Ethan had made this confession without premeditation, but once it was out, he realized he wanted reassurance. He wanted this man with decades of experience to tell him bugs were normal, you couldn’t always find them right away, he wasn’t a failure. He sat back waiting for the soothing words, the sort of expiation only an old engineer like Harry Minor or Daniel Wheatley could give him, to help find the joke that would let him laugh at this particular name for fuck-up: Jester.

But Wheatley had an altogether different reaction.

He suddenly sat forward in his seat and stared at Ethan. His face was inches from Ethan’s, huge, it seemed.

“Failure? You feel like a failure?” said Wheatley. “Look, kid. It’s not about you. Who the hell really cares about you? The failure is in the system, and the fear should be not for your ego but for the people who’ll use the system. Think about them. Be afraid for them. Forget about yourself for a while and then you’ll find it, then you’ll fix your bug. Not because you’re ashamed, but because people might be in danger and you have to.”

This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Dan Wheatley was supposed to be avuncular and sustaining, his presence next to Ethan on the plane a happy accident meant to shore up his faith in the patient intelligence of good, solid engineers. Now he couldn’t wait to land, to get off this flying piece of junk, get away from this too big, too invasive man.