The technician blinked. "It's on the storyboards?"

"Did you look at the storyboards?"

"I'm sorry, I guess I must have missed it."

"There's no time now to be sorry. Fix it!"

"You don't have to shout."

"Yes I do! I have to shout, because I'm surrounded by idiots!" She waved her hands in the air. "I'm about to go online and talk to eleven billion dollars of venture capital in five countries and show them submicroscopic technology, except I don't have a microscope feed, so they can't see the technology!"

On the bed, Julia said, "I kind of lost it with this guy. It was so frustrating. We had a clock counting down to the satellite time, which was booked and locked. We couldn't change it. We had to make the time, and this guy was a dimbus. But eventually we got it working. Fast forward."

The screen showed a static card, which read:

A Private Demonstration of

Advanced Medical Imaging by

Xymos Technology

Mountain View, CA

World Leader in Molecular Manufacturing Then, on the screen, Julia appeared, standing in front of the gurney and the medical apparatus. She'd brushed her hair and tucked in her blouse.

"Hello to all of you," she said, smiling at the camera. "I'm Julia Forman of Xymos Technology, and we're about to demonstrate a revolutionary medical imaging procedure just developed here. Our subject, Peter Morris, is lying behind me on the table. In a few moments, we're going to look inside his heart and blood vessels with an ease and accuracy never before possible." She began walking around the table, talking as she went.

"Unlike cardiac catheterization, our procedure is one hundred percent safe. And unlike catheterization, we can look everywhere in the body, at every sort of vessel, no matter how large or small. We'll see inside his aorta, the largest artery of the body. But we'll also look inside the alveoli of his lungs, and the tiny capillaries of his fingertips.