Upstairs: He could always go upstairs and dial up his simulation. It was still running on the Telligentsia server, waiting for him as always. It didn’t care that he’d been made a fool of at work, didn’t know about the bug, had no idea that a whole company waiting for its IPO had suspended sales because of him. The simulation was his other life. Separate, preserved, autonomous. He’d go back there, pick up the thought-line he’d started so long ago, before the bug ever existed.