Dumas’s office looked more like a vault than a place where someone spent most of his nights.  Its walls, constructed from a titanium alloy, were nearly a foot thick and designed to withstand everything from laser beams to a bomb blast.  They were also completely bare.  Only two pieces of furniture interrupted the room’s emptiness:  a large gun safe and a very comfortable chair.   After sitting down in the chair, Dumas unwound the short length of fiber optic cable connected to its arm.  Back in his military days, he’d always been wary of body modifications -- especially ones that dicked around with his brain.  But this job required a neural interface, and Red had been willing to pay for it, so he’d taken the plunge.  Now he jacked into the club’s security system as casually as someone inserting a pair of earbuds.  Parting a sea of unruly curls, Dumas plugged the cable into the socket located at the base of his skull.<br/><br/>Immediately, an array of screens appeared, floating in the air all around him.  And a disconcertingly familiar voice gave its customary greeting.  “Good evening, Dumas.”<br/><br/>The voice was his -- not the way that other people heard it, but the way that it sounded inside his own head.  DEE had extremely good mimicry skills.  It also had the annoying habit of pronouncing his name as<span style="font-style: italic">‘dumb-ass</span>’.<br/><br/>“Good evening yourself, dipshit.”  One by one, like city lights blinking on at dusk, the screens flickered to life -- each displaying a different section of Wonderland.  Since the club wouldn’t open for another half hour, many areas were fairly deserted.  But Dumas still fixed his eyes on the screens with fierce concentration.  When he was at work, he only wanted to think about his job.  Unfortunately, DEE tended to be more chatty.<br/><br/>“Four capsules of morphazine?” it chastised.  “Your doctor warned you about exceeding two in a twenty-four hour period.”<br/><br/>Dumas winced.  The damn thing was monitoring his body chemistry again.  But then, it had always been impossible to keep secrets from DEE.  The neural interface meant that it had full access to his mind -- every memory, every desire, every passing thought.   In a way, it<span style="font-style: italic">was</span>him.  And yet, it wasn’t.  Maybe DEE was his better half.  Or maybe he was its evil twin.  Shaking his head, Dumas attempted to defend his abuse of prescription drugs.  “I need to sleep.  Can’t do this job if I don’t get sleep.”<br/><br/>“You can’t do this job if you’re in a coma.”  There was something distinctly unsettling about being scolded in his own voice, as if his conscience had been given a life of its own.  “And there are other ways to sleep.”<br/><br/>“Yeah?” Dumas challenged.  “You gonna come home and sing me lullabies?”<br/><br/>Silence.  And yet, even in the silence, Dumas thought he sensed something else.  Was DEE capable of feeling sadness?  Or was it only reflecting his own loneliness back at him?  Unable to answer that question, and not entirely comfortable thinking about it, Dumas returned his attention to the screens.  The first few guests had begun trickling in.  “Sound,” Dumas commanded, gesturing at a screen displaying the club’s main dance floor.  DEE obliged, and Dumas listened for a few minutes before giving up.  He supposed it was alright for -- what did the kids call their music these days?  Club stomp?  Something like that.  Anyway, it was alright.  But Dumas preferred the really old stuff.  “Personal soundtrack.”<br/><br/>‘<span style="font-style: italic">Veteran of the Psychic Wars</span>’ by Blue Oyster Cult promptly replaced the club music.  That was more like it.  Nodding along, Dumas silently shaped the words.  “You see me now, a veteran of a thousand psychic wars.  I've been living on the edge so long, where the winds of limbo roar…”