Tubby's back got a little better. The rocket scientists got much worse.

Not all at once, not all at the same rate. Gently, heavily, inexorably. They all had Kanma on their phones, but they forgot to use it. They hadn't made enough of a habit of it, Tubby thought, and she reminded Mr. Chen to use it whenever she saw him. But the admonition didn't seem to take hold. She told Mrs. Xin to make him do it, but they seemed to have drifted apart. He wasn't developing the system any more, she said. Without his work on the signal processing and machine learning parts of it, there wasn't much point in her participation.

"You could study machine learning in your dreams," Tubby said one day, "if you're serious."

Mrs. Xin shrugged. "I'm not."

"Good," Tubby said. "A woman your age has better things to do than spend all day in front of a computer."

"That's true," said Mrs. Xin, and Tubby refused to be baited by that demure, sly smile. "Though our users are feeling a little bit neglected. The bug file is getting unmanageable."

There followed a short explanation of "bug file." "Did you ever write that letter about the subsidy?" Mrs. Xin asked afterward.

"No," said Tubby. "Maybe later. A woman my age has better things to do than grouse about a few stolen electrons."