"I appreciate you making the time, Saul," says Henry. "I'm still surprised they sent you down, though. Don't you usually handle bigger fish?"

  Henry Gates, the regional technician, is seated at a console in the atrium of the Farley O-station. The balconies of the office complex loom high above them, the ceiling seemingly miles away. Here, in the atrium, next to the elevators, five shiny white porting pods stand in a row, with people embarking and disembarking at regular intervals in the open space. The fifth pod, on the far end, has been reserved for this Restoration for twenty minutes.

  "I needed a break for a bit," says Saul. "I've had a few difficult private sector clients lately. Plus getting swept up in the Canada thing... I dunno. I wanted to get back on the ground. Even just a day or two in the field will do me good."

  All that was true, but not entirely.

  "Understandable," says Henry, nodding. "Like I said, I appreciate it."

  "It's no trouble at all, in fact, it's fun. I heard you guys got the new HK processors in recently. Have they improved throughput?"

  "Oh yeah," Henry says. "It's noticeably faster, and we've gotten phase errors down to 10-15 degrees across the board. It kind of feels like we've been stitching people back together with needle and thread before now."

  Saul laughs. "Well, don't say anything like that in front of John."

  "John?"

  "Katerina's husband," says Saul. "I get the idea he's a little squeamish about porting."

  "Huh. Interesting choice to marry Kat then. From what I've heard, she's crazy about porting. Maybe she needs a hard sell to practice on."

  Compared to White Point, Farley is a larger station, designed for more foot traffic, higher volume spikes of people, and the occasional freight shipment. It's tucked on the ground floor of the main building of one of those large office parks that had been making comebacks since the normalization of porting. When you could hire talent from all over the world and they could be at work in fifteen minutes, everyone preferred and encouraged the face-to-face.

  Saul looks at the clock. 3:20. The start of the Restoration had been scheduled for 3:05, to beat the "rush hour" traffic. Saul had insisted on the most rigorous Restoration, with full redundancies and triplicate checks everywhere, but it would only be another couple of minutes before Katerina stood in front of them, alive again.

  But a third man is still missing from the party. Someone Saul thought should have shown up by now.

  Where the hell is John Atherton? He stares at the outer door of the atrium. He'd texted John multiple times to confirm, and had gotten satisfying responses back. But there's only a couple minutes left until the actual Restoration, and Saul wants John to be there to welcome Katerina home.

  And maybe so he can skewer his paranoia a bit.

  Saul can't shake that ugly feeling about John. He'd tried to push it to the back of his mind, but that visit to the house had really left a sour taste in his mouth. While he hasn't supervised a private Restoration in quite a long time, he can't remember the last time someone had felt such animosity or fear regarding his line of work. Maybe it was a normal occurrence thirty years ago, but not today. Certainly not coming from someone under the age of 60.

  But rationality tends to go out the window when you're dealing with loved ones. Still, it might be worth trying to talk to Katerina upon her return. Maybe... maybe he can her to see...

  Saul shakes these thoughts out of his head. Best not go down that road right now.

  "We've got our backup uncompressed," says Henry, hunched over to stare down at the console's screen. His thick glasses are balanced precariously at the tip of his nose, and it takes Saul an enormous amount of self-control to not reach out and push them back towards his face. "Calvin is running checks against previous save fragments. From the language logs, everything looks to be normal so far. Wait." Henry frowns. "Hang on."

  Saul turns from his absent-minded staring at the front door. "What?" He peers at Henry's screen.

  "Never mind," says Henry. "Thought I saw some strange process messages. But I don't —" he scrolls through the logs a bit. "I don't see it in the history."

  "Stop and look in the OS telemetry," Saul says gruffly. "I don't want any funny business."

  "We're already in the funny business," Henry quips, but he diligently pulls up a new set of logs, where a full text record of the running backup sits. Saul and Henry peer at the logs as Henry slowly scrolls through them.

  Saul sees the suspicious message, and enters voice mode. "Calvin?"

  A voice, human, friendly, androgynous, melodic, exits the console speakers. It speaks deliberately, enunciating clearly, but indistinguishable from a human voice, unless you were very closely listening to that slight warble of digitally-assembled phonemes.

  "Hello Saul. Hello Henry. Can I help in any way?"

  Saul has always appreciated Calvin's tendency not to eavesdrop, and to only respond to his own name. It's easy for him to be constantly listening in on conversations, and his audio input buffer is constantly running, but he arguably has more important work to do right now, running a full, no-holds-barred Restoration. It was a deliberate, hard-coded programming choice to separate the buffer inputs. But it does mean Saul has to overly explain himself sometimes.

  "Hi Calvin," says Saul. "We're looking at a 500% time increase in the —" he squints. "The redundancy scope process. Can you identify the issue?"

  After a beat, Calvin replies. "Great observation, Saul. I was examining an old backup from thirteen days ago that was fragmented in an unusual way. I didn't think it was usable at first, but since I was running a comprehensive check, I decided to take a look. I'm still looking into it."

  "Can you elaborate on the fragmentation?" Saul asks.

  There is a long pause, then, "I cannot elaborate presently." Then silence.

  Saul frowns and looks at Henry, who also frowns. That was an unusual response, especially considering the attention to detail that's being given here. Calvin is usually willing to go deep and technical with his own processes. There's a lot about the reassembly process that's understood by only a few humans — and a lot more that isn't understood by anyone. But Calvin can usually paint a pretty convincing and reassuring picture to both technical and non-technical minds.

  Then again, Calvin's language process might be limited by the high compute necessary for a Restoration. Those quantum chips are tough to wrangle.

  It's then that Saul sees the front door to the station open, and a man in a tan jacket walks in. Tall, handsome, clean-shaven and well-dressed, wearing sensible shoes. A far cry from the scraggly, bathrobed, and bespectacled man that Saul had met the other day. The man power walks to the far side of the line of pods, to where Saul is standing.

  "Hi," says John, a bit breathless. "Sorry I'm late. There was... traffic." He grabs Saul's hand and shakes it vigorously. "Thanks a lot for doing this, Mr. Balavi."

  "No problem," says Saul, pleasantly surprised by John's jovial demeanor. His first impression of John had been disappointing, but there was a bright intensity in John today that he must have missed, or maybe had just forgotten about or ignored. John struck him as one of those men who had grown up to be taller than he intended, and so stooped over a little bit, but he still had a good presence about him. He was quite good-looking with the clean face. It made Saul feel a little ashamed to be fussing over his wife so much.

  As they're shaking hands, Calvin decides to chime in again. "Thanks for your patience, gentlemen. It turns out that there was nothing usable in that particular instance, but I've set it aside for further processing."

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  "Thanks, Calvin," Saul interrupts, before Calvin can offer further assistance. "We'll take a look at it later."

  "No problem," replies Calvin. Saul punches a button on the console that puts an end to voice mode. Otherwise Calvin might just keep trying to speak forever.

  "What was he talking about?" John asks Henry.

  Henry replies. "Nothing significant. Just making sure we have plenty of redundancy. We're doing a very comprehensive Restoration for Mrs. Atherton. We just finished verifying her backups and we're about to reassemble her. You're just in time."

  Something inside Saul winces at Henry's words. After so many Restorations, his department tended to be blunt with the messaging, where Saul would have preferred them to be more politically correct. There was a key phrase, "bring them over", that Saul tended to us when talking about reassembling someone's molecules. "Reassembly" reminded people that whoever was being ported had just been effectively disintegrated. He doesn't like that Henry was so technical with his choice of language during the Restoration of a citizen. He hadn't overseen something like this in a while, but if this was the new standard... He was going to have to bring this up with Diana.

  Still, if there's any discomfort from John regarding Henry's words, Saul can't detect it. Maybe he's gotten over it, he thinks. Or maybe he doesn't know what Henry's talking about. Or care. A restored Kat is better than no Kat at all.

  He chuckles to himself. Schrodinger's Kat.

  "What's so funny?" John says to Saul, and Saul freezes.

  "Sorry," says Saul. "I was... imagining what Mrs. Atherton will think of this whole process."

  "Me too," says John. "She talks about Restore all the time to me, but as far as I know she's never..." he gestures, searching for words. "You know. Been involved in one."

  John's eyes suddenly seem to glaze over. Saul knew how much Katerina talked about Restore. She had a bit of an obsession with Restore. Just one of the many totally groundbreaking features of porting, she would say. But a public Restore was definitely an awkward experience. He'd seen a lot of people lose their minds after it happened, after they'd been subject to the process. Saul tenses at the thought. Restore could be a delicate political struggle.

  "Okay," says Henry. "We have final linkage. We're ready."

  Saul relaxes.

  "Anything you need me to do?" asks John.

  "Nothing at all," says Saul. "We'll explain the situation to her. You just have to, you know, let her know you love her and that you're glad she's home safe. That sort of thing." He smiles.

  John smiles back. "Easy enough." He turns to look at the pod.

  The standard O-station travel pod is a large, complex piece of equipment. The interior of the pod itself is no larger than a refrigerator, but the machinery surrounding the pod has quite the footprint, in order to house the RTSC magnets necessary for assembly. There's even more machinery beneath the surface that takes up about as much space as a pickup truck for each pod. One of the reasons this station was chosen for the Restore is the ease of access to that machinery, and the more robust computer system attached to it. The pods themselves look like enormous bulging eggs, futuristic and white, with a curved wall towards the door.

  A series of beeps sound from Henry's console. A loud fan starts up from the base of the pod, and a glow appears around the perimeter of its doors. There is a brief, loud groan as the assembly runs, followed by a short, sharp, hissing sound of air pressure equalizing within the pod.

  A solid, pleasant bell tone confirms that the Restoration ran with no discernible manifestation errors. The doors slide open.

  Katerina stands inside. Skinny and gorgeous, dressed in a light blue jacket with a scarf around her neck. Her hair is long, a very dark brown, almost black, with a streak of grey in a part along the side. Beside her, a large container stands, a piece of rolling luggage.

  She steps out of the pod with the luggage, over the small gap in the floor. She has a wide smile on, her mouth open just a bit, ready to be inspired, ready for adventure.

  Then she looks around, a puzzled look crossing her face.

  "This doesn't look like —" She stops, catching the eye of Saul, who has moved to stand closest to the pod.

  "Saul!" she screams with delight. Her visage changes again, her voice is bright and excited. "So good to see you!" She goes in quickly for an embrace as the pod closes behind her. Saul awkwardly returns the hug. Her perfume is sweet, floral and light, just a hint of something bitter.

  "Hi, Katerina," says Saul, pushing her away from the hug. He is excited to see her, too. It had been a long time.

  "I didn't realize you would be coming on this trip," says Katerina. "Steve Hollis said you were—"

  She stops, seeing the other two men. Henry is still in his seat, peering at the screen, frantically checking post-assembly parameters.

  "John?" she says. Her husband is standing by the console, one hand on it to steady himself, staring at her. "You're here too. This doesn't look like Switzerland."

  Saul clears his throat. "You're at Farley station. There was... an incident. I'm here in an official capacity."

  Saul watches the pieces fall into place in Katerina's mind. "What day is it?" she asks, hesitantly.

  This time John speaks. "It's Thursday, hon. The 15th."

  Katerina's jaw drops slightly, her mouth open. John steps forward, with long strides, and puts his arms around her. Tightly.

  "What happened?" she asks, turning her head to Saul. "Are — are Dia and Jules okay?"

  "They're fine," says Saul. "There was an accident on Diechterhorn. Dia broke her ankle, but you — you fell 50 meters."

  "Oh my God," says Katerina. She stares into space, thinking. Saul thinks she's taking the news better than a lot of people who go through Restoration. Considering she's essentially been missing for five days...

  "All systems are clear," says Henry from his seat.

  "I need to call them right away," she says. "See if I can get an accident report."

  Saul can almost see gears turning behind her eyes, adjusting to this new situation. "Your mountaineering partners are aware of the Restoration," he says. "We informed them that it would take place this afternoon. They returned home as soon as the accident occurred, so if you need to, I expect you'll find them at their respective homes."

  "Thanks, Saul," says Katerina, and smiles. "It really is good to see you."

  Saul finds himself smiling back at her. He quickly kills the smile and glances at John, but John is looking at the pod, almost as if he's trying to stare through the doors and to the other side, into the abyss.

  Saul gets his attention. "John. Best that you catch Katerina up on the days she's missed."

  John nods, offering his arm to Katerina. Saul is about to say one more thing — one more thought slipping out from behind his teeth. But Katerina enthusiastically takes his arm, and John leads her away from the pod. She drags her luggage behind her, talking excitedly as she hops away like a little girl.

  "We were only planning on climbing maybe two days that week," Saul hears her say. "Bad luck. I was supposed to have a visit with Stephen at Cosoco yesterday. I'll have to move my schedule around. Huh. What a strange thing. I've never had to deal with being temporarily dead before." She laughs. "Honey, let's stop at Zephyr's. I'm supposed to — well, I was supposed to get coffee with Simon Wallace when I got to Lucerne, and I could use a cup of the home brew..."

  John walks stiffly, silently, his woman tight in his arm. He turns his head back once, as he and Katerina exit the building. Saul swears he sees John shooting him a death-glare.

  "Hey Saul." Saul looks at Henry, who sounds worried. Henry's glasses are somehow even lower on his nose than before. "There was some material left in the pod after porting."

  "Dirt?" asks Saul. A common occurrence. "Something on her shoe?"

  "I don't know," Henry says. "Bit more than the usual, but it got reclaimed almost immediately after she stepped out. I only spotted it because I had the logs pulled up. It was... organic material."

  "Organic material?" says Saul, frowning. "Carbon?"

  "Carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorous... the usual tells." Henry squints at the screen. "Hang on. There's some more. Familiar trace elements. Lots of heavy metals."

  He opens up a new window on the console screen, a matter analysis program. People are starting to travel through the pod now, the one that Katerina had left. The Restore session was closed. Saul nods politely at a couple of the travelers as they pop in and out of existence.

  "There," says Henry. "Water content, trace minerals, proteins... plasma... wait a minute." He adjusts his glasses. "That's blood."

  Saul's heart jumps in his chest. "What? Blood? Are you sure?"

  "Positive," says Henry. "B positive, actually. I checked it against some biomed samples on file. First pass shows it's definitely human blood. Second pass..."

  He does some typing, and then sucks in some air through his teeth. "Yep. It's Katerina's."

  Saul's mind begins to race. How could there be blood left behind in the teleporter? He scans his memory. He can't remember any sign of Katerina bleeding. Surely they would have seen that, on the white floor of the pod, or more on the offramp, or...

  "How much?" Saul asks. "By volume?"

  "Quite a bit," says Henry. "Forty milliliters."

  "Holy shit," says Saul. Even the heaviest contaminants were only ever a few grams before they raised alarm bells. But this hadn't? And for Calvin to reclaim it, without a word, was incredibly odd. Henry was looking at telemetry from the machinery itself, not from the assembly program. The assembly logs had mentioned nothing. Typically those things threw some sort of flag, even if it was the lowest-level warning.

  But dirt and dust were one thing to leave behind. Blood was entirely another.

  Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  "Stay here and check it out," Saul says. "I need to go talk to her."

  He turns and dashes for the exit doors, almost sprinting. He almost knocks over a woman entering the pod closest to the exit. How could this happen during a full Restore? he thinks, reeling. Something's the matter with her. Something's wrong with this whole thing. I have to make sure she's alright.

  He flings open the doors and runs out into the bright afternoon sun. The other office park buildings loom around him, tall modern monoliths of colored metal and glass, which surround a courtyard of short grasses and meticulously trimmed trees. The homes of corporations big and small. Two Huangs sit waiting in a narrow driveway that comes to a roundabout in the middle of the courtyard, with a third pulling up to the station entrance.

  He peers into the Huangs. Empty. He looks frantically around the courtyard for Katerina, for John, shielding his eyes from the light.

  A hundred feet away, there's a green sedan pulling out of the drive's exit. Being driven, manually, by a person. Saul watches as it peels onto the main street and speeds away.