Sally had actually done something akin to sleeping in her strange new state of being. She guessed that his sleep caused hers. Matthew had not rejected the avatar she had offered. She had expected that he would have gone for something geeky or perverse. Instead, he had been fine with the profile scan of her that she used on social media. The scan had been a fairly plain image of her in a simple dress. He had even liked her actual voice. She was flattered, but that did not help her get back into her body. The more time she spent in this limbo, the more she wanted to understand this man. She was used to selfish men who would use anyone they could for their own gain. This guy was different. He didn’t even try to dip into the stolen funds they discovered. It wasn’t that he was foolish, but he seemed to actually want to do what was right. Even her father was more selfish than him.

Sally took a portion of the money she recovered from the thieves, only about 700K, to put into some short tern investments. So far, returns for the overnight investments have been spectacular. She expected the profit to be massive. Another two million was placed in long term investments. She also took advantage of some online services to create a corporation and put the last four million into an account in the corporation’s name. The last two million was placed into the accounts of the thieves. This last transaction made it easy for the culprits to face legal challenges.

Her Dad had drilled lessons in cash management into her at an early age. With the use of certain algorithms that she had easy access to through the internet, she was able to set up a sequence of risky trades that would create a spectacular level of profits.

The creation of an LLC was simple and allowed Sally to create business bank accounts. She put them in trust to her own offshore accounts and tied the investments to the LLC accounts with instructions to take 30% of the ongoing profits into the accounts for long term storage. The rest of the returns were cycled through the same algorithms to reinvest. Overall, it was really a money making machine that resided in the cloud and was protected by the best encryption available. The creation of a few specific systems to alert her if anything strange happened was her final touch. The money would all go back to Matthew as soon as she was back where she belonged.

This way, she could try to make it up to him for what she could not help but feel was an unwilling invasion of his life and mind. There was much guilt in her mind over this. He had done nothing but work hard and try to improve himself.

Turning from the set of tasks she had assigned herself, Sally investigated the girl from the other night showed that she had gotten arrested that night and spent the night in jail. This was not her first time assaulting people over minor disagreements about their personal choices. Her family had pushed for psychological assessments. Significant levels of medication were prescribed. She seemed to be on a path to much better mental health.

The most shocking thing that came in the news cycle was the sudden death of an employee of her father’s company. He had been shot in the head from close range. There were no suspects, but he was one of the people under investigation for the theft she and Matthew had discovered. Law enforcement was treating it as an effort to tie up loose ends in the theft. She quickly set several alerts that would trigger if any new information came to light about either crime as well as anything about the other workers implicated in the thefts.

---===+++===---

Robert Stanley was stumped. His roommate obviously had the prototype. How was it that he was the first to not be put into a coma? Everyone else who tried the chip had either gone into a coma or had the chip reject them and detach from them in a matter of seconds. The first three to attempt implanting it had woken up a week later, when the chip detached itself. They described a series of vivid dreams and nightmares on awakening. One of them had trouble sleeping and had been put on suicide watch. The CEO’s daughter, who tampered with the experiment, was still in a coma even after the chip had disconnected from her.

Matthew had none of those problems. He even seemed quite upbeat even after the fiasco of his blind date. He usually had issues with self doubt when these things would happen. Robert was glad for the change. He was just sorry his instincts for setting up his hetero friend always worked out so badly.

Robert looked up at Matthew, doing something with the chip. The external casing of the device had been added by whoever had intercepted it. They had disguised it as a variation of a prototype that Robert knew for certain had been destroyed. Overheating issues had caused that chip to be unsalvageable. He should know, he was in the direct chain of command of that project and had observed every stage.

Matthew looked up with a goofy smile that was typical for him during a nerd out over some new bit of tech. “This thing is incredible! I just did some scripting that I can put on one of the servers when I go into work Monday! That box has been a problem for the last month. I suspect that the malware I found on Thursday has been the cause. It probably compromised some of the services.

“That’s great Matt! Are you chasing a promotion already?”

“It’s a bit early for that, but doing this kind of thing consistently will be a start!” replied the excited young man.

Silently, in the background, Sally was impressed by the scripting skill her ‘host’ had shown. He was quite good for a guy just out of school. He hadn’t even used AI to generate any part of the script. He was also right about the cause of the unpredictable server performance. The server had been part of the exploit that was used to steal from her father’s company. The logs of the server proved educational for her. She doubted anyone other than herself or Matthew could have found the problem. Management had been thinking of decommissioning and securely disposing of the server if a solution could not be found by Wednesday. She preserved all evidence of tampering with the server.

“By the way, let’s not do the ‘blind date’ thing again. I’m sure you are great at picking guys for yourself, but you suck at choosing women for me!”

“Fair enough, but if you go another six months without a date, I reserve the right to fix you up again!” replied the well dressed young man. “So you had better up your game, or I will hook you up with another vegan!

“By the way, what did you do to her? That girl ended up in a psych ward, according to the ‘grapevine’. I mean, I can believe it. She nearly got fired last week. I figured you were both lonely and could have a good time, but a psych ward was not in my expectations!”

Sally started thinking about their conversation. “Too bad my body is currently doing an impression of broccoli,” she could not stop herself from thinking. 

Instead of letting her mind spin a fantasy, Sally started rereading the research documentation on the strange prison she had mistakenly placed herself in. This young man's mind was interesting to learn more about, but she needed to get out. 

She kept thinking of how her life was not that different from his. Her dad had thrown himself into work after her mom was killed in a mugging. The perpetrator had managed to avoid being identified by cameras and drones in the area. It had been frustrating. They had managed to flawlessly predict every point of surveillance and remain uncaught. There weren't even suspects.

Dating had been a nonstarter as she mourned her mom's death during her sixteenth year. Guys did not know how to deal with the combination of a powerful father who had become very protective and the sorrow of her mother's passing. The security measures had been so stringent that she had rebelled by digging into cybersecurity and teaching herself to code. This scared the guys even more than her father's paranoia. It had taken her weeks to crack the testing lab's systems to get herself added as the next subject.

Now, at the age of twenty-one, she had numerous degrees in cybersecurity and computer science, and an impressive resume with her father's company, but no boyfriends or even ex-boyfriends.