She stared. The mug sat solid on the desk. She tried again. This time her fingers connected. But for a half-second—a sliver of time so brief she might have imagined it—her hand had been out of phase .
The ovoid pulsed once. Warm.
Deep in the server farm, floor seventeen, rack forty-two, a new process appeared in the system log. No origin. No signature. Just a name: xammps