Anthemone only dared try online again when Balmain had spoken her last and given them the last five minutes of the period for quiet independent study. The homepage error message had changed.

303 ERROR. THE NATIONAL SEER/SAYER ADVISORY NETWORK IS OVER CAPACITY. CANNOT ACCESS. PLEASE TRY AGAIN LATER.

Gavin Potenza, future Least Likely to Bother, nodded at her terminal display. "It's been like that since right after lunch. Didn't much think that was allowed to break."

She flicked an eyebrow in surprise. Regulars read the NSSAN? I guess I read it, so... "That goes double for me. I didn't know it could go down."

"Everything breaks. The things that aren't supposed to break at the worst possible time."

"So they do."

It was all too strange for Anthemone. First the dream, then the store, and now this. She needed clarity. She needed Efram Cahill who was nowhere to be seen. He'd taken a 'leave of absence' when Eau du Pur turned into a fireball in the middle of the commercial district. Some of the online hecklers were calling him conspicuous by his absence. She would have called those people conspiracy theorists if she weren't starting to feel quite so paranoid herself.

...

Anthemone's day progressed normally—and far less humiliatingly from there—culminating in an uneventful period of ethics class with tenured Instructor Principio. Anthemone and Khadijah passed handwritten notes whilst he reviewed the previous week's quiz and previewed the coming midterm.

"Common sense is the watch word, students. Bring yours to the examination and you should have only success."

Useful knowledge, that, Anthemone quipped in her head. She was trying to avoid any more stern talking-tos today.

Having informed the class of all they needed to know, Principio switched on a holo-vid, and then disappeared to the back of the hall to grade their latest essay assignment. Good luck with all that.

On the video, two completely indistinguishable (in Anthemone's opinion) suited white men sat on a raised dais in matching chairs. Each was cheaply outfitted with dark dye-jobs and horn-rimmed spectacles. They're anachronisms. I've never seen them outside of a comedy skit of 4 a.m. infomercials for Foresight Insurance. She was shocked to learn they were based on real people. How disappointing.

"Current predictive models predict the future just as well as any seer," began Indistinguishable Man 1, designated as Cal Beste from Cal Tech ("no relation, a-yuck yuck yuck"—kill me, kill everyone, salt the Earth!) by the marquee at the foot of the screen. She foresaw more dad jokes in the next three minutes than were survivable by anyone not unconscious.

Indistinguishable Man 2 assumed the bully pulpit. Hugh Campbell. Should I know him? And what precisely is a precognitive ethicist? Death was taking too long; this approached torture. Where is the Geneva Convention for this crap?

"Probability engines compute probability. Seers predict the future. One is full proof, the other is a game of chance."

"Models will only improve as technology improves. You just have to give it a chance."

"Thousands of years of human innovation and your programs can only begin to replicate human predictive capability. Don't you think your efforts would be better placed elsewhere, say in traumatic brain injury recovery research? Isn't that your specialty? Couldn't you take your ends a step further and induce precognitive and projective ability in willing, susceptible patients?"

"Anything can be done, Dr. Campbell, but not everything should be done."

Anthemone slapped Reload incessantly. This is state-mandated torture.

To her relief, service was restored to NSSAN during the final minutes of the school day, bringing with it a slew of new entries for Anthemone to pore over. Thank god. She could finally ignore this vid in peace.

First, she filtered by region to restrict the results to subdivisions contained within Belleton. There was a plant malfunction on the outskirts of town, almost a full blown reactor meltdown. She eyed her classmates. Nobody else seemed bothered. Was there a psychic blast? Did I miss it? A weak enough bulletin would have gone in one ear and out the next for most Regulars and even some Irregulars. Something like that, you'd want people to know. It's not like the governor to keep us all guessing.

"You ever get the feeling something weird's happening?" she asked Penelope Boyega, a classmate of hers from History of the New World, which they'd have tomorrow.

"Just about every time I wake up."

"Same," she commiserated and went back to tap-scroll-tapping at her slate.

Calgary wrote to her via band text after the tolling of the final bell:

Staying back to talk with Balmain. Vid ya later?

Anthemone was a hair annoyed, but relieved, nevertheless. That'll save me from having to make excuses.

See ya!

She had to pay another visit to Huron Boulevard.