"Really?"

"Yes, really."

"What do you want us to do?"

"I want you to fix it," Julia said.

"Then we have to boost power, and you have-"

"I don't care," she said. "I can't show the VCs an image of this quality. They've seen better pictures from Mars. Fix it."

Beside me on the bed, Julia said, "I didn't know they recorded all this. This is before the demo. You can fast forward."

I pushed the remote. The picture scrambled. I waited a few seconds, and played it again.

Same scene. Julia still in the foreground. Carol, her assistant, whispering to her.

"Okay, but then what do I tell him?"

"Tell him no."

"But he wants to get started."

"I understand. But the transmission isn't for an hour. Tell him no."

On the bed, Julia said to me, "Mad Dog was our experimental subject. He was very restless. Impatient to get started."

On the screen, the assistant lowered her voice. "I think he's nervous, Julia. I would be, too, with a couple of million of those things crawling around inside my body-"

"It's not a couple of million, and they're not crawling," Julia said. "Anyway, they're his invention."

"Even so."

"Isn't that an anesthesiologist over there?"

"No, just a cardiologist."

"Well, maybe the cardiologist can give him something for his nervousness."

"They already did. An injection."

On the bed beside me, Julia said, "Fast forward, Jack." I did. The picture jumped ahead.

"Okay, here."

I saw Julia standing at the monitor again, with the technician beside her. "That's acceptable," onscreen Julia was saying, pointing to the image. "Not great, but acceptable. Now, show me the STM."

"The what?"

"The STM. The electron microscope. Show me the image from that."

The technician looked confused. "Uh… Nobody told us about any electron microscope."

"For God's sake, read the damn storyboards!"