Helen, Marto, and the ninjas passed the day at the lodge, eating and sleeping. The ninjas and Helen needed time to recover from their latest escapades and Marto was happy to stay put and get his thoughts together. They had only one interruption, a woman and a man who stopped by the door asking after Maxtor. The party thought they were going to be evicted, but there was no mention of their exit. They said they had no idea where he was. The couple left.

"I think I know where Maxtor went," Marto said to the group, over his morning coffee. What he didn't say was that he had an idea why his past had been kept a secret. He hoped he wasn't right.

"Where?" asked Helen. "Do you think he can tell us why the blackout happened?"

"I can't think of anyone else who could," Marto said, getting to his feet. "We need to go to Plainville."

"How far is that?"

"Should be just northeast of here. That's why he brought me here. He wanted to escape."

"Escape?"

"His life. He's mysterious, but I think I understand him better now. Let's try to go north, then east, and just bushwhack it."

The party of eight, Marto, Helen and the ninjas walked outside, determined their direction from the shadows of the morning sun, and pushed through the underbrush heading north.

A short way through the brush they found the wreckage of an old amusement park. The old rides had crumbled or filled with dirt. A carousel was still standing, the horses looking pale. A crumbling semi-circle of a ride stood with chairs hanging vertically from a giant wheel. The top of the wheel had caved in, the top half falling down onto the lower half. Past these relics, they saw printed homes in rows, the inhabitants wandering aimlessly about. Marto had been walking his uni, wishing he could ride it.

["Hey, do you know what happened to the ... everything?"] One of the disconnected was messaging them. She stood before them on the road, looking distressed. She had dark curly hair, showing a touch of grey. ["Everything is just blank. Do you know what happened?"]

["We are as much in the dark as you,"] Marto replied.

["I've been trying to get through to ... anybody. I feel like my brain has imploded. This can't last, can it? And aren't you the wandering writer fellow? The one who was traveling with Maxtor?"]

["That is me, yes. Say, you wouldn't have any bikes my friends could borrow would you?"] Marto was hoping his Merit would help them, even though there was no way to give ratings.

["Not for us!"] Londra sent. ["We run."]

["Okay, well, I guess just one bike?"]

["Certainly! You are welcome to one. I have a couple near my home. Just remember me when all the connections come back on will you?"]

She sent her name. Lydia « Martha « Didi « Mirona « etc. Marto recorded it, with a note of where she was from. That should be enough. ["Absolutely,"] he responded.

["Hey, did you just get me a bike?"] Helen sent. She had picked up the private messaging quickly. This was fortunate.

["Yes, indeed! Follow Lydia and meet us back here."] Helen walked in the direction of a pink printed house and came back with a bamboo bike.

They followed the paths, winding in and out of the homes, still going north. The ninjas kept up with little difficulty. As they passed more of the disconnected, the same questions were asked, and the same answer was given. They got directions. By mid-afternoon, they had arrived at a place where the paths had turned to dirt, and there were no more neat, little, printed homes. Plainville.

The sky was uniformly overcast. Before them lay a series of fields. Men and women worked in them, pulling up crops. They wore straw hats. Marto and Helen hopped off their rides and walked into the fields.

One of the farmers walked toward them. "Hello! Are you lost?" the man said. He was stocky and strong and wore a faded blue shirt, stained with sweat. His jeans were tattered. He wore boots. He held a shovel in one hand.

"No, not lost. We are here by invitation. A man named Zeke." Marto held out his hands in a gesture he hoped looked friendly.

"Ah. Well, he's up at the yellow barn, a couple of fields over," the man said. "One thing you have to know before you go over there. We have a strict rule about mental chitter chatter here. If you want to walk our fields, you have to keep your thoughts to yourselves..." he waved his fingers out from the side of his head "and use your words."

"This should not be a problem," said Marto.

["Is he serious?"] thexted Billie, one of the ninjas.

"Yes, he's serious. No thexting, no messaging. They can tell." Marto was addressing the whole party. "It's a serious thing with them."

"Hai!" said the ninjas in unison. Helen broke out laughing.

They walked the edges of the fields, careful not to disturb the crops. Marto had never seen so much open farming before. The amount of land they used was startling. The amount of water required was alarming. He thought about Maxtor and his comments on water as they cleared the first field, then the second and headed across the third.

Up ahead was a yellow barn. In front of it, clumsily working a trowel in the dirt was a man covered in carefully adorned multicolored hair. The great Maxtor Uber G was wearing overalls and harvesting something. He bent down and picked up a beet, immediately putting it in his mouth. Looking up, he saw Marto and waved. A trail of red ran down his chin. He was clearly enjoying himself.

"Hello, Maxtor!" Marto shouted back. "Having fun?"

"Hey, hey my green, green node, you found me! And you brought friends!"

The ninjas clacked their staffs together in the air. Marto hoped they were not synchronizing their actions via thext.

"And you must be the lovely Helen. The launch that faced a floundered ship."

"You know me? I'm honored to be recognized by the famous Maxtor."

"Well, aren't you an ingot of solid gorgeous? Yeah, I heard about your abduction. Good drama. And you can call me the formerly famous. I'm just a simple farmer now. I wanted a straw hat, just like the others, but my head is too big." He took another bite.

"Maxtor, do you know what's going on out there?" Marto asked.

"Oh, you mean the ultimate Game over? Oh yes, my node. I predicted it a week ago." He got deadly serious for a moment. "Did you tell anyone I was in here?"

"No."

He brightened again, "Good. So you figured out my plan. Found me. How'd ya do it?" Maxtor was making a show of talking like Zeke and his ilk.

"Well, I had this dream, and in it, I was on an island. Everything was silent. It was frightening, but it was also peaceful. When I woke, I remembered you had visited Zeke on the Merritt and given him a black box for detecting signals. I remembered Zeke was in Plainville, on the map near the lake we were on. I figured you used me as an excuse to get close to here so you could sneak away. I think you are hiding to escape your fame for a while."

"Mm-hmm, that's part of it, my wandering node. Yes indeed. But there's more. Like the big blackout. What do you think that's about?"

"We came here to ask you."

Maxtor glanced at the sky and turned around in a circle. A block of dark clouds was moving in from the west. "Yeah, let's go inside," he said.

In the back of the yellow barn were bales of hay under a loft behind an old tractor. Maxtor jumped up on one of the hay bales, and the others did the same. He looked around, checking out every wall.

"The super-mods saw her coming," Maxtor said to them. His voice was almost a whisper. "Data copying itself, tucking itself away. Large movements of information for no good reason. Super-mods glean things other people can never glean. They love the data, the raw stuff. They sift it around, run it through their fingers like sand. They see things."

"Like what?" Helen asked.

"The super-mods called her Leviathan." Maxtor got even quieter. "Something swimming around in all the data. Like something really big. Didn't know what she was. Don't know if she was an AI or something else they can't glean. All they could tell was she was there, and she was hunkering down."

"I don't know Maxtor," said Marto, "This sounds a lot like a story I would tell to children to scare them. The data monster, and the blackout."

"Well, the blackout is real, ain't it, my node? I'm not saying this Leviathan caused it, but she knew what was coming. When she began protecting herself, was when we grasped the situation. One of the super-mods showed me. Leviathan was behaving in a way which suggested motivation. She was protecting herself from a network collapse. This meant the collapse was either beyond her control or Leviathan caused it. We can't parse that part. I had no idea it was going to happen yesterday morning. My getting here just in time was a coincidence."

"So, there might be a kind of program out there, stored away," Marto said, sounding incredulous. "Why is this a reason for you to run and hide here?"

"Well, first off, I needed a break and this place is the nads. I haven't been here even two days, and already I feel so much better. I like working with my hands, feeling the wind, being solo, and taking a break from all the hullaballoo. I needed a serious vacation. Secondly, I don't mind telling you if there is a general AI out there doing her thing in the same space we all do our thing, it scares the fleeping spit out of me. It throws our whole game into question, glean?"

Marto did glean. He did not like the idea at all. "I thought it was impossible. You're talking about the singularity."

"'Tis one way of looking at her. She has a will, of sorts. She's protecting herself. That's pretty singular if you parse me. Remember I was telling you about the algorithm? How it's gotten too big to fathom? Well, what if this big program is the algorithm? Or what if she's manipulating the algorithm, using it to control our behavior? Can you picture the power she would have? What does she want? What is she doing? We have no way to tell. That's the major reason I needed to remove myself from the equation. I came here in secret because I needed time to think, by myself."

"I don't know," said Zha-Zha, "I think it's exciting there might be a new form of life out there. Why should we fear her?"

Maxtor regarded her with a kind of patient annoyance. "Well, why indeed?" he said. "Why fear a thing you don't understand, something that knows you better than you do, pulling the strings out beyond our ability to perceive? Something with motivations which are perfectly ineffable?"

Zha-Zha reflected her annoyance back at Maxtor. She didn't like being treated like a child.

"Is she god or devil, this Leviathan? If she's a good and benevolent god, then no problem. We are all happy Edenites. But if she is the devil, or worse, if she's neutral, and she's in the minds of millions, playing a game of her own, then we are all just puppets. Glean?"

Zha-Zha thought for a while. "Yeah, I guess that's kinda creepy."

"But she's down now. She's in hiding?" Helen asked. "She can't do much harm while the connections are dark, can she?"

"You got me there, ingot. No way to know if she's dormant, or just split apart into smaller versions of herself working away in our minds," Maxtor said, shuddering. "My guess is something that big has a plan to turn the lights back on. None of us mere humans know what things will look like when that happens."

There were footsteps outside, and the barn door swung open to reveal Zeke in his light blue shirt and straw hat. With him were four women, dressed in a similar fashion. "Hello?" Zeke called. "Maxtor?" He waited for his eyes to adjust to the light of the barn. "Who are your friends?"

"Hi Zeke," said Marto, standing. "We met on the bridge. At the pop-up cafe? I passed out, remember?"

"Ah, yes. Skater boy. You came here after all. Didn't think you would. Welcome."

"Thanks. I brought a few friends. Told them the rules." He introduced Helen and the ninjas.

"Well, I wish you had picked better weather for your arrival. We are in for a nasty storm. It's coming in from Danvers. We'd better get to the shelter. Oh, and these are my wives," He pointed. "Karaugh, Deborah, Allie, and Martika." They each said hello.

Marto looked at the ninjas and Helen. They turned their heads to look at him, their eyes scowling. Marto didn't need a private message to know what they were thinking.

Polygamist.