Mark Zuckerberg

"Look, as much as I would love to have you out of my hair right now," Eduardo says, hands gesturing absently in front of him, "and believe me, I really, really would, it's not that easy." Chances are, he's picked the worst, most roundabout way to start explaining this place, but it isn't his fault that Mark has just assumed he can go home. In the moment, it seems simplest, beginning with what he knows to be fact — that he would very much like Mark gone, a desire that comes second only to the one he won't acknowledge, for things to somehow turn out alright — and work from there, instead of dealing with what he knows Mark will probably have too many unanswerable questions about. Hell, for all he knows, he'll assume that Eduardo himself is somehow behind this, and that's a possibility he wouldn't even know how to begin to deal with. None of this is, really. He'd liked it here, thinking the whole mess with Facebook was behind him, found that he was even happy in the life he's been beginning to build. But no, of course it could never be that easy. He wouldn't get a clean break like that, not where Mark is concerned.

There's a lot he's thought of that he's wanted to say, in the time that's passed between now and the confrontation in Palo Alto, but in the moment, he forgets most of it. (Probably, that's for the best; more important than reminding Mark that he was his one friend is getting this stupid welcome to the island speech taken care of.) "There's no phone. And if there were, it wouldn't work, there'd be no signal. You've been lucky enough to find yourself on the pocket universe island of no return, which sounds crazy, but is one hundred percent real." He pauses, takes a breath. "Also, I don't know what money you're talking about."