Cleverness When It Counts - Lauren Ipsum: A Story About Computer Science and Other Improbable Things - page 77

“Yeah,” Xor said. “Hey, aren't you Somebody?”
“Me?”
“Yeah! I'm pretty sure you are Somebody. Otherwise, you'd be Nobody, and that wouldn't
make sense to Anybody.”
“But I'm just a kid. No one pays attention to kids.”
“So? No one pays attention to me, either,” he said.
“But that's what you want, right? To be invisible.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“What are we going to do, Xor?”
“I dunno. Think. You're good at that.”
“No, I'm not,” Laurie muttered.
“Really? Tinker thought you are. Winsome does, too.”
Laurie put her head down again and sighed. “I'm just her delivery girl.”
“No, you're her interesting delivery girl,” Xor said.
“So?”
“So you figure out how to go where other people can't. Remember when you were arguing
with Ponens and Tollens outside of Symbol? I didn't think you'd find a way past them. But
you did. Same with that scary old lady Jane.”
“They never caught us, either,” Laurie smiled a little.
“Not until Custody grabbed you.”
“And that's when Winsome saved—oh.”
“What?”
“I can't go back and tell Winsome that I couldn't even get past the front door!”
“Why not?” Xor asked.
“I just . . . I can't. She gave me a job, and I have to do it myself.”
So with nothing else she could do, and nowhere else she could go, Laurie started to think.
She needed an Approval from Euripides so she could get one from Darius. Then, she needed
to use that to get an Approval from General Case, and finally, the Form had to be signed and
countersigned by Basil and Anton. There was something familiar about this Byzantine chaos.