[b]York:[/b]

“I’ll do the flower book and put your name on the condiments set.” York nods, flicking through his phone as Orange talks and narrows his eyes. “Found your source, by the way.” 

He’s quiet for a moment, looking at his phone. Then he turns it off, takes the battery out, and puts both back into his pocket. “I’ve got to be vague, but don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m asking. Did you know before, or from what happened last night.” 

There’s no tell how he feels yet. He’s hiding everything right now, though given what headlines he just read it’s likely it’s as much [i]for[/i] Orange as from her. 

[b]Dudekov:[/b]

“The trick to making ships in bottles,” Dudekov continues with his eyes closed, “is that you have to remember your place. When you think about the next piece, you can’t imagine it already in the place you think it must go. It’s much harder than you think to not see it as if it is already there.” 

He opens them again and opens a drawer for a hotel pen, no notepad but a Gideon bible. He tears a page out and uses it as notepaper, speed-drawing a rough bottle, some hull, and circling the number 13 to keep his place. He looks back up. 

“Either my brain was not really ripped, in which case this is the real trick. The big show to convince me to, what? Call the right people, warn them? Have agents around the city see who jumps when I call?” Dudekov asks with a raised eyebrow. “Or that is a double-bluff, I [i]have [/i]had my brain ripped, at which point you are the asset sent to liquidate me afterwards, or some such thing, and I am better where I am. There is no urgency, nothing more can be done.” 

“I do not know what it is planning,” Dudekov looks at his sheet of paper again, at the number thirteen, and closes his eyes. His fingers twitch lightly as he imagines the work. “Only that no scheme is too contrived, too convoluted. One must imagine a GAI as a bored teenager playing the world like it has a save/load function.”