Jill Donoghue was in a status hearing early this morning and ran into him. What business took him to the federal courthouse in Boston and why didn’t he mention it before we both left for work? What really gnaws at me is that Donoghue brought up something called data fiction in the context of why I just called her. What does it have to do with Lucy or me or any of us? Or was she simply referencing something that was on her mind? I twist around and look up at the helicopter banking east, swooping around, thundering over Lucy’s house directly toward us.

“Are we ready?” Lucy’s face is stone.

I can’t be sure that she didn’t overhear my conversation. I have no idea what she really knows.

“Yes we should go,” I reply, and we set out for the house together. “Before we say another word to each other let me remind you that whatever is communicated between the two of us isn’t privileged.”

“That’s nothing new, Aunt Kay.”

“So I want to be very careful what I ask or tell you, Lucy. I just want to make sure you understand that.” Thick grass makes a brushing sound against my boots, and the humidity is fast approaching the dew point.

In another hour or so we’re going to have a Noah’s Ark downpour.

“I know all about privilege.” She glances over at me. “What do you want to know? Ask me while you can. In a few minutes it won’t be safe to have this conversation.”

“Jill Donoghue mentioned something about a case involving data fiction. I’m curious if you have any idea what she might have been referring to because I’m not familiar with the term.”

“Data fiction is a trending concept on the Undernet, the underground of the Internet.”

“The Undernet where most of what goes on is illegal?”

“Depends on who you’re talking to. For me it’s just an extreme frontier of cyberspace like the wild wild west, just another place to data mine and send my search engines loose.”

“Tell me about data fiction.”

“It’s what can happen if we’re so reliant on technology that we become completely dependent on things we can’t see. Therefore we can no longer judge for ourselves what’s true, what’s false, what’s accurate, what isn’t. In other words if reality is defined by software that does all the work for us then what if this software lies? What if everything we believe isn’t true but is a facade, a mirage? What if we go to war, pull the plug, make life-and-death decisions based on data fiction?”

“I’d say that happens more than we’d like to imagine,” I reply. “It’s certainly something I worry about every time we generate our annual crime statistics and the government makes decisions based on our data.”