Shopped!/On the Road/Family Reunion

26 was outraged on my behalf and was sure that Katarina had shopped me. I told her she didn't know what she was talking about, that the lady had been so supportive of me. 26 demanded Katarina's e-mail address so she could send an angry message to her, but I said that wouldn't be fair.

“How about if I write her a message on a piece of paper and you take a picture of it and e-mail it to her?” I said.

She shook her head at me (I was already getting sick of this). “You poor sod, you're really stuck, aren't you? Am I going to end up being your Seeing Internet Dog for the next two weeks, then?”

“Come on,” I said. “I need to know whether she betrayed me or whether it just got out.”

26 rolled her eyes at me. “Fine,” she said. She dug through the piles of junk in her room and came up with an old school notebook. She tore a page out of the back of it, handed me a biro, and passed them to me. I shut my laptop lid and used it for a desk.

I started to write, got as far as “Dear Katarina, I was in court today” and balled up the paper and chucked it aside. “Paper,” I said.

“Maybe you should do it in pencil, Cecil,” 26 said.

“Shaddit,” I said, and she swatted me and handed me more paper. It took three tries, but this is what I got:

Dear Katarina, I had my hearing today, about the court case where all the film studios are suing me for millions of pounds for remixing your grandad's films. They wanted the court to take my Internet access away and they got what they wanted. The reason that happened is that they had a copy of the video I gave to you, the one about the security checks at the cinema. You were the only person besides me who had a copy. I don't remember if I told you not to distribute it. I guess I just wanted to know if you passed it on to those lawyers to get me in trouble, or what?

I included my phone number and signed it, and 26 shot it with her phone and attached it to an e-mail and sent it off.

“How'd the exams go?” I said. She's been playing nonchalant about them all along, but I knew that her guts'd been in knots about it. 26 was smart, the kind of smart they love at school, and she'd always got fantastic marks, but that seemed to make her more anxious about succeeding, not less. Figure that one out.

“I can never tell. I think it all went well, except, well, maybe I'm wrong, right? Like the calculus -- it seemed too easy, like maybe I was just not understanding the questions right.” She shook her head hard and went Waaaaargh! and jumped up and down on the spot a while. “That's better. It's over in any event. And it's just going to start again at uni next year, of course.”

I didn't say anything. We both knew that she was going to go off to university eventually. She was such a brain-box, and her parents would flay her alive if she didn't. She kept talking about taking a gap year and working, but the parental authorities were very down on the idea, and besides, it was only delaying the inevitable.

26 caught it. She always caught it. “I've been reading up on the law program at University College London. There's an Intellectual Property specialist course that looks perfectly awful, raw propaganda for the entertainment industry. I was thinking it'd be a fun place to go and shout at people for the next four years.”

I smiled. “Really? UCL? As in, right here in London?”

She'd put in for Oxford and Cambridge, of course, and Sheffield and Nottingham. But this was the first she'd said about UCL.

“Right here,” she said.

“But I thought you wanted to do public policy, right? Oxford?”

She looked away. “Oh, Oxford's overrated. It's all rah-rah punting and snobbishness. Be- sides, law's just another side to public policy. And with a law degree, I could defend people like you! Public policy's just a fast-track to being a career bureaucrat or a politician.”

“I think you'd make a great MP,” I said. “You'd be the first woman with a shaved head and facial piercings to sit in the Commons!”

She bit my earlobe. “Do you want me to go away?”

I shrugged. “Of course not. But I don't want you to waste four years doing a degree you're not interested in just to be around me. I don't have to live in London, you know. Doesn't really matter where I am. I just want to make films. I could do that anywhere.”

“You going to find a squat in Oxford?”

“Why not? There's empty buildings everywhere. Or,” I held her gaze, “you could squat with me.”

“That's the most romantic proposal I've ever had, Cecil B. DeVil. I think it's a little early for us to be playing house, though, don't you think?”

It's weird. I'd said it as a joke, but her refusal skewered me. Which was stupid, because here she was ready to pick a second-choice university because it would mean being nearer to me. Love makes you into an idiot. Well, it makes me into an idiot, anyway.

Neither of us said anything. Her room -- which was always a tip -- had grown even more chaotic, what with all the work on TIP-Ex and all the time spent at mine or on her exams. I suddenly felt exhausted. I pushed aside some of the crap on the bed and crawled along it face down until I had a pillow under my head and I buried my nose in it -- 26's scalp smell, delicious and familiar -- and squeezed my eyes shut.

26 belly-flopped on top of me and chewed my hair. “Poor Cecil. It's all a bit much, isn't it?”

It was. In a short year, I'd moved to London, been robbed, squatted, been chased, squatted again, taken every conceivable substance including sugar and lived to tell the tale, lost a legislative fight, made dozens of films and screened them all over the city, traveled up and down the countryside giving speeches, reconciled with my parents, broken into a sewer, learned to build a laptop, and been sued for tens of millions of pounds. And lost my virginity. “It's been a busy season, I'll give you that. Dizzying, really.”

“I know what you mean,” she said. For a moment, I felt irrationally irritated with her. This was my moment to be miserable, not hers. What had she gone through, anyway? But a few seconds later, I came up with the answer: political campaigning, arrest, falling in love (yay!), a boyfriend who ran out and left her to give a speech with no prep, the business with her biological dad, and her A levels and impending graduation.

“What a pair we are,” I said.

“We're a good team,” she said, and chewed my hair some more, pulling at the roots. “We'll figure it out,” I said.

“We always do.”

Living without the net was impossible. At first, I tried to stay off my laptop altogether, be- cause once it was on, the temptation to log in and just have a poke around was enormous. I'd promised Roshan and Gregory that I wouldn't log in, not even a little, not even if I was dead certain no one could catch me. I'd learned my lesson about leaky secrets with the video I'd given to Katarina.

But with no laptop and no Internet, I started to go absolutely mad. I really liked Jem's mural, and it had got smudged or wiped away in places, so I tried my hand at fixing it up, but this involved asking Jem for loads of advice, and he soon bored of it. So I switched to cooking, which was Chester's major lookout, and we made good progress on things like soups and stews before he got utterly sick with googling recipes for me and he went out and bought me an armload of ancient Jamie Oliver cookbooks from the one-pound bin at the Age Concern charity shop. I got bored of being alone in the kitchen, so I went and bothered Rabid Dog, who was going through a phase of trying to perfect the artificial wound. He worked with unflavored gelatin, paint, food coloring, and various breakfast cereals and sand to create the most revolting gashes, slashes, scars and scabs you'd ever seen. He had a half-formed plan to shoot his own slasher pic in the Zeroday some time, but mostly he just loved mucking about with all the gore and goop. Dog was very good about tolerating my ham-fisted attempts to create a realistic entrail-squib, a flesh-colored belly pouch filled with revolting viscera that could be slit open, spilling them down your front. But I wasn't very good at it, to tell the truth, and what's more, I kept forgetting to wash the brushes and cap the paints, and so after a day of this, he told me I'd need to get my own supplies if I wanted to go on. I swore I would, but never got round to it.

So I went back to the one thing I was good at: editing video on my laptop. I had a bunch more long bus- and train-trips to kill time on -- talks at rallies in Cardiff, Bath, and then one in good old Bradford, so I reckoned I could spend the time editing the one video I was reasonably sure I couldn't get into trouble for playing with: the footage of Scot Colford that Katarina had given me.

I set to work cataloging this the day before I hit the road, and I was deep into it when 26 showed up at my door. I'd talked her into spending the night since we were going to be apart for so long.

“I got an e-mail back from your doctor,” she said, after she'd kissed me hello. “You're going to love this.”

Dear Cecil,

Oh god, I'm mortified. I was so delighted by that video that I sent it around to some friends (well, many friends -- practically everyone I know, in fact). I hadn't realized that it was meant to be confidential, though I suppose I should have worked that out. I can't apologize enough for having landed you in the soup. If there's anything I can do to help, please let me know (I was serious when I told you you should feel free to tell people that Scot Colford's grand-daughter heartily approves of your efforts). I just googled and saw you've got a talk coming up in Bath; I grew up there and have e-mailed all my friends and told them to go and see you. I know this won't solve your legal woes, but I hope it helps a little.

Best of luck,

Katarina

That certainly put me in a better mood -- and my mood got better still when 26 dragged me up to my room for a serious and steamy snog. Afterward, we lay on my bed, sharing a big glass of ice water and occasionally sneaking cubes out of the glass and pressing them to one another's exposed skin, which was 26's idea of comedy.

“Do you think we're going to win?” I asked.

She didn't say anything for a long time. “I think we might,” she said, finally. “Oh, that's encouraging.”

She sat up. “It's just that most MPs still don't see this as a big deal. They're more concerned with health care and jobs and education and the economy. They just don't understand that today, all those things depend on the Internet. My mum decided that we needed a new garden shed last week and she discovered that the council doesn't even have paper building-permit forms anymore! You can't get a recycling box, you can't complain about your neighbors, you can't report a pot-hole, none of it unless you've got the net.”

“Do you remember you once said we should get every MP cut off from the net for piracy? Grass on the whole lot of them?”

She snorted. “Yeah, but I don't know how we'd pull that off. I'm sure that when an MP gets an infringement notice, she can just make it all go away. One law for them, another law for us. I bet that there's also plenty of chances for rich parents to pay a little 'fine' and stop their Internet being taken away or their kids going to jail.”

“I keep coming back to it, though. It's like you said: the reason they voted this in is that they just don't think of Internet access as being anything like a right. They think the whole Internet is just a glorified system for downloading films for free and getting music without paying for it. If we could just show them what it's like to lose access --”

“You're right, but it's just a dream. A pretty dream, but a dream nonetheless.”

But I couldn't get it out of my head. When I got on the train to Bath the next day, I found myself roughing out a video in which Scot Colford loses his Internet access. There was so much stuff in the footage dump that Katarina'd given me that lent itself to this, I could already tell that I'd be able to show Scot flunking out of college, losing his housing benefit, failing to help his kids with their homework, and not being able to produce a film. He loved to make comic short films where he played a bumbler or sad-sack, and once I had the idea, the video practically put itself together.

I got about half the rough cut done on the bus, chortling evilly to myself as I went, and then I was at the demonstration and giving a speech, which seemed to go well, but I couldn't tell you what I'd said, because all I could think of was my video, my video, my video. I was being hosted that night by some people from the local hackspace, a kind of technology co-op where everyone paid subscriptions to use a bunch of really fantastic communal kit; laser cutters and 3D printers and computer-controlled mills and lathes. The hackspace was in an old industrial estate that reminded me of Aziz's place, and it was even more cluttered than Aziz's, because they had less space and more people using it. They made their own beer, and it was quite good, and I chatted politely for as long as I could.

Finally, I had to say, “Look, I don't mean to be rude, but I've got this thing I'm making and I can't get it out of my head and I just want to get stuck in with my lappie. I know it's horrible guest behavior, but --”

The assorted hackers immediately rushed to say, no, no, by all means, get stuck in mate, if you're in the creative fug, don't let us get in your way. Of course I should have guessed that they'd understand. (Later, I found myself reading the hackspace rules that someone had posted in the toilet, and the third rule was “If someone's in the groove, don't bother them.”) (Rule two was “If you don't know how to use something, ask someone who does

before you try.” And rule number one was “Don't be on fire.” Which struck me as eminently sensible.)

Work, work, work. I wished like fire that I could use the net and e-mail some of the other Colford freaks I knew and get their advice, and I burned to drop in some of the official Scot clips from his classic films -- some of which I'd used in dozens of projects before, so that I knew exactly how many seconds they lasted and could even give you their timecode from memory.

But the constraint of having to work with nothing but the new footage meant that I couldn't use my familiar, lazy shortcuts. I had to think my way around each scene and cut, coming up with really inventive solutions. It was the best kind of puzzle-solving, something I'd been training for all my life, really.

Being in that kind of creative fog was weird. I just couldn't put the machine down. Not having Internet access actually helped, since it meant that I couldn't alt-tab away from my edit suite to check on my mail or read tweets or social media walls or the Web. I had to just get my head down and edit, create, refine. My world contracted until it contained nothing except for me and my computer, and before I knew it, the sun was rising and my phone was beeping at me, telling me it was time to wake up and get to the bus-station, so I got started on the way to Cardiff. Except I hadn't slept yet, and when I stood up, my back and hips made a noise like someone stepping on a bag of peanut shells. My wrists felt like they'd swollen to three times their normal size, and when I went to the toilet to sponge off and brush my teeth, I saw that my eyes looked like they'd been doused in chili sauce.

I didn't feel bad, though. Tired, sure. But I felt amazing. The video was some of my best work, maybe my best ever. The most wonderful part was that it was looking exactly like it had in my head. After years and years of trying, I'd finally found a way to connect the thing I saw when I closed my eyes with the thing that showed up on my screen. It felt like I'd attained some kind of psychic superpower. It felt like I was a god. Sleep? Hah! I could sleep on the way to Cardiff.

My family was waiting for me when I arrived in Bradford: Mum and Dad and Cora standing awkwardly by the train turnstiles, and I spotted them before they spotted me. My parents were older than I remembered; Dad's hair had gone from thinning to balding, and Mum's shoulders were rounded and her head drooped forward a little as though her neck couldn't support it. They both looked a little frail. Cora, on the other hand, looked like an adult, practically -- give her the right clothes and she could have passed for twenty-five. But for all that, they were definitely my family and I felt a rush of affection for them as soon as I spotted them. For a moment I resisted the impulse to wave madly to them, then I gave in, though it made everyone else in the station stare at us, and I ran the last twenty meters to them and enjoyed an epic four-way cuddle. Something tight in my chest let go, and I felt something unfold there, a spreading warmth that I can only call “homecoming.”

Cora had just finished her school year with her usual top marks -- pulled up out of the slump during the year when she'd been knocked offline. Dad had been getting more hours than ever, mostly answering the phone for an appliance warranty company and booking engineers to go on service calls for misbehaving washing machines. It didn't pay anything like his factory job had, but it was more money than the family had seen in years, and not having to feed me also made a difference (though Mum thumped him in the shoulder when he mentioned it), so the flat was looking brilliant. There was a new sofa, a new telly, a new lappie for Dad with a top of the range headset, and a chair that looked like it belonged in the cockpit of an airplane. And Mum had a new exercise machine that was part of the rehab for her legs -- she'd done away with her cane, and unless you know to look for it, you wouldn't have spotted her limping.

“What're you going to say tomorrow, then, Trent?” Mum said as we rode the bus home together. The faces on the bus had a weird familiarity -- they weren't people I knew, but chances were they were people I'd seen once or twice or even dozens of times over the years. It seemed like I could go days in London without seeing a face I knew outside of the Zeroday.

I shrugged. “The same as ever, I suppose. I used to try to say something different ev- erywhere I went, cos I knew that all the talks were going up on YouTube and that, and I thought it'd look weird if I said the same thing each time. But really, there's only one thing to say: why TIP is terrible, why I think we can wipe it out, how you can help. And when I tried to say something different every time, I couldn't really practice properly, so I was making mistakes all the time instead of getting better. Now I just say pretty much the same thing, and if someone sees two similar talks on YouTube, I don't worry much about it. No one's complained, anyway.”

Dad shook his head. “Son, don't take this the wrong way, but I never figured you for the speechifying type. Fancy the idea that you've got people who show up to hear you talk!” He shook his head again.

I hid my grin. “What about Cora, then? She's going to talk tomorrow, too.” It hadn't been my idea -- the local organizers who were putting on the rally had invited her separately, and truth be told, I was half afraid she'd show me up altogether with her brilliance. But mostly, I was delighted that my little sister was going to give a talk and I'd get to hear her.

Cora pretended she hadn't heard and looked out the window, but I could see she was blushing.

Dad waved his hand. “Oh, Cora. Well, of course we always figured Cora would be some kind of politician or professor or a famous inventor or something. But Trent --” He opened and closed his hands, as though he was trying to pluck the right words out of the over- heated, slightly smelly bus-air. “Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that we're proud of you, son.”

It wasn't a very northern thing for him to say. It was a sentimental, London kind of statement, really. And of course, that's why it meant so much more than it would have coming from any of my southern pals. My dad, my actual, cynical, hard as nails dad, was getting all soppy with me. What I felt then, well, it wasn't like anything I'd ever felt before.

Dinner was better than any I remembered from home, and we all watched some telly to- gether afterward, and after that, I showed Cora my new Scot Colford video, and she gushed that it was my best work so far. Then I went out to the community center and played snooker with some of my old mates, who all seemed to have got younger even as my family had got older. They were full of talk about who was snogging who and who was pregnant and who'd been banged up for public drunkenness or stupid, petty crimes. I made a real effort not to seem aloof or condescending, but I musn't have done much of a job, because before long, they were passing sarky remarks about how I'd “gone London,” and I was too big for little Bradford. I pretended these didn't bother me, but they made me miserable, and my triumphant day finished with me staring in frustration at the ceiling as I tried to find sleep in my old bed, thinking of clever, cutting things I should have said to my so-called pals.

Cora talked before me, and as I expected, she was dead good. She'd changed her makeup and hair and put on her school uniform, and she looked years younger than she had the night before. It made her speech come off all the better, as she spoke about being a student and trying to keep her marks up and how she'd learned that sharing knowledge was better for society than locking it up. She finished out with something that made the whole room laugh:

“Back in the old days, they didn't have science, they had alchemy. Alchemy was a lot like science, except that every alchemist kept what he learned to himself.” She made a wry face. “Alchemists were always 'he's -- and particularly daft specimens of the type at that.” That got a chuckle. “And that meant that no alchemist could benefit from what he'd learned. Which meant that every single alchemist discovered for himself -- the hard way -- that drinking mercury was an awful idea.” That got a bigger laugh. “As you might imagine, alchemy didn't progress very far.” That got a bigger laugh still. She was working them like a comedian, and her timing was spot on. I couldn't believe that my little sister was kicking quantities of arse.

“Until, one day, everything changed. Some alchemist decided that rather than keeping his results secret, he'd publish them and let his peers review his results. We have a word for that kind of publication: we call it 'science.' And we have a name for the time that followed from this innovation: we call it 'the Enlightenment.'

“For hundreds of years, the human race has dreamt of a world where knowledge could be shared universally, where every human being on the planet could have access to our storehouse of knowledge. Because knowledge is power, and shared knowledge is a super- power. Now, after centuries, we have it within our grasp to realize one of our most beautiful dreams.

“And wouldn't you know it, some people are so bleeding stupid and greedy and blinkered and ignorant that they think that this is a bad thing. The greatest library of human knowledge and creativity ever seen, ever dreamed of, and all these fools can do is moan about how they can't figure out how to stay rich if kids go around downloading rubbishy pop music without paying for it. They think that the Internet's power to make sharing easy is a bug -- and they've set out to 'fix' it, no matter how many lives and futures they ruin on this stupid mission.

“I may just be a kid, I may not be rich or brilliant or powerful, but I know that copying is a feature, not a bug. It's brilliant, it's wonderful, it's only because it snuck up on us so gradually that we're not on our knees in wonder.

“I think they're going to fail in the long run. In the long run, though, we're all dead. The question for me is, how many lives will we destroy before we wake up and realize what we've got is worth saving -- worth celebrating?

“We've got a chance to start making the kind of world that's safe for the Internet and the people who love it -- the people who use it to work, use it to stay in touch with their families, the people who use it to create art or do science. I've spent the past six months down at my MP's surgery every week, telling John Mutanhed about all the wonderful things we can use the net for, and how many innocent people are facing jail or ruin because a small handful of greedy companies have bought miserable law after miserable law, until we're all guilty, and it's only a matter of time until we're all in for it.

“Now there's this bill, you know it, the one they call TIP-Ex. Loads of people who know more about government than I do tell me that it stands a real chance of passing, of undoing some of the harm Parliament caused when they voted in that daft Theft of Intellectual Property Act. It stands a chance, that is, if you and the people you know get off your bums and go down to your MPs' surgeries, call their offices, write them a letter, and tell them what this means to you.

“These people are supposed to be our representatives. They're supposed to be doing what's good for us, not for gigantic American film companies. We can make them do what's right, but only if we pay attention, all the time, every day, and let them know we're watching. There's an election coming, and if there's one time that people like us can make a difference, it's just before the election. Maybe your MP thinks he's in a 'safe seat' where he'll never get voted out, but the dirty secret of safe seats is that the winner in those seats is usually 'none of the above' -- quantities of voters just stay home rather than hold their nose and vote for the lesser of two evils. If you're upset about your neighbors losing their Internet access and their jobs, if you're upset about kids going to jail, you tell them, 'I will turn up at the polls come the day, and I will vote for anyone, no matter how big a bastard he is, if he promises to do away with this rotten, stupid, filthy, dishonorable business we call the Theft of Intellectual Property Act!”

She had them. They roared with one throat, a sound so ferocious it made my balls shrink. My god, my sister was a brilliant speaker! I'd had no idea. I knew she'd given little talks at school, and had been in her debate society, but this -- this was like watching a master performer.

And I had to go on after her!

I stumbled through my talk as best as I could. I was thankful that I was giving a speech I'd given so many times before, because I'd have got lost otherwise. As it was, I could have recited the words in my sleep, and that familiarity let me focus on delivering them with all the fire I could muster, trying to live up to the standard Cora had set. They applauded me, but not like they had for Cora. After a moment's jealousy, I decided that I was more proud than jealous. My sister! Who knew she was so brilliant? (Well, I had, of course, but I hadn't known that she could speak like that!)

Mum and Dad took us out for curry that night, a posh place with a huge menu that went on for pages and pages and a long wine list. Dad had an expression on his face like he was some kind of millionaire out on the town, and Mum kept reaching over to pat us on the shoulder or the leg, or touch our cheeks. Cora and I were the stars of the night, and we felt it. Big grins all round, and I slept like a baby that night, getting up early for a bowl of cereal with Cora before I dashed out to catch my coach to London -- back to 26, back to the the Zeroday, and back to my new life.

It was a beautiful day in the Kensal Green cemetery, the grass so green it looked artificial, watered into a lush growth by a wet and miserable spring. There were fresh flowers on the newer graves, and families strolled through the grounds with broad-brimmed anti-mosquito hats, the sound of zapped mosquitoes a punctuation to the cars in Hornton Street.

I squeezed 26's hand, and said, “I don't understand, why is Letitia meeting us here?”

26 squeezed back. “Like I said, I have no idea. But she insisted and it sounded important. I'm not bothered, anyway -- much nicer to be out here than in her office, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “But I've got a bad feeling about this. Why wouldn't she want to meet us in her office?”

We found out soon enough. Letitia was right where she said she'd be, on a bench near a slip road behind the crematorium. She was wearing a broad-brimmed sun-hat and sun- glasses and a sun-dress, but for all that, she didn't look very sunny. As we drew near to her, I could see the slump of her shoulders, and it was pure defeat.

She patted the bench beside her and we sat down. She didn't bother with any niceties, just started in with, “First of all, let me say that I think the two of you have been magnificent. When I first discussed this with you, I never dreamed that you and your friends would be able to drum up so much support for my bill. You have every right to be proud of yourselves.”

“But?” I said. I could hear the but waiting to come out.

“But,” she said. “But. But politics are an ugly business. I have had a series of increasingly desperate meetings and calls with various power brokers in my party, and, well, let me say that I was lucky not to have to withdraw the bill altogether. But they made it very, very clear that all the whips had been firmly told by the party bigwigs that my bill must not pass, under any circumstances. I think it's likely that I will be expelled from my party if I vote in favor of TIP-Ex. Despite that, I plan to do so, because -- well, because, all jokes notwithstanding, a career in politics shouldn't mean a life without integrity.”

We sat there in numb shock.

26 said, “I don't understand.”

I said, “She's saying that we've lost. It doesn't matter what we do. It doesn't matter how many voters shout at their MPs. It's fixed, it's rigged. It's done. Parliament is going to vote against her bill. End of story.”

“But I thought with the election coming up --”

Letitia looked grim. “The election only matters if some MPs vote for the bill. If all the parties vote against it, there'll be no one to vote against, because there'll be no one to vote for.”

“Someone got to them,” I said. “The big film studios, or maybe the record labels, or maybe the video-game companies.”

“Lobbyists from all three, I rather suspect,” Letitia said. “They can be very persuasive. My guess is that there've been a number of very good, lavish parties lately, the kind of thing that's just packed with film stars and pop stars and that, and MPs and their families were invited -- maybe weekends in the country where your wife gets to go to the spa with a famous film star while your kids frolic in the pool with their favorite musicians and you go for cigars and golf with legendary film directors. The content people can be very persuasive at times. It's their stock in trade, really.”

“We didn't stand a chance,” I said. “Might as well have stayed at home. What a shitting waste.”

Letitia slumped further. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I thought you could win it. I really did. I thought that my party, at least, would welcome the chance to distance itself from un- popular legislation just before the election. But the simple fact is, I was outgunned and outmaneuvered. These people are very, very good at playing the politics game. Better, I'm afraid, than I can ever hope to be. I am so, so sorry for this. I know it must break your heart.” She drew in a shuddering sigh. “It's certainly broken mine.”

None of us said anything. Then 26 stood up, and said, “Well, there you go. Bugger it all. Government's for sale to the highest bidder. Always has been, always will be. No wonder someone always ends up throwing bombs. No matter who you vote for, the arsing government always gets in, doesn't it?”

Letitia looked like she wanted to die. I knew how she felt. I was torn between wanting to sit and comfort her and wanting to chase after 26, who was walking away as quickly as she could without breaking into a run. I went after 26. Of course I did. Letitia was a grown-up, she could take care of herself. 26 and I were a unit.

“Hey,” I said as I caught up with her. She kept walking quickly, head down, arms swing- ing.

“Hey, I said again. ”Hey, 26. Come on, it's going to be okay. You explained this to me, remember? We'll build momentum up. People will see how unfair this is and more of them will come out next time. It's awful, sure, but it'll get better eventually. They can't put us all in jail, right?”

She stopped and whirled to face me. I took a step back. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth, and she'd cried mascara down her cheeks in long black streaks. She had her hands clenched into fists and her arms were held straight down at her sides. For a second, I was sure she was going to hit me. “Forget it, Cecil. Just forget it. My stupid father was right. This is a ridiculous waste of time. We'll never, ever change anything. Rich, powerful people just run everything and the whole world is tilted to their favor. We were stupid to even think for a second that we had a chance of changing things. All those people who believed us and worked with us? Idiots. Just as crapping stupid as we are. I'm going to go to school, keep my stupid head down, get a stupid degree, get a stupid job, grow old, die, and rot. Might as well face it. None of us are special, none of us are geniuses. We're just little people and we're lucky that the giants let us go on living and breathing.”

It was worse than being slapped. “Twenty --” I said.

But she was already stalking off. I turned back to where Letitia had been sitting, but she was gone now, too. I found my hands were shaking. I wanted to run after 26 and tell her she was wrong.

The problem was, I really felt like she might be right.

Fear and loathing in commercial interludes

Trent has a lot of obsessions. In this regard, he is much like his creator -- me. One obsession we share is coffee. Really, really good coffee. I cold brew it, Aeropress it, order it at the local cart. Many's the city I've roamed, looking for really top-notch beans, or a beautiful cup to take me through a jetlagged day.

Coffee doesn't come cheap, if you follow my meaning.