“It’s not in these computers,” he said, shaking his head,” it’s in the clouds.” He corrected himself, and Kira saw another gap in his comprehension begin to widen: “In the cloud. The network. Do you know how the cloud works?”

“Tell me.”

“It’s not just up in the sky,” he said. “Every piece of data is stored in a computer somewhere—a little one like these, or a big one called a server. It’s like a . . . an ant farm. Did you ever have an ant farm as a kid?”

“No,” said Kira, motioning with her hand for him to keep going. “Tell me about them.”

“It’s like, a bunch of rooms, and a bunch of roads all running between them. You could make something on one device, and people could see it on the others because it traveled along through the little roads. Every device had a road. But the cloud is down.” He looked at the floor and saw the papers, as if noticing them for the first time, and began cleaning them up. He was silent for too long, and Kira spoke again, trying to pull him back.

“If all these things are in the cloud, how do we bring it back up?”

“You can’t,” he said, and his voice was still strong—still “present.” “It’s gone forever with the power grid. The cloud only works if every piece works—every computer from here to the one you want to talk to, like links in a chain. When the power went down, the cloud went with it. All the roads in the ant farm got filled in, and none of the rooms can talk to each other.”

“But the rooms are still there,” said Kira. “The data is still there, on a computer somewhere, just waiting for us to power it up. If we can find the right computer and hook it up to a generator, you can read it, right? You know the file system, and the encryption system, and everything?”

“I know everything,” he said. “Almost everything.”

“So where is the ParaGen server?” she demanded. “Is it here somewhere? Is it back in the office tower? Let’s go get it—I can go get it right now. Just tell me how to find it.”

Afa shook his head. “The Manhattan office was financial only. The server we want is too far away.”

“Out in the wilderness?” she asked. “Listen, Afa, I can go to the wilderness if that’s what it takes. We have to find the rest of these records.”

“I can’t do it,” he said, hugging the folder and staring at the floor. “I’m the last human being left alive. I need to keep the records safe.”

“We need to find them first,” said Kira. “Tell me where they are.”

“I’m the last human—”