“So what do you think of that?” the host asked with a nervous laugh. “Have you ever witnessed a technology suffering such a widespread and cataclysmic failure, and then had so many of its users—the people impacted by the outage—all come out in support of the company?”
The panelists all answered at once: “Never.” “Nope.” “This is unprecedented. And frankly a little creepy.”
“Creepy is an understatement,” Claudia said, muting the holovid.
I was thinking the same thing but didn’t want to say it out loud because her dad was part of the whole mess. I felt like I should say something, but with the holovid sound off, we could once again hear her parents downstairs.
“For the last time, no, I’m not going to get rid of it,” Chris was saying, his voice emphatic but even. “My Wellplant has made me a better person, in every sense of the word. It is without a doubt, the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“Really?!” Bonnie shot back, her voice raw and shaking. “Better than me? Better than your own daughter? Your brilliant, chimera daughter?”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it,” he replied. “And if you would just trust me and get one, as well, like I asked, you would see the same benefits.”
The last thing I wanted to do was to go downstairs into the middle of that argument, but I knew I shouldn’t be there at all. I turned to Claudia and said, “I should probably go.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. I’d give you a ride, but I should stay. Okay if I get you another pod?”
“Thanks. That would be great.”
THIRTY-ONE
The pod arrived fifteen minutes later. Claudia and I hugged at the front door and she thanked me for coming over.
“Tell your folks I said bye,” I said softly. “I’m really glad he seems better now.”
“Me too,” she said. “I hope he really is better.”
“I’ll check in later, okay?”
“Thanks.”
She opened the door and I stepped outside, where the air was still thick with the smell of brush-fire smoke. The pod was waiting at the bottom of the steps, and once it had confirmed my identity, the door opened. As I was getting inside, another vehicle drove up, this one a heavy-looking SUV, black with dark tinted windows. I paused as it pulled up behind the pod and two men got out wearing shades and dark suits. They had Wellplants.
They both looked at me then looked away without saying a word as they climbed the steps to the front door.
Bonnie answered the door, and one of the men said, “We’re here from Wellplant.”
Bonnie said, “Well, it’s about bloody time.”
She let them in and closed the door.
I got into the pod and as soon as it pulled away, the newsfeed came to life, more on the Wellplant Blackout, as they were calling it now. As we made our way through the woods, the smoke grew denser. To our left, the landscape looked otherworldly, blackened and smoldering but frosted in places with bright pink fire retardant. In the distance, a small swarm of drones was dropping more of the stuff on other areas that were smoking, half a dozen tiny plumes of pink falling from the sky.
By the time we were past it, the newsfeed had moved on to the other big story of the day: forty-three people had now been sickened by the mysterious bug making the rounds at the Humans for Humanity convention. H4H had issued statements downplaying the seriousness of the situation, but several hundred convention-goers had gone home early.
After a recap of the weather forecast—hot and dry with dangerous brush-fire conditions, go figure—the topic returned to Howard Wells and a very repetitive conversation about how the blackout might impact the presidential race. I watched it anyway, my mind wandering the entire way home. As the pod pulled up in front of my house, the newscaster announced that Wells would be holding a rally in front of Philadelphia’s City Hall at noon.
When I got inside, I flopped on the sofa. I felt tired and out of sorts, and I decided maybe a soak in the tub would make me feel better. Before I could go upstairs to fill the tub, however, the phone rang. It was Rex.
“Hey!” I said.
“Hey! I called Claudia and she told me you’d already left.”
“Yeah, I just got home. How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine. Tired, but not sick. How about you?”
“Same. They’re saying forty-three H4Hers are sick now. Whatever it is, it’s spreading fast.”
“I know,” he said. “Hopefully when we talk to Sly later today we’ll get a better idea of what’s going on, and what to do about it.”
“Yeah.…”
“How are things at Claudia’s house? How’s her dad?”
I told him Chris had regained consciousness, and how things were when I left.
“That sounds really tense. How’s she holding up?”
I sighed. “I don’t know. She’s tough, but she is definitely freaked out.”
“I’m sure she is.” Rex sighed before switching gears. “Hey, did you get the call from E4E?”
“I don’t know. I just got in. What’s up?”
“They’re organizing a protest for Wells’s big speech in front of City Hall today. They want a show of strength, so there’s an ‘all hands on deck’ call, to get as many of us there as possible.”
“Oh?” My heart sank a little. After everything that had happened at the last rally, I felt a tiny, creeping doubt, wondering exactly how much good these protests were doing. Even so, I knew there was no doubt I would be there at this one, too. “What time?”
“Noon. We can head over to meet Sly after.”
I looked at the clock. It was only ten. I probably still had just enough time for a bath, even if not a long one. “Okay,” I said, with as much enthusiasm as I could muster.
We agreed to meet at the southern-most part of the protest area. When I got off the phone, I poured myself some orange juice and drank it down, then ran up the stairs to get the tub started. The water had just warmed up when the doorbell rang. Cursing under my breath, I turned the faucet off and went to the door.
I could see through the peep hole that it was Ralphs and Agent Scanlon. I cursed once more before opening the door.
Agent Scanlon was holding up his badge. “Agents Scanlon and Ralphs.”
“Yeah, hi to you, too,” I said. “Look, I’m busy, my mom’s not here, and I really don’t have time for this. Don’t you people ever call first?”
Ralphs opened her mouth, but Scanlon spoke first. “Dymphna Corcoran, we’re here from the FBI and we need to question you.”
I stared at him for an instant, then turned to Ralphs, who rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Sorry,” she said. “It won’t take a minute.”
I knew my mom would be angry. She didn’t like the idea of me talking to law enforcement without her present. But I also knew that if I didn’t talk to them now, I’d have to talk to them later, and it would probably be a much bigger deal. “Sorry,” I started to say, but Scanlon cut me off.
“We do not have a subpoena, but we can get one if necessary,” he said. “Then a few minutes would become many long hours.”