Reg picked up the stylus in his left hand. The stylus attached by a cable to the left side of the speech board because the client could use his left hand. That was fine with Reg because Reg liked using his left hand better. He touched the menu bar with it, and then chose one of the choices Zephyr had asked him to pre-program.

"Thank you," the speech board said in a metallic male tenor.

Reg returned to the menu and brought up the alphabetical word lists. He touched the B and chose a word. He touched the T, scrolled down, and chose a word. He did the same for E and K. Then he touched the black square on the lower right side.

"Back teaspoon equal knows," the speech board said.

Reg thought that was amusing. He tried again.

"Pale cover isn't mercury state," the speech board said. Reg tried again. "Downstairs cognizance myth price radiate lying worse on."

He realized after a while that each of the words were familiar to him. They all existed somewhere stored in his brain, in the place the Other Voice called 'vocabulary'. The speech board organized the words more efficiently; in Reg's mind they were much more jumbled up and randomized. Very difficult to string together to make sentences. The speech board didn't string together sentences on its own, but at least it kept its words more orderly. Reg tried again.

"System simple function," the speech board said.

Reg was pleased.

****

Marsh gave up on the Holy Name paperwork and went downstairs to find something to work on. His enthusiasm for the large project had been soured by Zephyr's negative reaction. Reg was testing one of his new devices; Marsh nodded to him as he passed by Reg's workspace to his own.

He found something sufficiently tedious to do - pre-assembling the pieces of a mini-lift. And as was usually the case when he did something tedious, he started to think. And, as usual, that led to the urge to talk. Reg made a perfect sounding board, since he never interrupted and never absorbed anything Marsh said. He never gave helpful advice, either, but that was a small sacrifice. Talking to Reg was a lot like talking to himself, without forcing him to resort to actually talking to himself.

"Remember that hearing I was supposed to go to?" Marsh asked. Reg ignored him as usual, so he continued. "I don't think it went very well. Nothing went wrong that I can put my finger on; it just had that sort of wrong feel to it. Nancy's attorney is one of those relentless women who seems to think that all men in divorce cases are filthy rats. I don't know; maybe I'm projecting. But the woman kept hammering me and hammering me with all these... these questions. Strange questions. I don't know what Nancy's been telling her. She seems to think... oh, I don't know exactly. She insinuates that I've been neglectful; okay, I can understand that. I guess in a way I was neglectful. But then she questioned my honesty.

"Maybe it's just part of her job. I can't imagine that Nancy told her I was a liar. That's not Nancy's style. Now, accusing me of being greedy, I know Nancy's behind that. But come on, I never drained our joint accounts behind her back; I'd never have even considered embezzling from Eureka Custom... I don't know where she gets those ideas! I'm not worth more than I say I am! Do you think that's just part of the routine? Do you think that woman put my wife up to it, claiming I'm lying about my assets?"

"Sad personal hope better," said an unexpectedly metallic voice from Reg's direction.

Startled, Marsh looked up. Reg sat in the same place, staring at the device in his lap. He held a stylus in his left hand and was busy running it over the board's screen. He didn't seem to be paying attention to Marsh at all.

Marsh shrugged and rambled on. "So now I've been ordered to present all of my financial records to the court. It's a pain in the butt, I tell you. I didn't bring any of my investment or insurance papers with me when I moved into my new place. Nancy has them somewhere. But now she insists that I must have purposely hidden everything from her. She didn't come out and say that directly, but she implied it strongly. And how do I prove that I don't have more investments than I do? It's easy enough for that witch to keep saying, 'Is that all?' ad nauseum. I just can't provide positive proof of the nonexistence of whatever Nancy sees fit to dream up."

"Increase runner width increase stability," the thin metallic voice said.

Marsh looked up again. "Excuse me?"

Reg still hadn't shown any signs of awareness that Marsh was present, but his stylus flew across the screen. Marsh waited. After half a minute, the speech board spoke again. "Increase runner width less stress on base."

Marsh finally realized that the comment was relevant to the lift he was building. "I know that," he assured Reg. "That's why I made it an inch and a half wide."

Reg drew the stylus quickly over the screen again. Marsh waited. The board spoke. "Increase half inch. Margin less two percent of width easier later."

Marsh looked at his handiwork. It was fine the way it was... he had used this design before and had no problems. But perhaps Reg's suggestion would be an improvement. It wasn't too early to remove a few components and redo the runners. He'd have to revise the specs, of course... that would be a bit of work, but it was a good excuse to spend more time working. And it did follow the MARZ principle of doing the best job he could the first time so he wouldn't have to make many adjustments in the future.

"I could do that," he told Reg. "I'd have to use bigger screws and bolts, but that wouldn't be a problem." He pulled the blueprints out of the folder to peruse them for further changes.

A few minutes later, the metallic voice spoke again. "Woman not love not fear. Woman take. Not take Mars."

"Huh?" Marsh said. He thought about Reg's words, but could only make the barest sense of them. He was almost sure the woman in question was Nancy, and mars was MARZ, but what exactly was Reg's intention? Reg was rarely as talkative on his own as he was being with that machine, but what he had gained in verbosity, he'd lost in coherence. Then it occurred to Marsh that, although Reg's word choice made little sense, he was clearly reacting to what Marsh was saying and doing. Reg was aware after all. Marsh wondered how much Reg really understood.

"Woman not take Mars," Reg made the speech board say.

"No," Marsh replied. "Nancy isn't going to take MARZ. MARZ belongs to us."

"Thank you," the metallic voice said.

"You're welcome."

"I think so. Thank you. How are you? I'm hungry. I'm ready to go. Good-bye. Good morning. Good night. Good. Thank you. I think so. I don't think so. Of course."

Marsh sighed and went back to work as Reg continued to test his speech board.