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Sighing, Bash said, “She’s not my girlfriend. Oh, well, what’ve I got to lose? Let’s give it a try.”

The Masqueleros and Bash crowded into an adjacent room full of antique hardware, including decrepit plasma flatscreens and folding PDA peripheral keyboards duct-taped into usability. The trapped heat and smells of the laboring electronics reminded Bash of his student days, seemingly eons removed from the present. Several of the Masqueleros sat down in front of their machines and begin to mouse furiously away. Interior and exterior shots of Greater Boston as seen from innumerable forgotten and dusty webcams swarmed the screens in an impressionistic movie without plot or sound.

Tito Harnnoy handed Bash a can of Glialsqueeze pop and said, “Refresh yourself, pard. This could take awhile.”

Eventually Bash and Tito fell to discussing the latest spintronics developments, and their potential impact on proteopape.

“Making the circuitry smaller doesn’t change the basic proteopape paradigm,” maintained Bash. “Each sheet gets faster and boasts more capacity, but the standard functionality remains the same.”

“Nuh-huh! Spintronics means that all of proteopape’s uses can be distributed into the environment itself. Proteopape as a distinct entity will vanish.”

Bash had to chew on this disturbing new scenario for a while. Gradually, he began to accept Harnnoy’s thesis, at least partially. Why hadn’t he seen such an eventuality before? Maybe Dagny had been right when she accused him of losing his edge….

“Got her!”

Bash and the others clustered around one monitor. And there shone Dagny.

She sat in a small comfy nest of cushions and fast-food packaging trash, a large sheet of proteopape in her lap.

“What camera is this feed coming from?” Bash said.

“It’s mounted at ceiling level in the mezzanine of the Paramount Theater on Washington Street, down near Chinatown.”

When Bash had been born in 1999, the Paramount Theater, one of the grand dames of twentieth-century Hollywood’s Golden Age, had already been shuttered for over two decades. Various rehabilitation plans had been tossed about for the next fifteen years, until Bash entered MIT. During that year, renovations finally began. The grand opening of the theater coincided with the churning of the economy occasioned by the release of proteopape and also with a shortlived but scarily virulent outbreak of Megapox. Faced with uncertain financing, fear of contagion in mass gatherings, and the cheapness of superior home-theater systems fashioned of proteopape, the revamped movie house had locked its doors, falling once again into genteel desuetude.

“Can you magnify the view?” Bash asked. “See what she’s looking at?”

The webcam zoomed in on the sheet of paper in Dagny’s lap.

And Bash saw that she was watching them.

In infinite regress, the monitor showed the proteopape showing the monitor showing the proteopape showing…..

Bash howled. “Someone’s got proteopape on them!”

Just then a leering Dagny looked backward over her shoulder directly at the webcam, and at the same time Bash’s chin spoke.

“It’s you, you idiot,” said Bash’s epidermis in Dagny’s stepped-down voice.

Bash ripped off the smart band-aid he had applied while shaving, and the image of the Masqueleros on Dagny’s proteopape swung crazily to track the movement.

“Dagny!” Bash yelled into the band-aid. “This has gone far enough! You’ve had your fun at my expense. Now give me your current password so I can make proteopape secure again.”

“Come and get it,” taunted Dagny. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I will!”

With that bold avowal, Bash furiously twisted the band-aid, causing the image of the Masqueleros on Dagny’s proteopape to shatter. On the monitor screen she appeared unconcerned, lolling back among her cushions like the Queen of Sheba.

Bash turned to Tito. “Lend me a phone and your Segway. I’m going to nail this troublemaker once and for all.”

“Some of us’ll go with you, pard.”

“No, you stay here. Dagny won’t react well to intimidation by a bunch of strangers. And besides, I need the Masqueleros