Randy looks over at Eb, the only person in the room who actually lives here. Eb seems bigger than he is, and maybe it’s because of his detonating hair: two feet long, blond with a faint reddish glow, thick and wavy and tending to congeal into ropy strands. No ponytail holder can contain it, so when he bothers to tie it back, he uses a piece of string. Eb is doodling on one of those little computers that uses a stylus so that you can write on the screen. In general, hackers don’t use them, but Eb (or rather, one of Eb’s defunct corporations) wrote the software for this model and so he has a lot of them lying around. He seems to be absorbed in whatever he’s doing, but after Randy has been looking in his direction for two seconds, he senses it, and looks up. He has pale green eyes and wears a luxuriant red beard, except when he’s in one of his shaving phases, which usually coincide with serious romantic involvements. Right now his beard is about half an inch long, indicating a recent breakup, and implying a willingness to take new risks.