Simon excuses him with a neat analyst's salute, and a parting murmur of "Sire" as he takes himself away to his duty.
And he determinedly doesn't think about Gregor for the rest of the day, at least not in a personal context. The impulse to replay a scene frame by frame in his head had trapped him too many times in the past; he recognized it as an unproductive habit. In most cases, over-analysis tended to obscure more than it revealed. And there was no hidden agenda, at least, not a particularly deep one. What Gregor wanted for this evening was something that would become apparent in approximately twelve hours.
One of the benefits (and one of its drawbacks, in other circumstances) of the chip was always being able to fill his head with something. He set the memory of that morning aside and replaced it with an endless array of reports, relentlessly dictating his own focus over the next twelve hours. Having run on ahead of his normal daily workload, he pulled all the newly submitted reports—just before end of the work day; doubtlessly try to push of their debriefing as far as possible to avoid some idiot thing they had done—and was still reviewing them and composing his remarks as he waited in Gregor's sitting room, jacket and boots removed as had become customary.
no subject
And he determinedly doesn't think about Gregor for the rest of the day, at least not in a personal context. The impulse to replay a scene frame by frame in his head had trapped him too many times in the past; he recognized it as an unproductive habit. In most cases, over-analysis tended to obscure more than it revealed. And there was no hidden agenda, at least, not a particularly deep one. What Gregor wanted for this evening was something that would become apparent in approximately twelve hours.
One of the benefits (and one of its drawbacks, in other circumstances) of the chip was always being able to fill his head with something. He set the memory of that morning aside and replaced it with an endless array of reports, relentlessly dictating his own focus over the next twelve hours. Having run on ahead of his normal daily workload, he pulled all the newly submitted reports—just before end of the work day; doubtlessly try to push of their debriefing as far as possible to avoid some idiot thing they had done—and was still reviewing them and composing his remarks as he waited in Gregor's sitting room, jacket and boots removed as had become customary.