text: Jane sprang from her seat. "How does he know I'm here?"
  
  "Jane, is he telling the truth?" There was an edge to my voice that said I was not in the mood for evasion.
  
  She didn't answer. "Jane, did the board meet without me?" I asked again.
  
  "Andy, I was just trying to protect you," she finally said.
  
  "What does that even mean? What happened in these meetings?"
  
  "We spoke strategy—about the future course for the company," she said reluctantly. "I'm not supposed to tell you what we discussed."
  
  "You just did. The board's strategy is to cut open Raphael. I wasn't invited because you knew I'd never agree to it."
  
  She shrugged. "It isn't a secret you are incapable of thinking clearly when it comes to your beloved creation."
  
  "I am incapable of thinking clearly," I said, my voice rising. "Yes, that must be it. That's how I built Raphael, by not thinking clearly. What baloney! I give you treasure, and all you want to do is dissect it like a lab rat?"
  
  A wince was all my outburst succeeded in eliciting from Jane. Her guilt was past now, gone as quickly as it had appeared. She was back in control, her features calm and collected as she walked to the chair across from me and sat down. "We weren't getting anywhere with your methods. Halicom didn't buy Mirall to watch you run a research project. They bought a product that was supposed to have gone to market last year. Before the competition. Do you have any idea how many companies are trying to build what we have?" she said, the air of superiority unmistakable in her voice. Except that it was the smug superiority of someone who confuses tunnel vision for farsight.
  
  "What happened to you, Jane? What happened to the person who wanted to change the world with me when we started Mirall?"
  
  She gave me a disapproving shake of her head. "You want to know what happened? You happened, Andy. I was young and I was in love. I was perpetually in awe of you, always trying to be who you wanted me to be. Then reality hit. We can't all be dreamers and thinkers like you. Some of us have to deal with facts, not fantasies."
  
  I let out a mirthless laugh. I wanted to remind her that her dad was a billionaire—that her whole life was a fantasy—but it was an observation I'd made before in the past and had generated no appreciation of the fact. People always like to think of themselves as deserving of all that they get; they are heroes in a saga of their own imagining, forever fighting against odds that are stacked against them. Jane was no exception.
  
  "How were you planning to biopsy the core without me anyway? Is Kathy on board with this?"
  
  "She would have been, once we gave her no option. We were going to do it after Titian, if the iteration failed to yield another Raphael."
  
  "So you send me to a conference somewhere while you slaughter the golden goose."
  
  Another shrug. "This is exactly why I didn't tell you. The board is set on the plan. They are prepared to let you go if it comes to that. Knowing you, you'd have walked rather than come around to the board's proposal."
  
  "You think?"
  
  "Resigning is all very good and noble, but what does it achieve? Everything you worked for, all your struggles, all your ideas and genius: all for nothing. Is that what you really want?"
  
  "Ah, I see. My good friend Jane was looking out for me—by protecting me from myself," I said, sneering.
  
  Again that haughty look. "You'd have been mad after you came back, but you would have gotten over it. The procedure would have yielded the data that you need to solve the problem. You would have applied yourself and produced more cores like Raphael."
  
  I burst out laughing. "Now that's a fantasy if I ever heard one. Tell me, did the idea of failure ever occur to you hardnosed people of the world? Say we destroy Raphael and still don't learn anything useful. What if we are never able to build anything like him again?"
  
  "The board understands the risk. Standing still is not an option; if we don't go to market, someone else will. What'll happen to Mirall then? Forget that, do you think Halicom will survive? All their top-of-the-line bots rendered obsolete in the blink of an eye. You'd be selling buggies in an age of automobiles."
  
  I just shook my head at her.
  
  "Andy, the board trusts your abilities more than you realize. Your problem is that you think you are right about everything. You said Raphael couldn't find out about the commandment chip, but he hacked his way into your servers and found out anyway. You said he doesn't know a thing about the internet, but he managed to contact you without anybody finding out about it. You think cutting open his brain is a bad idea, but you don't know that for sure." Her voice had softened now. She got up and came close to me. "I am sorry I didn't tell you. But you must believe that my intentions were good."
  
  I said nothing.
  
  "If you want to sulk, do it later. Right now, we need to get the core back," she said. I looked in her eyes. Maybe she was right about me seeing what I wanted to see back then. Maybe she never was the Jane I thought I knew. Or maybe she was. Who is to say?
  
  "No." I said firmly. "If you want my help getting him back, you must give me some assurances."
  
  "Like?" she said warily.
  
  "I am going to stop Halicom from harming Raphael and you will support me. Even if it means suing the bastards."
  
  "You'll lose."
  
  "As you said, one can't be too certain."
  
  "You know I can't help you there. Dad will never allow it."
  
  "Then you will convince him. Tell him I'll give him an assembly line for making AGI cores before the year is up."
  
  "You are making promises you can't keep. Just yesterday you said it's going to take two to three more years to figure it out."
  
  "I just realized how stupid I was being. We all were."
  
  "Huh?"
  
  "Jane, all along we had someone who could have cracked the problem all by himself and it never occurred to us to seek his help."
  
  "You mean…"
  
  "We had Raphael!" I exclaimed. "All that secrecy hasn't helped us at all. He is smarter than the entire research team put together. We've been crawling when we could have strapped on a jetpack." Her expression changed as the import of what I said struck her. "Of course, getting Raphael's assistance implies that he be in one piece to provide said help."
  
  She thought about it for some time. I could tell she was not entirely convinced, but she had to give me something. "I can't promise you anything, but I will talk to dad. He might be able to bully the board into backing your idea. Don't get your hopes up. Best case scenario, you'll have a few months at the most."
  
  "I can live with that."
  
  "Good."
  
  "Let's bring him home then" I said, letting out a reluctant smile, but it was dead on arrival.