Pity, because he thought he well understood why some unhappy soul might have been driven to feel that things weren’t nearly interesting enough. What he didn’t get, though, was how on earth he or she had actually decided it would be a good idea to come up with a device that turned information into a drug by streaming it straight into the brain. The Intelligence Interface, the edubots had called it—the ultimate mind-expanding high. And it had found quite a few takers, too. Which just went to show that a perfect world also came equipped with perfect idiots, because none of them—not one—had realized just what a potent, addictive drug raw, streaming information was. When the authorities had caught on to what was happening, they had acted swiftly enough, outlawing the device and creating a new network of clean, sanitized data, banning everything outside it as potentially contaminated. But, for the unlucky ones, it was still too late. The narcotic charms of information outweighed the benefits of perfection. Hundreds of people had taken to the streets and then, when the clampdown came, they went below them, into the abandoned sewage pipes and tunnels that were rumoured to run underneath the City, where they huddled like erudite rats in their holes, numbing their minds with useless knowledge whenever they could.

No matter how many the bots detained, and even on occasion deleted, their numbers seemed to be growing. And they weren’t alone. There were the dealers—furtive figures selling illegal data streams and top-ups in the shadows—and the assorted misfits, kooks and crazies, the ones who demanded the destruction of all technology, the pulling down of the Dome and various other things. From the outside, of course, dissent wasn’t part of the tenets. In that sense, it was an apt name for these people—Outliers. A society within society, yet outside it, peopled by the broken, the unwanted, the hopeless and the homeless—victims of the past who now sought others to victimize.

He began to sigh and then stopped—both the half-born sound as well as his forward movement—and stood in his tracks, clucking irritatedly. He had good reason to feel vexed. Lost in his musings, he had ambled straight ahead when he should have turned, and had wandered far beyond his intended route. He now stood in an open lot littered with mounds of debris and rubble, scraps of steel from past confrontations scattered on the ground. Behind him, still visible in the distance, lay the safe confines of the Administrative Section, which he had exited without noticing. He had come so deep into the lot that he couldn’t even see the entrance any more.