555-6734. I am at my desk now through 6pm.

It's like 5:20.  Hhhhhhh.

He will set a timer for five minutes, and lie down until it goes off, and make the call.

"Noah Taylor speaking."

"This is Julien Doucet, hi."

"Hello, Mr. Doucet. Congratulations on awakening." He's got a businesslike friendliness to his voice.

"Thanks!"  Does he say 'Just Julien is fine,' or does he not say that.  He doesn't remember hearing Paula ever address Haru by anything...

"The conventional way this works is that you tell me in general terms what kinds and amounts of work you want, and what is and isn't working for you about your assignments, and I handle things like negotiating your pay and making sure you aren't double-booked or over-booked, and I coordinate with your partner's agent so that when possible you and your partner are backlashed at the same time, unless for whatever reason the specific backlashes are such that this shouldn't be the case. I can also get you connected to other services if you are likely to need things like self-driving cars to and from dungeons, classes and certifications for things like scuba and weaponry, and silo rental."

"That sounds great."  He should have something to take notes with on hand for this; laptop, laptop wake up.  "...Should I start mentioning particulars about me or is it too early for that?"

"You can if you would like. I will keep your information confidential even if you choose not to move forward here."

"Uh, sure."  Hmm.  "Uh, so like I said in the email I'm, I seem to have a paranoia-based backlash?  At first I thought that I had been put into a - fake world, where I would get tortured if I did anything that was out of line with that?  I don't know if I expect that to come back, though, it got kind of replaced by other things."

Typing sounds. "What kind of range of things did you pass through while awakening?"

"Um, on the kind of innocuous end I did a lot of disaster prep research, and - Traceless got called into an emergency dungeon and it was important that I be available when he got done, so I was making a lot of checklists and setting alarms to go off every few minutes because I was worried I wouldn't get notifications for the texts I was expecting to receive.  And I was afraid something would go wrong if I left the couch so I stayed there even though I was getting cold.  And then, uh.... I also had this other identity show up.  A few times.  I wasn't sure if he would last past awakening but I think he was there for a while while I was at the dungeon today.  It was harder to tell, though."

"- that's an odd manifestation of paranoia but backlash can be like that - what's the other identity like?"

"He was, uh, by the end he was really afraid he wouldn't persist after awakening but was much more functional than me because he channeled it all into trying to have nice chill experiences before he died.  We didn't start out very friendly but eventually things seemed to be going in a pretty okay direction."

"Do you share memories or do you have to communicate in other ways?"

"...I could definitely remember the basic stuff that had happened.  We did write each other a letter apiece but that was kind of a formality.  We got a bunch of each other's thoughts but maybe not quite as much as our own?  I'm not sure.  And we weren't, like, running at the same time, ever.  It was one or the other."

"If you had to guess, could more different personalities emerge?"

"I don't know if any will, but it doesn't seem like they couldn't."

"Are you at zero backlash right now?"

"Yes."

Typing noises. "Are you going to want to do anything like maintain separate bank accounts?"

"I would have to - uh, he'll remember this came up and will be able to think about it?  As an initial reaction from me, I'd guess it won't be necessary but might be convenient.  Except that allocating who gets what money as income might be too stressful to be worth it."

"I'll table that for now but avoid locking anything in that would make it difficult to do in a month, then."

"Thanks."

"Of course. Anything else irregular like that?"