I stretch out on a gentle slope of Sharon Meadow, my favorite lightly-discovered nook of Golden Gate Park, and rub clear my eyes. The temperature is a non-climate-controlled seventy-one degrees, the sun shining its best behind layers of cottony clouds.

I've been coding three hours straight and badly need banh mi.

A girl, five or six years old, keeps cutting her eyes between me and the sky.

"Is that thingie, um, yours?" she asks, pointing shyly. "Are you controlling it?"

Her mother, who wears one younger brother in a sling and was disciplining another some distance away, takes a step to discourage the girl. I wave to her that it's cool.

"Sort of," I say, tilting my laptop screen so the girl can see. "Right now she's controlling herself—making her own decisions about how high or fast or where to fly. But I did make her brains."

The girl recoils, probably imagining me manipulating squishy gray goop. "How do you do that?"

"Well," I say, "it takes a lot of work. A lot of determination. You have to go to school and study." I tap my forehead, then immediately wonder when the concept of corniness enters a child's awareness. "This brain I actually made a long time ago. It's an amazing brain. I didn't want to lose it."

Together we watch Wren traipse through the air, flirting with leafy willow branches, dodging Monterey pine needles. She has a more aerodynamic look than Raven—minus the repurposed arcade claw, plus a parabolic silver chassis. The waterproofing (I'm anticipating more outside use) has also shaved down several of Raven's pricklier edges.

When a real bird approaches, a splashy male cardinal, Wren appropriately rises to let him pass underneath.

The move is encouraging. I've been worrying about her paths, which can feel jerky compared to her mom's—twin sister's?—but that looked well smoothed. The algorithms are byte-for-byte identical; possibly I invented the deficiency in my head.

Preoccupied with the girl and drone, I don't notice Cecil's approach until he is standing right behind me.

"Lil Deb."

His deep voice spins me around.

"Look at you, healing up," he says. "I do believe the new office digs suit you better."

The girl leans to one side, peering around me to Cecil. Her eyes hitch on his cart, parked between bushes.

"Now I keep lollipops in there," he says. "But only for girls who been nice to their little brothers."

Her face is frozen for a moment until Cecil's breaks wide in a grin. She grins too. He glances to the mother with a question in his eyes. When she gives a nod of assent, he pulls a goofy-relieved face to the girl and heads for the cart.

Once the sucker is delivered, we sit in the grass and chat. Cecil catches me up on the giant Obama he and a friend are wheatpasting onto an I-80 overpass. I tell him what a difference it's made seeing Mom twice a day, how Crestwood Psychiatric has cut her dosages by two-thirds.

"They cut the dose," Cecil says, "or you made them cut the dose?"

"Made. They just raised their fees so they're feeling especially accommodating."

He drums his fingers over his broad belly. "You okay on cash, them raising fees?"

"Pshaw." I brush off his concern, then think twice—what am I, Miss Moneybags?—before remembering who I am talking to. Cecil has known me since I was making rain catchers out of milk jugs. "I'm still suckling at the Codewise teat. Susan gives me little contract stuff. Last week, I had to teach my old dragonfly friends a few hand signals."

"Pay nice?"

"Nice enough."

"And you're cool going back? Walking in that building..."

I shrug. "I do the work remotely—here, in cafes. The coding. But I'll pop into 235 Second Ave for a meeting if need be. I'm not afraid. It's just bricks and glass. It doesn't have fangs."

He pulls back one side of his face as though doubting the statement.

Oleg, at least, is unlikely to return to the scene of his triumph-turned-defeat. According to Susan, the FBI has opened an investigation into his stateside actions—he fled the country the day Blackquest 40 ended—and placed his name and likeness on various travel watch lists.

She did come clean after the attempted sabotage of OurSpace. Somewhat clean. She took great pains to tell me—tracking me down at my apartment, startling Liz, the new woman I'm seeing—that she had turned over all the paperwork on that murky Elite revenue, copies of all the Blackquest contracts with Carter's and Jim Davis's signatures on them.

She begged me to stay. Carter Kotanchek was history—and so was his brand of oily hucksterism. Codewise was rededicating itself to bleeding-edge optimization solutions. No more Sales hires. No more corporate training. She was changing the culture.

Saying all this, a lesser executive might have struggled to look me in the eye. I knew, after all, that her involvement with Blackquest 40 had been every bit as deep as Carter's.

I knew that when the bull had turned nasty, she'd gripped the horns and ridden it through the muck rather than own her mistake.

But Susan didn't struggle. She pitched me with clarity and conviction. This company can be great again, but it needs you to be its greatest.

I don't know that she broke eye contact, or so much as blinked—not even once. She's that good.

But not quite good enough. I'll do her contract jobs when they fit into my schedule, but she doesn't get me. Not all of me.

Cecil asks, "What time we supposed to be meeting?"

I look toward the sun. "Two. Ish."

"You know what we're going to talk about?"

I finger a stack of papers in an outer pocket of my satchel. "I printed up agendas, I dunno. They're rough. We can play by ear."

He nods warily. Cecil and the other unhoused members of the board aren't big process people. They bristle at structure, preferring a baggier, free-flowing exchange of ideas.

Which is cool—I started out pretty casual myself—but over the last month, I've come to believe basic meeting topics and objectives have their place. Diversity of opinion is great, but six people talking over each other about the symbolism of a blue house icon versus a black one gets you nowhere.

Wanda and Earl arrive next. The clouds are thinning out, and they slough off outer layers as they settle in, joshing each other about the Niners. Cecil hugs them both and says they're both wrong—the Raiders are the only team in the Bay Area going to the playoffs.

Theresa Braun, my host representative, shows next. She is finishing a call, phone between chin and shoulder, swiveling to confirm the legality of her parking spot. She works for Seagate down in Cupertino. I thank her heartily for trekking up here.

Everybody claims a patch of grass in a loose circle around me.

Cecil angles his tremendous form toward South of Market. "You sure he's coming?"

I nod. "He said he was. We can count on him."

Sure enough, a minute later at what I can only assume is the stroke of two o'clock, Paul comes cycling up. He dismounts, sets his kickstand, and removes a bike helmet that's smashed his half-donut of hair.

He approaches our circle puffing hard. Google has put him in their Spear Street office, which beats Mountain View but is still a solid half hour pedal.

I scoot to make a space, patting the ground. "Here, plenty of room."

He folds his legs awkwardly in his lap and looks around the group.

I announce, "This is my friend, Paul Bloor. Paul is a conventional white male who frequents McDonald's. But he's okay. He's going to help us make Carebnb great."

Paul waves, a timid swipe in front of his chest pocket. "Pleasure meeting you all."

These words don't match the flummoxed expression on his face, but I am not worried. He'll warm up quick.

With all parties present and accounted for, I break into my satchel and spread a dozen banh mi—half lemongrass tofu, half five spice chicken—in the middle of the circle, a kind of metaphorical gavel bang.

"Welcome to the seventh official meeting of the Carebnb Board of Directors. We've accomplished a lot so far. The feedback system has incentivized"—I can barely pronounce the word with a straight face—"both hosts and users to behave better. The personal space guidelines have helped too. Every time I peek under the hood, I see higher occupancy and satisfaction metrics."

My report meets with smiles and gratified murmurs. It's a talented mix that surrounds me—a mix I'm just learning to harness. Wanda hates every idea the first time she hears it, but understands the realities of the unhoused community and will eventually listen to reason.

Theresa, who finds my solutions over-technical, needs to see any proposal on the printed page. Once she does, though, she knows at a glance what six tweaks it'll take to work.

"Still, there's more to do." I tap a command for Wren to make us some shade—I can barely read the screen now in the sun's glare. "And we're going to get it done—together. We're going to finish this job."

-------------------------

Author's note: If you've enjoyed Blackquest 40, please consider leaving a review of the final, polished version on Amazon. A thoughtful review there is much more valuable to me than whatever royalties I'd receive off a single sale, and I would be extraordinarily grateful for it.

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732255229/

One last time...thanks for reading.