Hindsight is a wonderful thing, Kath thought. It had been a trying day already and she hadn't made it through the door yet. They definitely lie about the buses. After this morning, she was sure of it. When you call them, the first instinct of the drone on the other end of the line is to lie. To accuse you of lying. To suggest you must have been standing at the wrong stop, looking at a cached version of the web site, suffering some kind of Time Dilation effect due to the anti-psychosis drugs you were obviously taking.

An unfortunate coffee disaster had already set her on the runaway train to total freak-out. The soaking she received from the one bus that did bother to turn up had, she admitted, covered the stain nicely, but then the angry phone call in the cold was the last straw.

'Yes madam, the buses are running on time.'

'But I've been standing here for an hour now. They are supposed to be every ten minutes.'

'Yes, they're running every ten minutes,' said the operator, who sounded as if he was still in bed. Where Kath wished she was. Kath told him, using carefully chosen non-inflammatory words, that if they had been on time she would be on one right now, instead of freezing her arse off at six thirty in the morning. She pointed out that she didn't want to upset anybody, but something must have gone wrong, buses didn't just disappear. Unless some sort of vortex had opened up just round the corner and swallowed the five buses which had passed her going the other way.

'Well...'

'No wait, don't tell me some kind of bus swallowing vortex has opened up around the corner?'

'I'm sorry, madam, I-'

'Do you think that's possible? Well, do you?'

'Er...'

Kath hung up, but not before asking the operator to consider her educated opinion on methods by which he may improve his lifestyle, with some encouraging suggestions on how to make the world a better place, vis-à-vis removing himself from it, then began to run.

The White Building was a stylised reflective glass affair, a sprawling complex of oddly shaped boxes permeated with lakes and lush gardens. The Company liked to keep the drones happy and did not wish to appear the sort of place that conducted questionable medical research. Hippies were safely contained on the other side of a tall electrified fence and several levels of security away from the front door.

Kath did not often think of the nervous little girl who had introduced the Royal Society to a talking machine all those years ago. So many years in fact, she sometimes wondered if it had even happened at all, but Unicorn was real, and here she was, respected neural-network designer and once again late for work. The security guard watched blankly, while she struggled to keep hold of all her papers and rummage through her bag. He did not move a muscle when she looked up and told him sheepishly that her ID was still sitting on the table in her flat, but she desperately had to get in right now as the Boss was waiting, and she was already so late, you know how buses are round here. She waved her Company tablet PC at him and pointed out that only the most respected employees were given one. She asked him if he had one. His eyes glazed over and she knew he was talking to the mainframe. Kath carried on waving the tablet in front of him, as if to hypnotise the man, but the door soon hissed open and she hurried inside before he could stop her. Good old Uni, she thought.

The Company affectionately referred to the vast expanse of extravagant space Kath found herself in as 'The Foyer', but she was of the opinion that 'The Improbably Vast Zeppelin Hangar' would have been more appropriate. Although it bustled with suits and administrators, the place had the bizarre characteristic of dampening most noises down to a faint rumble. She made her way towards a circular reception area in the middle of a series of koi ponds, designed to look like the opening petals of a lotus flower. Something pretty and sickeningly Feng Shui for the execs to look at from their elevated glass offices while they made petty decisions that changed the world. She often imagined sinister fins or tentacles breaking the surface of these pools, and the strange silence of the foyer to be broken by the tortured screams of careless investors.

'You! Speak to me.'

Kath spun wildly with a squeak of surprise, fumbling her papers and watching in dismay as the whole armful cascaded out of her hands and crashed onto the marble floor. The tablet's fragile touchscreen cracked into a beautiful explosion of colours, and Kath almost wept. They made you pay for those. How did she do it? Even when you are actively looking for her, the woman still managed to appear right behind you. The whole room paused and watched her drop to her knees on the cold stone with morbid fascination. Even the koi seemed to be observing her with an air of smug satisfaction only fat lazy fish could pull off. It was always much more fun when it wasn't you.

'S-sorry ma'am,' Kath mumbled at the floor while she scrabbled to get everything back in order, trying not to think about the stern woman around whose feet she was crawling. For a little while there was no sound except for the rustle of papers and the tap-tapping of a sharply pointed boot, and then the world caught up with an almost audible sigh, once the onlookers accepted there wouldn't be any fireworks this time. The foyer began to bustle again. The lackey who had been accompanying the woman gratefully faded into the background as soon as her focus shifted onto the nervous technician, who was using the time to wonder how best to phrase the bad news.

'I just need to sort this - ' Kath began.

'You need to do nothing of the sort,' the tall woman snapped.

'But I have something imp-'

'I am not interested in unnecessary technical details. Just tell me you're making progress with the new software.' Kath straightened up cautiously, bundle of papers and expensive rubbish clasped safely in her arms. Some morning this was turning out to be. Not even had her triple espresso yet. She had never been good at this sort of thing. Where the hell had Craig gone? He usually dealt with the Dragon, she just tried to keep the subjects comfortable and crunched numbers. That was how it was, that was how it should be. She shouldn't have to deal with people.

'I- I- ' She realised she would just have to come out with it and took a deep breath. 'I - I - Well.' she said.