It was his first time to Portland. He'd heard of the rain but was surprised at the bone-chilling cold, unconveyed by the lifetime saturation of vidimagery. He turned left on Madison, then right on fifth, following the images which showed the best path for a jaunt through downtown. A pizza image with text-wrap flickered in and grew stronger as he walked. The Blind Onion. He processed his files; a new pizza joint with modest reviews and decent prices. But it was close and he was hungry. He turned on to Montgomery and walk until the LOCAR light told him he'd arrived. Inside he found pre-cooked pizza rotating on a heater rack behind the counter. He ordered a slice and drank half his Pepsi while processing his afternoon.

Three o'clock and he'd meet with the new regional manager. Five and dinner with the man's family and the lead supplier for the region. There was no escaping his fate. He was trapped in an ironclad schedule with tremendous expectations from Washington. Software must be sold, after all. True, in the first year of the new millennium all software was sold over the early version of the omninet, but face-to-face contact still was the ticket to successful market entrenchment.

He ate his lunch methodically, reviewing his outlined notes. He saw an error on one note screen and blinked rapidly, calling up the correction menu and making a few adjustments. Satisfied, he stared into the distance for a second to clear the notes away. He left a good tip; the waitress was pretty and the lunch was good.

"You're Brent, right?" The doctor was harried as he quizzically looked at him.

"That's me. Brent Williams."

"And how long has this been going on?"

"About three hours...it was fuzzy when I woke up and while I was shaving it made a noise--"

"A noise?"

"Yeah, a 'fizzipp' kinda sound..." Brent stopped to watch the Doctor bring out a strange looking instrument. The Doctor clicked a button and watched with a satisfied air while it buzzed and whirred.

"Open your mouth?"

"My mouth?" Brent grew increasingly alarmed as the instrument whirred louder.

"Your mouth. It's how the digiscope registers your implant. The back of the throat has the least tissue to block the signal." He fingered Brent's lips with the probe. "Say ah."

The Doctor hummed and hawed and Brent felt the round tip bump into his tonsils.

"Unh."

"Sorry about that!" The doc retracted his tool and clicked it off, a puzzled expression on his face.

"Well?"

"I wish I could say. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with it, the diagnostic portion is working, but it definitely is not receiving."

"What can you do?" Brent fought rising annoyance.

"Wait for the parts. I'll place an order right away. How long are you in town?"

"The rest of the week. I'm waiting to close a business deal."

"Good. Call me on Friday."

"But this is Tuesday, how will I get around?"

The doc smiled. "We didn't always have implants you know. In the old days people read signs and asked questions. You'll be fine."

Re-orienting wasn't as hard as Brent thought. Wednesday was hard. He got confused between two different sets of instructions from two people on the street, and their looks of surprise and concern almost made him walk on before he had the answer to his questions, but it worked, and by Thursday night, he was enjoying himself. Information in the real world was chaotic. 'Raw Data' they called it in implant class as they talked down their noses, as if you never wanted to access it directly yourself. "Let the processors do the work," they always told him. And he did, until this last week.

The doctor was surprised at his reaction. "Patients usually can't wait to be re-connected. You seem uncertain. Do you have second thoughts?"

"No. I don't." Brent's confident words spoke for him.

But later, on the plane back to new York, ensconced in the protective bubble of tele-connectedness provided by the datalink supplied free to all passengers so they could remain connected via satellite as they traversed null coverage zones, he started thinking. The coverage zone extended beyond all cities by ten miles or so, adequate for most travelers who never ventured beyond the link zone for long for fear of missing crucial data. What would happen if he tried?

Two days later, he was in a fully charged rental and humming along-as much as traffic allowed- towards the edge of the city. Soon he was into the suburbs. His link chip sensed his latitude-longitude coordinates, and, referencing them against a database of everywhere Brent had ever been, noted he'd never covered this territory before. It was out of character, the chip would have mused if it had been capable of musing.

"Brent, are you hungry?" His retinal screen blinked. He ignored it. A moment later: "There is a McCaffee's soup house 3.2 miles up the highway, to the right. You haven't eaten at one of those outlets in 9.6 weeks. Shall I lead you there?" A precursor grid appeared, waiting preemptively for the anticipated yes-blink. He clicked his teeth 'no' and the grid disappeared immediately. He kept driving.

Crossing the city border interim grids a light flashed on the rental display he'd never seen before. It blinked d briefly orange alternating with yellow, then displayed an alert box.

"Brent, you will be outside the coverage area in 5 minutes at your current rate of travel. Turn off at exit 178 and I will guide you through a small town where you can eat then I'll turn you back to the city."

A countdown ticker appeared, visually synchronizing with the antiquated mile marker signs as he forged ahead. An audio tone began in his head followed by a synthetic voice, neither male or female.

"Warning. coverage zone will be exceeded in one minute Stop and reverse course immediately."

An ominous red grid appeared with a blinking white dot--him--near the edge of the construct. Beyond here be dragons, he thought, remembering an ancient trick of the flat world map makers of drawing dragons to fill the void beyond the knowledge they knew to display on their charts. The white blip was on the edge now. He looked beyond the illusion, straight ahead, and the grid flickered, then faded away in a static filled hiss. All data feeds ceased. He was on his own. He looked reflectively at the dashboard of the car for information, but dashboards were from his youth; no car within the last decade had anything other than a smooth contour of vinyl; there was no need, since the implants provided all necessary information.

In silence, he drove along a road with wildflowers growing at the edge of a meadow. At the far side of the meadow was a small grove of trees. He slowed and stopped, mesmerized by the colors of the afternoon sun flickering across the leafy branches. Birds darted through the sky, swooping for insects. A breeze tussled his hair. He swept his hand through it and caught sight of his watch, an emergency data link. Without hesitation he took the watch off his wrist and hurled it twinkling through the light far into the field. A small piff of dust arose, marking the spot and then disappearing.

A small smile came to his face, un-prompted, the first in a long, long time.