"Okay, maybe you could fill a serious chunk of time on this if you didn't have anything pressing."

"Yeah. Now that there're worlds that need fixing, not so much, but we thought everyone everywhere had it pretty much okay. Maybe someday they will and then people can go back to that kind of thing."

"But by then everyone will have the Internet."

"I bet at least one Elven city outlaws it just on principle that it makes people hurry their lives too much. And if they're happier than their neighbors their neighbors would eventually follow suit, and if not - I'm not really sure. Might end up sorting into people who're happier with and people who're happier without. I know which kind Tirion'll be, though."

"You have to hurry! If you don't hurry you'll miss stuff!"

Giggle. "If you hurry you also miss stuff! Just different stuff."

"Fair enough. I've been struggling to keep up with the digests Rete sends me of what-all has been up since we were - gone."

"I haven't even tried. Highlights?"

"We're down Surabaya to the Simurgh and Haiti to Leviathan. Cape population estimated to have cleared forty K worldwide. There's an attempt at a census thereof which is wildly optimistic, even I'm not answering it yet, have to lie low for now. Some books I wanted to read came out and the Republicans took the Senate."

"I don't know anything about American politics. Lady under a bridge told me everything was the fault of the Communists and a kid in Dylan's PhD program said everything was the fault of the capitalists so I figured I'd heard all sides."

...snort.

Kiss.

Kiss!

Study, analysis.

Focus on one target, and decoding is faster. Spread out and it's slower, but she gets more information, low-feedback. Her times of hibernation serve this purpose, so she can take the actions that will cause the desired ripples. Of most subjects, she can see everything, their whole existence, from its beginning however many years ago to its end in the less certain future—although that end is sometimes just darkness, obscured by another power.

This is not usually an obstacle—throw a rock into the darkness, and you know it will keep moving until it hits something. Zoom out, and it's more like billiard in a badly illuminated room, acrylic going into shadow and rolling out of it, leaving a puzzle for her to unravel. If the individual is understood well enough, she can model almost perfectly what must have happened there.

There is one exception.

No past and no future. She knows when the exception appeared, but now she can no longer see where it came from. Those closest to it are frequently in its shadow, and its actions are seldom detected with enough time to act. It has been her greatest weakness, all these years.

She doesn't know how long ago that was set in motion, but she knows that the data traveling around the world now is going to have ripples. These ripples needn't happen. She sends electromagnetic pulses, in the right places, at the right times. The data will never reach its destination. All records of it are corrupted, impossible to access.

All that she can see.

"Hey Dragon, anybody reply to their email yet?"

"What do you mean?"

"The email you were going to send to the Triumvirate and also Costa-Brown? About Correlate et al?"

"I don't remember such an email."

"- well. Fuck."

"Dragon do you remember why we're here."

"Rete convinced me it was safe and I extracted you from Baltimore."

"You were going to forward that information to - you know what can you just give me Alexandria's phone number, whichever identity is awake right now."

Dragon does so.

"Rete, get me a baffle number and put me through -"

Ringing.