His laugh was short and sharp. “This one knows very little.” He read his fortune: be wary of sudden impulses.
I crossed my arms. “You know, except for that parlor trick with the bank manager holo, I have no proof that you are what you say you are.”
“Give me your hand.”
“My hand?”
“Yes. Either one. Thank you.”
Johnny held my right hand in both of his. His fingers were longer than mine. Mine were stronger.
“Close your eyes,” he said.
I did. There was no transition: one instant I was sitting in the Blue Lotus on Red Dragon Street and the next I was … nowhere. Somewhere! Streaking through gray-blue datumplane, banking along chrome-yellow information highways, passing over and under and through great cities of glowing information storage, red skyscrapers sheathed in black security ice, simple entities like personal accounts or corporate files blazing like burning refineries in the night. Above it all, just out of sight as if poised in twisted space, hung the gigantic weights of the AIs, their simplest communications pulsing like violent heat lightning along the infinite horizons. Somewhere in the distance, all but lost in the maze of three-dimensional neon that partitioned one tiny second of arc in the incredible datasphere of one small world, I sensed rather than saw those soft, hazel eyes waiting for me.
Johnny released my hand. He cracked my fortune cookie open. The strip of paper read: INVEST WISELY IN NEW VENTURES.
�