As the microwave clock turned 4:30, the time my Blogger Royale contact had instructed me to dial in, a million modes raced in my brain. Excitement. Calculation. Pride. Fear. The NPR affiliate that produced the show syndicated it nationally, which meant tens of thousands of people would be hearing my voice—once described by our high-school choir director Mr. Jacoby as "full of heart and life, but with certain chipmunk undertones we may need to modulate."

What would they think? Would I come off as a fierce advocate for the disenfranchised, or overextended parent stressed about their daughter getting home early from ballet?

Would anybody like me?

Given what I needed to say, doubtful.

I slid the stroganoff into the oven to thaw, then sat clutching the phone in both hands. The last week had been a whirlwind. I had cranked up the vitriol on mollyforchange.org. Out with plum, in with livid crimson. I trashed six sectors of the economy in a single afternoon. I invoked "moral retaliation" in defending the Mice, a step we'd been avoiding for fear of appearing too obvious. My new persona confused some readers, but for each one I lost, hundreds more flocked to the site.

The internet loves a firebrand.

Quaid's contacts helped. Somehow he managed to plant a story in The New York Times—"Blogger Says the Unsayable, and Readers Cheer"—which raised my profile immensely. Multiple media outlets asked me to appear, including Blogger Royale.

"Hello?" I said, answering an ambiguous blip. "Molly Wixom for the roundtable?"

An intern verified my identity and asked a few preliminaries. Preferred prefix, Ms. or Mrs.? Secondary number in case of disconnection? With shocking speed, I was live on air.

"We're pleased to welcome," said a moderator's silky-studious voice, "a relatively new blogger whose writings on factory farming and wage inequity have, of late, electrified the discourse. Her thoughts on the Blind Mice in particular have rankled many. We'll of course have much to say on the Mice, but let us begin with Sri Lanka."

I almost groaned into the phone. I had posted nothing about Sri Lanka—the Mice showed little interest in foreign policy—and hadn't included the topic in my morning cram-session. While other panelists offered vivid anecdotes of abuse, I scrambled for my laptop.

"Yes, certainly the situation is grave ..." I hedged when my turn came, phone pinned at my shoulder. "We must curb civilian causalities, even if—and so—you know, I'm sure the UN is doing all it can, but the junta should be held accountable."

So much for electrifying the discourse.

My next tries were better. As the topics moved closer to home, I stalked around the breakfast nook and railed against insurance companies, decried a "quote, 'tax-reform' bill" moving through Congress, and even corrected another blogger who misrepresented the head of the NAACP on his stance regarding the death penalty.

It was 4:50—Karen's ballet finished at five—before the moderator got around to the Mice. "Molly let's start with you, because clearly you've been outspoken in justifying their—"

"Michael, if I may," said the blogger I had corrected, a Portland environmentalist. "I believe it's important to call a spade a spade here. The Blind Mice are terrorists."

The words had barely left his mouth before others began piling on. The Progressive Movement had no room for violence. In actuality, the disadvantaged bore the brunt of these reckless pranks. The panel's unanimity reminded me of a psych experiment I'd assisted for in grad school where subjects, observing a speaker being berated for her opinion, were 300% more likely to criticize the speaker than those hearing the same opinion aired in a respectful forum.

For two full minutes, I held the phone away from my ear.

"Well," I said once the arrows stopped flying. "I see things differently."

I drew in breath. My eyes fluttered shut, then opened to slits. "I understand the panelists' concerns. I do not relish having to padlock my windows, or forbid my children buying lemonade in front of strange houses. At the same time"—my back teeth ground—"what is it going to take? Round and round we go, blogs, hearings, outrage, and nothing changes. The ratio between CEO and entry-level pay continues to skyrocket. Local governments continue to be held hostage by companies threatening to outsource jobs without sweetheart tax deals—deals that decimate the social safety net. The Blind Mice target data networks, websites, corporate supply chains. Never people. Not one individual has been killed in their attacks."

"What do you call eight motorists dying in a pile-up caused by dark stoplights?"

The Portland guy again. I was opening my mouth to answer when the doorbell rang.

"I—er, obviously downstream effects are something all change agents grapple with." I ran to the door. "The Mice, at least I imagine they are, uh, fully cognizant of what ..."

I reached the door before my thought finished or became remotely coherent. Mr. Beale, father of Karen's friend Makayla, smiled at me from the porch. I twisted the doorknob and beckoned Karen inside, rolling my eyes apologetically.

Mr. Beale whispered, "Girls did great. The tulip dance is really looking sharp."

I nodded, neck muscles throbbing from keeping the phone at my shoulder—and reached for Karen, but she and Makayla were doing giggling pirouettes on the doormat. Dimly I heard another panelist condemning me.

"Sorry, one sec." I caught Karen by the tutu and waved goodbye to Makayla and her dad.

Infuriatingly Mr. Beale remained on my porch, smiling, dopey. He had a harmless married-man crush on me ("Karen is so lucky, my wife just doesn't have your body type") that was usually easy to ignore. I placed my hand over the receiver. "Thanks, Greg. I appreciate your bailing me out."

"Not a problem. Absolutely any time. If you need help with Mondays—"

"Right, I'll call."

He took the hint and corralled his daughter.

"As I was saying," I resumed, "whether or not you agree with their methods, these young, um ..." I groped for a non-judgmental term. "Activists have shaken corporations out of their comfort zone. Monsanto just raised salaries for line workers. Panhandle Oil & Gas Consortium agreed to publish its members' particulate counts on the web. These are real reforms."

Karen wore her ballet slippers on her hands. "Mommy what are 'preforms?' Like shows?"

I shooed her to the art table, pushing crayons and a Frozen coloring page in front of her. Yes Pooh Bear, like shows, I mouthed.

Back in the kitchen, I laid out the rationales Quaid and I had rehearsed earlier today. From the Industrial Revolution on, had anything interrupted the will of big business? Truly slowed the abuses? Maybe the Mice went too far. Or maybe "too far" was called for. Provocateurs had always faced resistance. If anything, the across-the-board condemnation by mainstream voices confirmed the Mice's success. The status-quo was worth a lot of money to a lot of people.

As my fervor grew, the interruptions stopped. The panel's silence felt like a collective gasp.

"That ... wow." The moderator's voice hung, like he might be dialing 911 on some emergency red phone. "Quite an impassioned defense."

The roundtable ended soon afterward. The guys both texted that I had done great, hit it outta the park, but I couldn't help worrying I had sounded too extreme. A helicopter passed over the house—a noise that seemed to become more frequent every day—and when its thunderous whop-whop paused, I was sure the FBI was coming for me.

Fortunately, household demands soon overtook my nerves. Zach returned from skateboarding with friends. I spooned stroganoff onto plates and threw together a salad. Karen scraped her knee; Granny helped me apply Neosporin and Band-aid.

That night, I lay in bed a long while before falling asleep. I considered the nature of Good and Evil, Durwood's black-and-white view versus Quaid's willingness to see both in people. I considered the Bible, which I was raised on, and how my conception of its message had changed in adulthood. I no longer believed God created the world in six days, but I did believe in the Book's example, in the accumulated wisdom of Christian society and compass of my own heart.

Or did I?

Sleep refused to come. I burrowed into the comforter, hoping its plush folds might cool my thoughts. I wrapped both arms around the Boppy pillow I'd used nursing Karen and still kept in the bed. I stared at my laptop on the night table until it seemed like a living being—a being with ideas and prejudices and eyes and ears and a mouth, that could talk to me.

At 3:30 AM, it did.

A high, metallic chirp: new email. I dropped one leg out of bed, groped through darkness to my computer. Clicked my inbox.

The message had come from an unfamiliar address. #%&*@___.___. Huh? The subject line read, "for the fledgling."

Must be spam. Every morning I woke to five or six porn/Viagro/refinance messages without understanding when they'd arrived in the night; well, now I knew. I dragged my fingertip along the trackpad intending to shut down—yawning, tired at last—when the message body appeared onscreen.

My eyes blazed at the words. Adrenaline ejected all traces of fatigue.

Nibble, nibble. Until the whole sick scam rots through.

mollyforchange: dOeS YOUr HeaRt RAGE TRuLY?