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“Friends! Not another single sad thought today and not a single mention of Collective

Mind! You and Sandrine are used to this place, but I want to luxuriate in paradise!” he cast a significant glance at Bikie and at his guitar. Bikie nodded eagerly.

“This time shall we set out to sea, or sail off on a drinking spree?” he sang, strumming the guitar, before reaching out for his bottle.

“Is that Byron?” Wolanski asked.

Isaac laughed so hard he almost choked.

Bikie gave Wolanski a severe look.

“That’s not By-ron, it’s By-kie. It’s my song, you dorks.”

“I wasn’t joking, I actually like it.”

“That’s the most terrible compliment I’ve ever heard. Dorks like my music.”

“I don’t get you. I can’t compliment you and I can’t criticize you either.”

“Why don’t you just listen without any comments?”

“Okay, okay. Can I at least light up my cigarette lighter and stand beside you for a while, like at a rock concert?”

Sandrine and Isaac laughed until they cried.

“You can lie down on the bottom of your pool with the lighter if you like. The longer the better.”

Bikie carried on strumming, sometimes the words were sad, sometimes really jaunty.

There was a lot about women and drinking. Everybody enjoyed listening.

“She gobbled her food by the ton, and her figure was soon lost and gone. She crammed

down that swill and GMO slop, in massive amounts, unable to stop,” he sang.

For some reason the women in his songs were beautiful, but very fat, a Botero of music.

“Her backside was just like a nut!” he continued, “Tra-la-la. All fatty and rough to the touch, La-la-la. Her backside was just like a nut, Tra-la-la, that goes by the name avocado.”

Boom! A loud final chord.

The evening was so heartwarming that Isaac felt amazing. Nice company, intelligent

people, light-hearted mood, even more awesome than with his university friends. “Man does not live by Pascal alone,” Isaac noted, recalling his evenings with his friend. And he had never sat around with a guitar like this before. Every cloud has a silver lining. If he hadn’t had problems, he wouldn’t have met Bikie or Peter, and he wouldn’t be sitting here at this classy villa. He even saw the terrorist Elvis through different eyes now and regretted that he hadn’t talked to him while they were in the police cell. Where was he now? Probably already in jail. But never mind, if Isaac pulled this off, they would let Elvis go too. He would definitely prefer to sit in jail for any number of years, but not volunteer for downloading.

The next day he went to see Vicky in the hospital. She was in relatively good shape. The situation was stable, and Isaac had two months to find the money for the operation. Two months ought to be long enough for him. Fortunately he only had to pay for the operation itself and for bringing the specialists from Germany. His sister’s stay in the hospital was covered by social insurance.

When he got back to the villa, Bikie met him with contrived cheerfulness.

“Well then, back already from your sweet little cutie?” Bikie really wanted to cheer his friend up, but it came out awkward.

“What are you talking about?” said Isaac, puzzled. “I’ve been with Vicky, my sister.”

“Your stepsister. That’s who I meant,” Bikie chuckled. “Your little sister’s high-class. I looked at your photos with her. A jaw-dropping figure and great smile. A real beauty! Got to get her cured quick. Why that acid look, you guys have different folks, don’t you?”

“We do,” said Isaac slowly.

He felt a sudden, sharp sting. He wasn’t offended by Bikie’s offhand manner, he had simply never thought about his Vicky as a beautiful young woman. “Vicky, a little cutie,” he repeated to himself pensively. It was true. Neither hospital surroundings nor her wan complexion could spoil her looks. She looked so fragile under hospital bed sheets and she was… beautiful.

In the morning when Isaac and Bikie woke at the villa, excellent coffee was already

waiting.

“The gentle cooing of this pimped-up coffee machine is akin to the noble note that

resounds when I start up my Harley,” declared Bikie, already in a poetic mood first thing in the morning. “I think I’ll listen to it one more time. Isaac, put in a cup. Ah, tell you what: genuine coffee is some mighty stuff! Not like that instant shit. You are one fluky guy, Isaac. Maybe there’s some kind of fluky energy? Just think about it. You’ve got no money, but you will have.

Your sister’s sick, but only until you get your money, so it’s a temporary problem. Your brains are in good shape. You went to download your creativity, but Lady Luck saved you. You got a piece of computer plate and you didn’t throw it out, you looked at it. Out of the candidates you found me and Wolanski. Hit the bullseye again! I won’t deny that I’m glad we ended up here, not with that swanky jerk with the Harley.”

“It’s not entirely a fluke. I admit I was lucky with the downloading when Elvis showed

up. But choosing you and Wolanski was shrewd calculation. A risk it was certainly, but the analysis of the candidates was correct. Lady Luck likes hard workers; she doesn’t do everything for you herself. And what’s more, I had failures with a couple of other candidates.”

“Dunno. I reckon you’re fluky. And you’ve got good intuition. Sometimes I think about

how many little details came together for me to be sitting here, right at this moment, and I realize the math doesn’t explain it because it is unrepeatable from the standpoint of probability theory. I even ended up in the bar because I love motorbikes. The owner of the bar is a biker too. If I were not a biker, I wouldn’t have ended up in the bar, and you might have chosen someone else.”

“You could say that about absolutely anyone starting at least with the fact that every one of us is born from the victor in a race of spermatozoa. One out of tens of millions. It’s like one person from the whole of France, one from Poland, five from America. So mathematics hasn’t got anything to do with it, its fate or something else. Maybe it is flukiness.”

While they talked they had no less than three cups of coffee each. Heady, exquisite aroma diffused through the air and the delicious brew spread invigoratingly though Isaac’s body, clearing his thoughts. He always put in a lot of sugar. Now it was time to sit down at the computer.

“Ok, Bikie. Any ideas on how to find Link?”

“Considering how much sugar you just had, that’s really a question for you. Sugar is the brain’s main fuel. Your tank is over full right now.”

“About the ideas, I meant your professional skills in the first place.”

“Well, there are a few things we can do, and some we can’t. As always, we have to try

everything. You never know where you’ll stumble across the trail. Either he’s a total hermit, which is quite likely for a scientist, or sooner or later he’ll leave tracks. Provided he is alive and hasn’t become a Happy.”

“I still hope that he is present in the data base not just by accident or mistake. He’s definitely not a Happy, and clearly not officially listed as dead. Why keep data on the intellectual capabilities of a corpse?”

“Who knows? Many people searched him. Although we are special since we have out-of-

the-box thinking. I’ll try to turn the question round the other unusual way.”

Bikie considered himself a super-analyst and was sure he’d find Link if there was even the slightest chance. He downloaded all the information he could find, at the same time creating and running a file comparison program to eliminate identical content. In the end he gathered a vast amount of relevant data.

He also compared articles that were almost identical and copied out any differences into his list of leads. In one place he found the name of a hotel Link stayed in, in another - the make of car in which he was driven there. Then he found out how Link was dressed. He collected whatever could be collected.

Leaving his partner to ruminate, Isaac went off to the next meeting about registering his anti-rain invention.

Isaac hated Collective Mind more and more, his resolve to strike a blow at it was growing stronger. Five years ago his invention would literally have been grabbed out of his hands, they would have lined up for it. But now he was on his way to even more talks with the agent at the patents office, still not even knowing if this was the final meeting, or the first of yet another dozen bureaucratic discussions.

The bald, plumpish patent officer, who introduced himself as Serge Morell, was also an

Agency-hater. He had his reasons. He used to be the boss of a large department, almost twenty people, a big wheel and a well-respected man. Now his department consisted of just him, and it was only still considered a department because no one wanted to waste any time and energy on renaming it a section. He loved inventors and creative personalities, but nowadays they very rarely came his way. He felt awkward about Isaac’s case and tried to excuse himself saying that he was overwhelmed with doing everything alone; register the applications, check them, and even type out all the data.

He assured Isaac that the next meeting would be the last, everything was almost ready,

and he hinted that he would be happy to leave his job and become Isaac’s personal agent, marketing his inventions. Isaac promised to think about it. The agent added that his business card as a head of department still inspired respect and simplified negotiations. And he knew all about whom to approach and how – after all, he had thirty years of experience.

The former Isaac, so unsure of himself would have agreed immediately. But now he felt

like a different hardened hearted man - a man who wouldn’t fling himself at the very first offer with open arms. So he only said he’d consider it.

When Isaac got back from the patents office, he glanced into Bikie’s room. Seeing his

friend, tired from all his monotonous searching work, he decided to suggest an idea of his own.

“I can see you’re tired. I’ll run a fresh eye over your provisional results and tell you what I think and how we could approach the analysis. And you will tell me what’s possible and what’s not, and maybe add something else.”

“Go ahead,” said Bikie and turned back to the computer in his traditional style.

“Well, we need to find things that could be important to him: rare objects or an old

vintage motorbike, for instance.”

Seeing that Bikie was really whacked, Isaac wanted to cheer him up and offered his

suggestion with absolute seriousness. Bikie picked up on the gibe, turned his head and grinned.

“But seriously, though,” Isaac went on, “let’s take a look at his credit card expenditures, his bank statements, habits and journal subscriptions and any other little details of his day-to-day life. What he loved and what he hated.”

“Well, the journals could be a useful line, by the way, all right. There are all sorts of things on the internet, but good old paper journals, who doesn’t love them? That’s easy,” Bikie added. “And the same goes for phone numbers, his e-mail account, favorite sites and digital subscriptions.”

“If he’s alive and well he might secretly be keeping in touch with a few friends, like

Deputy Secretary Blake, for instance.”

“I think I can find out Blake’s mobile number, and if it’s not a corporate UN phone, I’ll crack all his calls, but if it is a UN phone, then for sure it won’t be easy. Probably even hopeless.

Lots of companies’ data protection programs are still not up to much, but that’s not the UN.

Usually it’s the people themselves who are sloppy; they leave heaps of leads behind, without even suspecting it either because they’re negligent or because they don’t consider themselves important enough. There are still hordes of heavy hackers around…and get this….we

programmers are actually underground types who have the lowest percentage of downloaders,”

Bikie announced smugly.

“Yeah right, but lots of you are actually employed full-time by the Agency.”

“If need be, a couple of my friends can crack any tough nut and get the best porn movies off the computer of the Satan himself.”

“And then,” Isaac reasoned. “I think we should take a look at where Link went most often before he disappeared. I don’t think he’s in Africa or the Antarctic. If you wanted to hide, you’d probably choose some place where you’d been before, the one you liked.”

“That’s easier. I can track journeys, especially old ones. In those days the data protection programs were total shit compared with today. Anyway, I don’t think any crazy tourist company would lay out its dosh on a super-program to protect data about its clients’ destinations a hundred years ago. I reckon I’ll get in easily from about ten years back. I don’t think Link had time to handle all the tedious ins and outs of traveling. More likely he used an assistant or a secretary.”

“Then there are frequent flyer programs and maybe he used a car-rental company. I doubt they have mega-protection either.”

“You can’t be sure. But as far as I can tell three assistants worked in Link’s lab, two male and one female. He wasn’t exactly the sociable type. There are only forty-two numbers that were called from the lab more than five times a year, and about another hundred for the female assistant. And there are obvious front runners among them.”

“Excellent, that’ll be useful.”

“Also,” Bikie continued, “we have to find his old bank card and at least pick out the most popular transactions.”

“Yes, we might see something unusual. Buying medication, for instance, and if it’s rare, he probably still uses it.”

“Get real. No more cancer, no more AIDS, remember? Or you think Link didn’t fix some

allergic catarrh he had?”

“Yeah, you’re right, not much chance. It depends on when it happened. It wasn’t

invented, manufactured and distributed at once. But even so, please take a look. Meanwhile I’ll slip down to the gym, somehow this place has given me the urge to work out. I used to think I wasn’t kind of a person suited for fitness training and now I just can’t wait to pump some iron. It really clears out your head and calms the nerves. See how much stronger my arms are?” Isaac proudly displayed his slightly enlarged biceps to Bikie.