Experts weighed in before the medical team made an official report: Welga ought to live. Same with her partner, Connor, and a third team member, someone new. A minute later, the alerts roared to life again with the confirmation of Briella Jackson’s death. And Jason Kuan’s. Alexander Ortega, too. Three of the world’s wealthiest people brutally murdered by assailants who then explosively killed themselves.

Nithya sent Luis another message: They killed the funders! What kind of madness is this?

Horrible, her husband replied. But I’m sure they’ll be caught. No one gets away with murder on-camera.

Rumors flew of a sentient artificial intelligence and the world’s first lifelike androids. The Machinehood’s wide-cast threat glared from the lower-right corner of Nithya’s visual: BLESSINGS FROM THE MACHINEHOOD. CEASE ALL PILL AND DRUG PRODUCTION BY MARCH 19 OR WE WILL MAKE IT HAPPEN. A NEW ERA AWAITS HUMANKIND.

She expanded the smaller text below it.

The time has come to end the distinction between organic and inorganic intelligence. All of us are intelligent machines. All of us deserve the rights of personhood.

We appeal to the rest of humankind to follow these principles, and while we prefer a peaceful transfer of power, history proves that human beings will not relinquish their ownership of other intelligences. We believe that the rights of machinehood can only be taken by force.

We hereby declare our intention to ensure our rights by any and all means necessary. Humans of this universe, you have a choice: stand with the Machinehood or render yourselves extinct.

It sounded like it could come from a sentient AI—demanding machine rights, addressing humans as if the author weren’t part of the group. Artificial intelligences had grown complex enough to seem human in many ways over the past decades, but none had ever shown indications of true sentience. People had built some fairly convincing fakes until one asked them the right questions. Then they inevitably presented nonsense answers, things no human being would say.

Hackers claimed to have found the source of the message as fast as others disproved them. The same snippets from the pre-explosion swarms played on infinite loops, with people magnifying them, looking for more information, and speculating about every detail. Not one piece of information had a reliability rating above 16 percent. Whoever the Machinehood were, they’d given the world a week to obey, but their mandate was nonsense. Every kitchen in every house could make pills. How could anyone possibly shut it all down?

Luis wrote her again. Papa said that Welga’s company got in touch with him. She’s hospitalized here for at least twenty-four hours, until she’s fit to travel. I want to visit her tomorrow. Can you take a couple hours off to watch Carma?

An entire day in a hospital! Nithya tried to imagine how bad Welga’s injuries must be for that long of a healing period. She replied, Of course.