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close briefly, and he shakes his head ever so slightly.
    â€œHe’s using a fixative?” Chance’s voice rises a little in disbelief.
    â€œHe’s hitting on me right now,” says bartender Apple, and nods toward the guy. Chance turns around. Apple, the waitress, is leaning against the table and laughing with the guy. She’s good looking—curvy, with brown hair; although her short costumey skirt and matching black-and-yellow-striped blouse look a bit silly. But the customer is even better looking—six-foot-four-ish, broad shouldered, chiseled jaw, blond close-cropped hair, narrow, smiling eyes. His face is flush with drink.
    Then Apple Two says in a hushed voice, “I don’t really know, but that’s what I think, a fixative.”
    â€œReally?” is all Chance can say.
    â€œThat guy’s two of the original thousand,” Apple Two continues, keeping his voice low. “A married couple. Says he was close friends with Music, but, you know . . .” Apple folds his arms again and leans back against the shelf.
    Apple Two is short and slightly heavyset, with dark sideburns shaved into a circle on each cheek. The left half of his head is shaved bald. The hair on the right half is about an inch long. He looks more like a solo from some sort of resistance cell than a bartender working near the core of a spire community. He speaks slowly. Despite the sarcasm, he seems like he might not have a sense of humor.
    â€œThe two of them were both pretty well off before joining,” Apple continues, his voice measured, to carry to Chance but not far beyond. “They put everything into Vitalcorp, in the early days. And won the lottery of five hundred to boot. Sold the last of their stock—most of it—a few years ago. That guy’s very rich.”
    Chance does a quick estimate. Everyone knows the approximate number. After Vitalcorp finished the trial of one thousand and released Join to the general public, its stock rose so fast it threatened to break the market. Vitalcorp was a capital hurricane, sucking in investment dollars like a megastorm sucks in small towns.
    And Join actually did break the government. Things like Social Security numbers and biometric security all assumed a person had only one body. Lots of programs got snarled up—should all of a join’s drives get benefits or only one? It was clear that regulators had let Join come to market too early, but the genie was out of the bottle. The government needed the money Vitalcorp was making in order to address the issues Join caused.
    In the end, the government froze the stock and seized the company. The joke was they merged. To avoid the catastrophe of a complete divestiture, shares continued to pay a sizable dividend until about ten years ago, when plans were announced to retire Vitalcorp equity, and the dividend started a phased decline. The bottom line was that each dollar invested before the trial of one thousand realized a very, very large return.
    Chance’s drink is empty. He pushes it forward. Apple is watching Apple One and the other patron closely. He steps up, finds the bottle, and refills Chance’s tequila without really taking his eyes off them.
    â€œWhat, ah, you said he was a nine?” Chance is confused briefly as a drunk spike inhibits the join. He has an attack of nausea and headache, and then he’s okay again.
    â€œYeah. Soon to be an eight,” says Apple, distracted by watching them. “Says he was a fifteen once. Now he’s going back down. Wants to make it to two.”
    â€œWhat’s his name? Would I recognize it?”
    â€œNo, I don’t think so. Says he’s one of the ones that didn’t look for press. Says a lot didn’t. Says the ones that didn’t were safer, during that first round of backlash.”
    â€œDo you believe him?” Chance sips his refilled drink.
    Apple finally looks at Chance. “Yeah, I do,” he