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I interrupted him with a wave of my hand “What are the nu to the top of his screen “Up seven percent in all markets”

Shaun whistled “Wow We should uncover terrorist conspiracies more often”

“We haven’t uncovered it yet; we’ve just found out that it existed,” I said, and sat down atyour people We’re doing the debrief in thirty, and then we start to edit and recap for the evening reports”

“On it” Shaun grabbed a chair and looked to Rick, adding carelessly, “You get to ping the Fictionals Buffy isn’t co his nose He was already pulling up his IM lists as he asked, “Why do I get the honor?”

“Because you kept the cat,” I said “Kick Magdalene She’ll help you Hush now Mo” He snorted but turned back to his computer Shaun and I did the sae boards into so that looked less like a combination of a forest fire and a conspiracy theorist convention No one had quite reached the point of linking the outbreak at the Ryman family ranch with the initial release of the Kellis cure and the death of JFK, but they’d have gotten there before er As I’d expected, everyone intheir best to moderate the mess, and from the crossover threads, it looked like the same was mostly true for the Irwins and the Fictionals Behold the power of the truth When people see its shadow on the wall, they don’t want to take the time to look away

“My boards are clear,” Shaun called “Ready when you are”

“Sa nicely, and the volunteer s under control”

“Excellent” Since the volunteers weren’t technically employees of After the End Ti I pulled up the e on now “Turn on your conference functions, boys We’re about to see the swar on now Roo system is half the standard Microsoft Windows VirtuParty setup—allowing people to share real-tih web-cams and a common server—and half Buffy’s own horees of security, from the base three, which clever readers can break into with relative ease, to eleven, which has never been successfully violated Not even by the people we’ve paid to try

Windows began spawning onthe sers Shaun, Rick, and I appeared first, followed almost immediately by Mahir, who looked like he hadn’t slept in several days, Alaric, and Suzy, the girl I’d hired to replace Becks after she jumped ship to the Irwins Becks herself appeared a nized Five ed in; three of the another of her infarindhouse parties

When all was said and done, ere onlyDave—one of Shaun’s Irwins, as on a field trip in the wilds of Alaska and probably couldn’t get to a conferencing setup—and Buffy I looked fro their expressions while the initial quiet still held They looked worried, confused, curious, even excited, but none of the to hide This was our team This e had to ith And we had a conspiracy to break

“All right, everyone,” I said “This afternoon, we led an expedition onto the Rye by now If you haven’t, please log out, watch it, and come back Here’s the topic at hand: ‘What happens next?’ ”

Following the caht me one important fact about politics: Sometimes, style canabout one of the great political ot her seat in Congress by proot, she’d wear so by the landslide of that first e’ll be seeing congressional hearings graced by a lady in lingerie long after the end of her tereneral ness to put “interesting” above “good for theman’s run for the presidential seat proved to be the tenth event Why was this? I place the blame partially on Senator Peter Ryman, a man who proved that style and substance can be cority is not actually dead

I also blaness to get into the can in a way that has seldo hasn’t been i we see even reat joy that I report that the youth of America aren’t actually riddled with ennui and apathy; that the truth hasn’t been fully forsaken for the ; that there’s a place in this world for reporting the facts as accurately and concisely as possible and allowing people to draw their own conclusions

I’ve never been

—Fro of Richard Cousins, March 18, 2040

Sixteen

The discussion lasted late into thePeople dropped off the conference one by one, until it was just Rick, Mahir, andback in his chair and snoring Rick’s newly acquired cat was curled up on his chest with its tail tucked over its nose, occasionally opening an eye to glare at the room