Life at Slitscan had a certain focused quality. Laney's colleagues limited themselves to a particular bandwidth of emotion. A certain kind of humor, as Kathy had said, was highly valued, but there was remarkably little laughter. The expected response was eye contact, a nod, the edge of a smile. Lives were destroyed here, and sometimes re-created, careers crushed or made anew in guises surreal and unexpected. Because Slitscan's business was the ritual letting of blood, and the blood it let was an alchemical fluid: celebrity in its rawest, purest form.