His mother stood there staring at him, hands on her hips, now, as if daring him to say something ill about the flesh-and-blood actress, the one who volunteered her time at orphanages, the one who’d acted in his mother’s favorite films.

China’s sweetheart.

Bah.

Zhi Li was just a phony, an empty shell who’d sold her soul for fame.

He bit his tongue.

Yuguo stood there, trying to find some way to bridge the gaping chasm between his mother’s beliefs and the reality of the modern world.

“Now why don’t you just run along and see your little friends,” his mother finished. “Or better yet, why don’t you work on your studies, so you actually can code something even a thousandth as nice as Zhi Li here? Hmm?”

He shook his head, nothing to say, and put one foot in front of the other.

It was as he was leaving the room that Zhi Li spoke to him again.

“Yuguo,” the actress said. Her voice was sweet and light again.

He turned and looked at her, despite his better judgment.

“Have fun with Lee and Wei and the boys.”

The simulacrum smiled at him with its perfect, ruby led lips.

Then the evil bitch winked.

Yuguo felt cold despair take up residence where his heart had been.

Yuguo took the subway to Jiao Tong University and crossed the campus on foot. In the Advanced Computing Building he stopped at his locker and unloaded his phone, his slate, and his watch there. Then he walked to the old chemistry building, took the emergency stairs down three flights and then into a down maze of antiquated hallways until he reached the maintenance door. He knocked the special knock. Knock-pause-knock-knock-knock-pause-knock.

The door opened a crack. An eye peered out. Then it opened fully and someone pulled him in, closing the door after him.

“Were you followed?” Wei asked breathlessly.

Yuguo shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Over here,” Lee said.

There were almost a dozen of them in this space with its exposed piping and unfinished walls. The room they’d been using for their ‘secret’ meetings. Everyone was a Jiao Tong student.

Yuguo crossed the room.

Lee had his hacked slate out. It looked like any other on the outside, but Yuguo knew from experience that it was slower, more prone to failure, and had cost far more in both time and Renminbi than any slate you could buy on a street corner.

Because this one, with its re-used factory casing and its home-built interior, lacked the state censor codes.

The multiple data fobs stuck into its side were the same kinds of beasts. Glossy plastic exteriors; kludgey home-built circuits within. They were inferior to cheap mass-produced stuff in every way but one. They were able to spread data the state prohibited.

Hidden in his bag, Yuguo had another data fob of the same sort.