?On us? No. On Buffy? Yeah. It?s all over the place. Somebody broke into our main camera upload and??
?I get the picture. I?ll get our official report up tonight so we can put these damn hoax rumors to rest and let people know I?m still breathing. Buffy deserves better than to have her death tarred with some publicity stunt we didn?t pull.?
?How official is this official report going to be?? asked Rick.
?You mean, ?am I going to include the call the CDC got?? ? I asked. He nodded. So did I. ?Yes, I am.?
?Is that??
?Wise? Safe? A good idea? No, on all three counts, but I?m going to do it anyway.? I pulled up my e-mail and started scanning the list of senders, looking for Mahir?s name. ?Somebody who?s depending on secrecy wants us out of the way. So screw ?em. We?re taking that secrecy away.?
?And when they start shooting??
?Who says they?ve stopped?? Even with Buffy?s astonishingly well-constructed filters, the amount of spam that had managed to get through was daunting. I began deleting. ?That reminds me. We need to hire a new head for the Fictionals.?
Rick shot me a sharp look. ?Doesn?t that seem a little abrupt? Buffy just died.?
?Buffy?s death was abrupt; this is necessary. The Fictionals aren?t like the Newsies or the Irwins. They won?t keep working just because they don?t know how to hold still. They need management, or it turns into a million works in progress and nothing that actually progresses. Unless we want to start getting angry letters from people wanting to know where the next installment of some fifty-part serial romance is, we need a new division head.?
Shaun blinked. ?Buffy didn?t name anyone??
?Buffy thought she was immortal. Talk to Magdalene; even if she won?t do it, she can probably suggest somebody who will.? Suddenly tired again, I set my spam purge to run on auto and minimized the window, pulling up the staff LW&T directory. That archive contained a current copy of the last will and testament of every employee currently on the After the End Times payroll, including details on the dispensation of their intellectual property. Properly filed and witnessed wills are legally required for all businesses whose normal routine brings them into contact with federally established hazard zones, the infected, or members of the working press. Journalists: as dangerous as zombies under modern American law. According to the directory time stamps, Buffy?s file hadn?t been updated since we left California.
I entered my password to open the file. Both Shaun and I possess the legal authority to access all files stored on our servers, just in case of situations like this. The document flashed open. It was a read-only copy of the actual document, which was being held, according to the header information, by the Meissonier family lawyer back in Berkeley. For our purposes, it was more than sufficient.
Shaun slid out of his chair and stepped up behind me, resting a hand on my shoulder. Buffy left the bulk of her personal possessions to her family, her written works and literary estate to the site as a whole, and her nonfiction?which is to say, her personal files?to Shaun and me. We had the right to use her data however we saw fit. There was no mention of a successor, but that didn?t matter because that last rider told me everything we needed to know.
?Son of a bitch,? I muttered. ?She knew she was going to die over this. And she knew she was doing the wrong thing, even if she didn?t want to admit it to herself. She knew.?
?How can you say that?? asked Rick.
Shaun answered for me, saying, ?She left us her personal files. Why would she do that if she didn?t know we?d need something that?s in them? Maybe she felt like she had to do this, but that doesn?t mean she managed to convince herself that it was right. George??
?Rick, I need you to find a new head for the Fictionals.? I hit Print and closed the file. ?That?s your assignment for right now. Well, that and the DAR report. Shaun, I?m going to need to do a news report on what happened, but??
?But the bulk of it?s an Irwin thing. Got it.? Shaun squeezed my shoulder before returning to his own machine. ?What about Buffy?s files? The server she told us to access??
?I?d really like that camera footage Mahir has; I was hoping to get that out of the way first. But yeah, the files. I?ll head over there now.?
?George??
?Just be quiet while I deal with this,? I said, almost more curtly than I?d meant to, and began to type.