[Jay slumps in the worn, crooked office chair, the edge of the desk biting into his arm. Like Tim's, his room is dorm-like, with barren, concrete-block walls. The comforter has a familiar pattern, some bland amalgamation of hotel bedcoverings circa 1989-1995, a spatter of brown, pink, and teal. What the room lacks in decoration, it makes up for in clutter; stacks of hard drives are stacked and scattered across the floor, each one labeled with a date and a few keywords, a tangle of wires criss-crosses the desk and the space behind it, used notebooks peek out from under the bed. There's a pair of plastic dishes up against the wall, one still encrusted with wet cat food, and a couple of battered toys (balls with jingle bells inside, mice constructed out of rabbit fur, a feather attached to a long string) dot the space between the bed and the door. (He's got to remember to look down next time; he's still nursing a bruise from the last time he didn't.) Clothes lie in loosely arranged piles: worn, wearable, clean. There's a stack of books on his bedside table, all borrowed from the library long enough ago that he can't quite remember how overdue they are. From his desk, he can see a couple textbooks, a biography of some godawful director with a fascinating story, and a dog-eared copy of the manual for his current handheld.]
[Jay stares at the communicator.]
[Archie rubs his chin against Jay's leg, before sauntering off to find something else to do.]
[Jay picks the communicator back up.]
not really
[She's not the most evasive person he's ever met, but that's only because the competition's so steep.]
[And because he's got Tim on the line, because this is a private message, because this isn't Twitter, he types the next words:]
no subject
[Jay stares at the communicator.]
[Archie rubs his chin against Jay's leg, before sauntering off to find something else to do.]
[Jay picks the communicator back up.]
not really
[She's not the most evasive person he's ever met, but that's only because the competition's so steep.]
[And because he's got Tim on the line, because this is a private message, because this isn't Twitter, he types the next words:]
you think we can do anything for her?