And then this amazing thing happened. Perry Gibbons *brainstormed* with him about the kinds of designs they could push out to these things. It was like some kind of awesome dream come true. Perry was treating him like a peer, loving his ideas, keying off of them. Then a dismal thought struck him. "Wait though, wait. They're using their own goop for the printers. Every design we print makes them richer." Perry laughed again, really merry. "Oh, that kind of thing never works. They've been trying to tie feedstock to printers since the inkjet days. We go through that like wet kleenex." "Isn't that illegal?" "Who the fuck knows? It shouldn't be. I don't care about illegal anymore. Legal gets you lawyers. Come on, dude -- what's the point of being all into some anti-authoritarian subculture if you spend all your time sucking up to the authorities?" Death laughed, which actually hurt quite a bit. It was the first laugh he'd had since he'd ended up in the hospital, maybe the first one since he'd been fired from Disney World, and as much as it hurt, it felt good, too, like a band being loosened from around his broken ribs. His roommates stirred and one of them must have pushed the nurse call button, because shortly thereafter, the formidable Ukrainian nurse came in and savagely told him off for disturbing the ward at five in the morning. Perry heard and said his goodbyes, like they were old pals who'd chatted too long, and Death Waits rang off and fell into a light doze, grinning like a maniac. # Hilda eyed Perry curiously. "That sounded like an interesting conversation," she said. She was wearing a long t-shirt of his that didn't really cover much, and she looked delicious in it. It was all he could do to keep from grabbing her and tossing her on the bed -- of course, the cast meant that he couldn't really do that. And Hilda wasn't exactly smiling, either. "Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up," he said. "It wasn't the talking that did it, it was you not being there in the first place. Gave me the toss-and-turns." She came over to him then, the lean muscles in her legs flexing as she crossed the living room. She took his laptop away and set it down on the coffee-table, then took off his headset. He was wearing nothing but boxers, and she reached down and gave his dick a companionable honk before sitting down next to him and giving him a kiss on the cheek, the throat and the lips. "So, Perry," she said, looking into his eyes. "What the fuck are you doing sitting in the living room at 5 am talking to your computer? And why didn't you come to bed last night? I'm not going to be hanging out in Florida for the rest of my life. I woulda thought you'd want to maximize your Hilda-time while you've got the chance." She smiled to let him know she was kidding around, but she was right, of course. "I'm an idiot, Hilda. I fired Tjan and Kettlewell, told them to get lost."