Upright, Hayes gazes a moment due east, and it doesn't take a mind reader to intuit he's looking toward South Pasadena and home. He fingers the moonflower still in his grip -- then opens his hand and lets it fall.

The robot, its arm a blur, catches the flower before it's dropped a foot. "No littering," it says.

"It's a flower," says Hayes.

"Yes," says the robot.

"If it fell off a vine, would that be littering?"

"It fell from your hand."

"Jesus," says Hayes, walking up the path and around the observatory's dirty white flank, into shadow.

He does not notice the robot lower itself carefully to its knees where he left it, on the stone path amidst foliage and crushed blooms of all sorts.

As Hayes comes around to the front of the observatory, heading for the parking lot, several more robots are emerging from their posts in the trees and at the corners of the old deco-style building. They form a loose phalanx around him, moving with him. His subscriber base effervesces with a fractal pattern reminiscent of the motion of air molecules against his skin in the warm twilight breezes. Users drop in and out -- some drawn by the rumor of a plugpull, others just tracking his progress toward home and the fight that's sure to come -- but overall his ratings are making a slight gain.

Not that you would know it by looking at him. Hayes moves at a heavy shamble past the James Dean memorial, like a man on his way to the gas chamber.

The last couples and families are packing up their cars, and some, catching sight of Hayes and his honor guard, nudge one another, wave, and try to attract his eye. Hayes bears this with resigned grace -- he is really an ideal subject for the experiment, regardless of what he and the public think -- but he flinches at the sudden sound of squealing tires from the road beyond the parking lot.

We've been tracking this Thunderbird as it winds through the park, of course, particularly since all eight occupants are active subscribers now logged in -- including the driver, who has the car on manual. Half a dozen LAPD autoscooters, parked until moments ago, are already forming a blockade fifty yards ahead of Hayes, signaling on every band for the car not to cross. The robot phalanx tightens around Hayes.

But crossing the line is not what these twentysomething college students, frat brats from Occidental, have in mind. The red, tricked-out Thunderbird slews to a sideways stop just beyond the scooters, drunken kids hanging out the windows and gesturing lewdly. "Ditch the bitch, Brian!" shouts one, and another: "Pound Sandra! Make her give it up!"

The rest are chanting together: "Do the nasty with Naomi, do the nasty with Naomi..."

Vitals through the roof, Hayes turns his head, at least denying the hecklers their chance to see themselves through his eyes for any length of time. His sense of loathing, though, both of them and of himself, rocks them back in their seats like a skin-crawling slap -- as does the Thunderbird's acceleration as we override its console and send the car humming back down the drive to Vermont Canyon Road, trailing hydrogen exhaust. They've lost manual privileges for the evening, and they'll find that no matter where they want to go tonight, their autodrive will choose the most congested route to get them there.

"Are you all right, Brian?" we ask through the nearest robot, concerned by his sudden lightheadedness. Hayes consistently pulls in the lowest ratings of any of the Spyware Seven, largely because he's only had sex twice in the three months of the experiment -- both times with his own wife. Cesar Murguia and Star Jarrett each do it daily, if not more often, and always with new partners, of which there is no shortage. (The highest-rated three hours of the series so far was Murguia and Jarrett together.) The other four subjects aren't nearly as sexually active, but they are still more active than Hayes. We know this sticks in his craw, but it's also part of what makes him our favorite of the seven. But we can't tell him that.

"I'm fine," he says brusquely. "Let's just get out of here. God, I hate assholes like that."

A patrol car rolls up before him and Hayes gets in, sinking gratefully into the gently vibrating back seat. One mirror-skinned robot enters through the opposite door to join him, while the rest of his escort board the humming scooters. The entourage pulls out onto the canyon road in perfect formation, the outriders winking pop! pop! pop! from sunset red to brown and dark forest green as they descend into the shadow of Mount Lee.

Beside Hayes, his current robot companion settles into its corner of the seat, right arm resting along the top of the upholstery. Hayes squirms as deep as he can into his own corner.

"Sometimes I feel like such a fugitive," he says, watching the stunted trees rush past the window. "Like I'm not a guinea pig but a genuine parolee on the run."

"Is that why you want to pull the plug?" we ask.

Hayes turns away from the window. "Hell, it's destroying my marriage. Isn't that obvious?"

"You'll forfeit the payout, you know." The subjects each receive a monthly stipend from the city to offset any lost income -- skittish clients fled Hayes' law practice initially, for instance, though his roster's now bursting with incautious exposure-seekers -- but only receive their full compensation if they stick out all six months. "You can make a lot of repairs on two million dollars."

"I know, I know." Head in hands, Hayes squeezes shut his eyes. Atlantic City is currently giving 7:2 odds on a plugpull by week's end -- another thing Hayes is better off not learning. "But can we make it long enough that there's anything left to repair?"

We refrain from pointing out that two million dollars can go a long way toward mending a broken heart also. Instead, the time has never been more ripe to float our trial balloon.

"Brian," we say, as the robot lays a companionable hand on his knee. The touch through Hayes' chinos is neither cool nor warm. "Brian ... what if we could help you preserve your relationship with Sandra?"

"What, you? A computer?" His wash of confused brain chemistry is swept away an instant later on a tide of amusement and anger.

"'Weak A.I.' would be the proper, if somewhat misleading, term," we say.

"Even so," says Hayes. The amusement is winning out. "What exactly are you proposing? Threats? Coercion? Mind control?"

"Nothing like that. Just some simple advice."

"Advice. About women." Now Hayes laughs out loud. "L.A., my friend, men have been trying to figure that one out since before the dawn of time. What makes you think you've nailed it?"

"We have three advantages humans don't -- near perfect observational ability, massive parallel correlational capacity distributed across a hundred processors, and no emotion to cloud our conclusions." As word of our conversation spreads, subscribers are hopping over to Hayes' spycast en masse. "You can place confidence in our recommendations, Brian. In fact, we can promise never to offer you counsel without at least a ninety percent confidence level in its efficacy."

Hayes shakes his head. "Ninety percent? Now I know you don't know what you're talking about. No given interaction with a woman is reproducible."

"You do yourself and them an injustice if you think so."

Hayes waves a peremptory hand. "What makes you so keen on helping me, anyway?"

The robot awkwardly shrugs its shoulders, then folds its arms. "We serve the public interest. Traffic control, emergency dispatch, municipal surveillance -- they're all critical, but it seems to us that the most effective public safety initiatives are preventative rather than reactive."

"Ah, yes, the theory that marriage counseling today heads off domestic violence tomorrow."

"It's not just that, Brian. Think about this technology. The experiment's been successful beyond anyone's expectations. Spyware fittings for registered offenders will no doubt go into effect next year. But why stop there? Can you imagine having a therapist, a financial counselor, a social secretary, a nutritionist and personal trainer at your beck and call twenty-four hours a day? You'd like to get rid of that spare tire, right? We could help you. Really."

Hayes shivers, though the climate inside the car is perfectly controlled. "Sure," he says. "And I could have the whole world watching everything I do, for the rest of my life."

"Well, if everyone had it, how many folks would have time enough to watch you? And anyway, as long as you kept a clean record, you could black yourself out anytime you wanted. But stay online and your chances of, say, getting mugged go way down, because there's always someone watching -- even if it's only just us."

"L.A., it's never going to work," says Hayes. "Trust me, no one wants a nanny looking over their shoulder every hour of the day."

"Some will," we say, spawning an untraceable anonymous instapoll to pose that very question to Hayes' subscribers, whose online numbers are approaching 700,000.

"Not many."

It turns out Hayes is right, by a factor of nearly six to one.

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