The Muse
Rick sat still, and the room's air quietly throbbed around him.
Rick had been in this business a long time. He'd made pletny of enemies, and he'd lost plenty of friends. There weren't many who could operate both on and off the Muse - who had contacts in both worlds. Not that Rick could boast. But there was a niche there - a niche for people who couldn't navigate the borderlands between the Muse world and the real one.
Still, though Rick had an office in the Muse - had several offices, in different places, under different names - Rick knew that most of his work would come from here. Not from the carefully programmed, carefully hidden online links, but from a shitty room sixty stories up, in a place that used to be London, when geography still meant anything.
For a moment Rick wanted to move - anywhere - in all directions at once - wanted to scream or to fall into pieces - wanted to disperse across space, in a way the Muse permitted.
But then Rick was back again, sitting at his desk, waiting and calm.
Just Rick, the air, the cold window, the rain outside it, the door (with a client behind it somewhere), and in the top drawer of his desk a bottle of whisky.
It was twenty past nine.
Does Rick:
Rick had been in this business a long time. He'd made pletny of enemies, and he'd lost plenty of friends. There weren't many who could operate both on and off the Muse - who had contacts in both worlds. Not that Rick could boast. But there was a niche there - a niche for people who couldn't navigate the borderlands between the Muse world and the real one.
Still, though Rick had an office in the Muse - had several offices, in different places, under different names - Rick knew that most of his work would come from here. Not from the carefully programmed, carefully hidden online links, but from a shitty room sixty stories up, in a place that used to be London, when geography still meant anything.
For a moment Rick wanted to move - anywhere - in all directions at once - wanted to scream or to fall into pieces - wanted to disperse across space, in a way the Muse permitted.
But then Rick was back again, sitting at his desk, waiting and calm.
Just Rick, the air, the cold window, the rain outside it, the door (with a client behind it somewhere), and in the top drawer of his desk a bottle of whisky.
It was twenty past nine.
Does Rick: