Makers

“Morning,” Lester said, brittle and chipper.

Perry dug around on Suza

“I’m in,” Perry said, around a mouthful of bagel, looking away.

Suza

“I’m staying. If you’ll have me. Let’s make some stuff.”

He put the bagel down and swallowed. He looked back at Lester and the two old comrades locked eyes for a long moment.

Lester smiled. “All right!” He danced a shuffling step, mindful of his sore hips. “All right, buddy, fuckin’ A! Yeah!”

Suza

He gave her a hard kiss. “I love you, Suza

Perry made a happy sound behind her.

“I love you, too, Lester,” she said, squeezing his ski

Lester let go of her and she turned to face Perry. Tears pricked his eyes, and she found that she was crying too. She gave him a hug, and felt the ways that his body had changed since she’d last held him, back in Florida, back in some forgotten time. He was thicker, but still solid, and he smelled the same. She put her lips close to his ear and whispered, “You’re a good man, Perry Gibbons.”

Lester gave his notice that morning. Though it was 8PM in Tehran when Lester called, Sammy was at his desk.

“Why are you telling me this, Lester?”

“It says in my contract that I have to give my notice to you, specifically.”

“Why the hell did I put that there?” Sammy’s voice sounded far away—not just in Iran. It sounded like he had travelled through time, too.

“Politics, I think,” he said.

“Hard to remember. Probably wanted to be sure that someone like Wiener wouldn’t convince you to quit, switch companies, and hire you again.”

“Not much risk of that now,” Lester said. “Let’s face it, Sammy, I don’t actually do anything for the company.”

“Nope. That’s right. We’re not very good at making use of people like you.”

“Nope.”

“Well, email me your paperwork and I’ll shove it around. How much notice are you supposed to give?”

“Three months’.”

“Yowch. Whatever. Just pack up and go home. Gardening leave.”

It had been two years since Lester’d had any contact with Sammy, but it was clear that ru

“How’s Iran treating you?”

“The Middle East operation is something else, boy. You’d like it here. The post-war towns all look like your squatter city—the craziest buildings you ever saw. They love the DiaBs though—we get the most fantastic designs through the fan cha

Ah. No sense in faking it. “Perry and I are going to go into business together. Making kinetic sculptures. Like the old days.”

“No way! Perry Gibbons? You two are back together? Christ, we’re all doomed.” He was laughing. “Sculptures—like that toast robot? And he wants to go into business? I thought he was some kind of Commie.”

Lester had a rush of remembrance, the emotional memory of how much he’d hated this man and everything he stood for. What had happened to him over the years that he counted this sneak, this thug, as his colleague? What had he sold when he sold out?

“Perry Gibbons,” Lester said, and drew in a breath. “Perry Gibbons is the sharpest entrepreneur I’ve ever met. He can’t help but make businesses. He’s an artist who anticipates the market a year ahead of the curve. He could be a rich man a hundred times over if he chose. Commie? Page, you’re not fit to keep his books.”

The line went quiet, the eerie silence of a net-co

Lester wanted to apologize. He wanted not to want to apologize. He swallowed the apology and disco

When it was time for bed, Suza

She picked her way carefully down the flagstones that led to the workshop, where the lights burned merrily in the night. There was no moon tonight, and the stars were laid out like a bag of synthetic diamonds arrayed on a piece of black velour in a street market stall.

She peered through the window before she went around to the door, the journalist in her wanting to fix an image of the moment in her mind before she moved in and disturbed it. That was the problem with being a reporter—everything changed the instant you started reporting on it. By now, there wasn’t a person alive who didn’t know what it means to be in the presence of a reporter. She was a roving Panopticon.

The scene inside the workshop was eerie. Perry and Lester stood next to each other, cheek by jowl, hunched over something on the workbench. Perry had a computer open in front of him, and he was typing, Lester holding something out of sight.

How many times had she seen this tableau? How many afternoons had she spent in the workshop in Florida, watching them hack a robot, build a sculpture, turn out the latest toy for Tjan’s amusement, Kettlewell’s enrichment? The postures were identical—though their bodies had changed, the hair thi

She must have made a noise, because Lester looked up—or maybe it was just the unca

“Hello, boys,” she said. They straightened up, both of them unconsciously cradling their low backs, and she suppressed a grin. My little boys, all grown up.

“Darling!” Lester said. “Come here, have a look!”

He put his arm over her shoulders and walked her to the bench, leaning on her a little.

It was in pieces, but she could see where it was going: a pair of familiar boxy shapes, two of Lester’s mechanical computers, their cola-can registers spilling away in a long daisy-chain of worm-gears and rotating shafts. One figure was big and round-shouldered like a vintage refrigerator. The other was cockeyed, half its gears set higher than the other half. Each had a single, stark mechanical arm extended before it, and at the end of each arm was a familiar cracked and fragrant baseball glove.

Lester put a ball into one of the gloves and Perry hammered away at the keyboard. Very, very slowly, the slope-shouldered robot drew its mechanical arm back—“We used one of the open-source prosthestic plans,” Lester whispered in the tense moment. Then it lobbed a soft underhand toss to the lopsided one.

The ball arced through the air and the other bot repositioned its arm in a series of clattering jerks. It seemed to Suza