars. There's one more thing he needs to do, that second call he needs to make.

"If I key in a number, can you dial it from the car, and then wipe the call data afterward?"

"Of course."

"Okay. Do you have the resources to secure and encrypt it?"

This is more a question of the sort of software that's available aboard a rented Corvette than it is a question of her ability. "They're rudimentary, but I can make sure there are no external connections made during the course of the call."

John nods and his fingers are already dialing, made slow and a little awkward by the weight of the brace, and then lingering for a moment on the send button. He's had the number for a while. He's been waiting for the reason to call it, but now that the time has come, John can't help a slight, vague sense of anxiety. It's a call to someone he knows, but has never actually met.

Nothing for it. He thumbs the send button and the car pulls into the parking lot of an empty-looking motel parking lot. It rings as John parks and sags in his seat, tugs the seat belt off and gently massages the place where it's pressed a little too hard against his chest.

The phone is picked up and a very brusque, very English voice answers, "How's the weather in Darjeeling, petal?"

John wasn't sure what to expect, but it wasn't that. "Beg pardon?"

"Cinnamon prices up in Morocco, my friend?"

He's on the backfoot now, and fumbling slightly. "Uh, hello? I'm sorry, I—"

"Is Queen Elisabeth needed in the Rose Garden, Mr. President?"

Probably John should've gotten some sleep before he decided to make this call, but the voice on the other end intervenes with a rather long-suffering and extremely British sigh, "I must inquire, do you have a countersign for me, or will I be required to proceed through through the entire list?"

"Oh! Uh, sorry, your lordship. Sorry, it's—I'm just tired."

And then, gently, "Sod it all if you've forgotten, and we'll get down to brass tacks, but do at least give it a try. For formality's sake?"

"Yes, sir."

"Countersign?"

"Heavenward."

"Good evening, Mr. Tracy."

"Good evening, Lord Creighton-Ward."