Tubby went down to the computer lab to do reconnaissance.

Mr. Adderly was on the dreamgame network; he had been studying materials. Dr. Gaynor was on the dreamgame network; he had been studying set theory and mathematical logic. Mr. Williams and Dr. Foglio were new; he'd been studying proto-Indo-European linguistics, she radiation oncology and magnetic resonance physics. All four had NM ports. Since they were all working in the lab, Tubby found this out by simple inspection. It wasn't well received, but after the protests and strange looks had passed, no one remembered the intrusion.

Dr. Ramachandran was on the network too. He was connected to Aurélie Ahearn and Taisheng Wang, and studying elementary Tamil. He had an NM port as well, but Tubby had to go up to his room to find it. He was in bed, strapped down and sedated, connected by eighteen slim green wires to a JustBE machine.