Free The Restoration Game by Ken MacLeod Page B

listened to the enthusiastic, innocent, fannish flow of his voice, I knew I wanted to keep the Other Thing from him too.
    No, that wasn't quite right: I wanted to keep him from the Other Thing. I wanted to protect him from it.
    In that, of course, I failed.
    But later that night I wanted Alec to protect me. I had been seriously creeped out by the suspicion that the young beggar had followed me home. When I looked around and noticed that we were among the last people at the party and that Julie and Gail had long gone, I didn't want to go home on my own and I had the perfect excuse not to.
    “Alec,” I said, “would you mind very much walking me home?”
    “Not at all,” he said.
    “It's not far, just down to Tolcross and up a bit.”
    “No worries,” he said.
    Outside, he paused for a moment on the porch to fill and light his pipe. Small bowl, curved stem.
    “Peterson,” he said. “‘The thinking man's pipe.’”
    He gave me his arm and I took it and we set off around the corner and down Home Street in good order with me misplacing my heels not too often and Alec taking these stumbles in his stride. Under a light drizzle late clubbers swayed in giggling or roaring groups: girls with bare legs and arms and lads in short-sleeved shirts.
    “Funny,” I said, “how much nicer pipe smoke smells. Than cigarettes, I mean.”
    “Only when it's fresh,” said Alec, through his teeth. “That's why I only smoke outside.”
    “My father smoked a pipe,” I said. “Well, my mother's ex-boyfriend.”
    “Hm,” said Alec, taking the pipe from his mouth this time, “you haven't told me much about yourself.”
    “That's because I'm mysterious,” I said, giving his elbow a squeeze.
    “Like why you don't have an American accent.”
    “Oh, that's because I was”—the rest sung nasally—”bo-o-rrnn in the You Ess Ess Arrr!”
    “Under a wandering star,” Alec sang back.
    We laughed and scooted across at the lights.
    “Seriously,” said Alec, “you were born in the Soviet Union?”
    “Ay-yup,” I said. “Seven years there—well, it was called the CIS when we left—then four years in Edinburgh, ten years in New York, and two years here.”
    “How did all that come about?”
    “My mother's an academic, she has to move around.”
    “Why d'you come back to Edinburgh?”
    “Ah, shit, that's complicated.”
    We'd reached the entrance to the block.
    “Long story?” Alec said.
    “Yes.”
    Now that we'd stopped he was facing me.
    “I'd like to hear it sometime,” he said.
    I fumbled my keys from my shoulder bag, and let them jingle.
    “Would you like to hear it tonight?”
    A smile spread across his face like sunlight across a planet.
    “Maybe…in the morning?” he said. I opened the door and stood aside, arm welcoming. “Well, come in,” I said. Alec stepped past me.
    As I closed the door I heard the footsteps of someone who'd just walked by: squish, squish.
    I locked the door and led Alec up the stone stairs, feeling quite safe.

1.

    A couple of months after I started working for Digital Damage, I played a little prank on the lads. I snatched an opportunity of everyone's being coincidentally out of the office on various brief errands to set all the desktops' Google language preferences to Klingon. One by one the lads returned from the post office or the sandwich shop or the fire escape and sat down and continued working or (it being lunchtime) doing a little recreational webbrowsing. Whether working or slacking, the lads use Google a lot.
    I sat back, like the evil H. R. cat in Dilbert , and waited for the cries of anguish to erupt.
    Nothing happened. Work continued without interruption all afternoon. No one said anything about it. Sean sent all of us an email reminding us to lock our screens or log off every single time we left the desk, “even if it's only for a slash or a smoke.”
    My respect for the team went up a level.
    So when I arrived at the office before everyone else, about eight on the