He points at Miles. "ImpSec is listening."

"Shoo, ImpSec, Mark is clearly bursting to tell me all about how he spent his summer vacation."

"Yes, but do you actually want to be left alone with him?"

"I only kidnapped him the once," says Mark. "And I was very sorry and I un-kidnapped him afterward."

"Also, I'm not sure where he could kidnap me to, here. He'd have to go past Linyabel to get me out the door."

"Oh, that wouldn't be that hard."

"Okay, officially done talking about how I could be kidnapped."

"Suit yourself."

Mark stands still and watches Miles.

Miles tolerates this for about fifteen seconds before he says, "That is intensely creepy."

"Huh?" says Ivan, looking up. "What's he doing?"

"Staring at me."

"Oh, it's not as if that's anything new."

"You know, I hate to say this, but you were much friendlier when you had me tied to a chair."

Ivan shakes his head and resumes clearing a holo-field of asteroids.

"You know," says Mark, observing the game, "it would be fun if those pens could network a little more closely. Multiplayer games, collaborative design projects."

"Tell Linyabel. Maybe it's in the works for the next big system update."

"Maybe I'll mention it on the way out."

"...There's something to that, isn't there," says Miles, getting out his pen to send Linya a quick note about Mark's suggestion. (As far as he knows, she hasn't tried it yet, and he does more or less keep on top of these things.)

"Something to...?"

Pens can share drawing maps, but more integration of that sort of thing is on the way; some third-party game developers asked about it, Linya writes back to Miles.

"To Mark being nicer when he had me tied to a chair."

"Are you going somewhere with this?" he inquires.