There was no mention of any of that, in any file on the building. Not that much in the way of files existed. The construction permits didn’t exist. The requisitions didn’t exist. The blueprints didn’t exist. The floor plans she downloaded, memorized, but didn’t trust.

She heard Kevin’s words, advice on sleuthing. She closed her eyes. She could hear his voice, feel his presence, as if he was standing at her elbow, looking over her shoulder, close enough to touch.

It hurt, but less than it would have a month ago. Less than it would have even a week ago. She was almost there.

Sometimes, the Nakamura who wasn’t here said, things are evident by their very absence.

She had to smile, despite the pain. Such a typical Kevin thing to say. Always with the enigmatic turn of phrase. But he had a way of being right.

The very absence of anything interesting listed about the Advanced Computational Sciences Building and Varun Verma made them very interesting indeed.

Sam reached over into the box she’d brought from her quarters, pulled out the small potted plant. She put it gently on the window sill, off into the far corner.

Until the tiny camera inside, the camera she’d bought on Brigade Road with money Division Six had paid her, was lined up with the entrance to the Advanced Computational Sciences Building.

She pulled out the anonymous phone she’d bought to go with it, pulled up the image from the camera, and adjusted the plant until it was just right. The monitoring and facial recognition software was already loaded.

She hit the buttons on the phone in sequence.

Monitor.

Record.

Alert.

74
Let’s Do This

Monday 2041.01.07

Rangan read through the messages in front of him one more time.

They were all from him. Or would be.

Once they were sent, there was no going back.

The collaborative firewall was working. The Mesh was working. Kade had weighed in, given Rangan insights from his work with Nexus children and Buddhist monks. Angel and Cheyenne had made those real. Mesh would be a mesh network, but more. A group using it would be able to form a high-gain transmitter, a high-gain receiver, boosting their collective ability to send and hear others in the way that the more intuitive collectives Kade worked with did.

But the real goal was to stop the violence.

Decision Day, as people were calling the Mall riot, had been the worst outbreak of violence yet, but it wasn’t the last. There were standing protests everywhere now, scattered groups of hundreds or thousands. And across the net there was a rallying cry for another surge of protest on Inauguration Day. Culminating in a Million (Transhu)Man March on DC.

January 21st. Two weeks from now.

Mesh had a chance to suppress the violence, if enough people were running the new code.

How do you get enough people to run the new code?