CHAPTER 47

The PING

Nyork, Unity

16.03.12.local_08_04_AU77

A signal—a short, imperative machine command monotonously identical to all the other signals sent from the transmitter over the last twenty-six weeks—was sent. Unique to the prior episodes, the apparatus received an answering affirmative and a short data stream. Chiu, Malila Evanova, number 59026169, was found.

BethanE Winters, graduate student in modern philosophical literature at Columbia’s University of the People, pulled back from the dense work of tracking down a metaphor that had gone rogue on her. It had disappeared somewhere around AU 15 when it had ducked behind a rampaging trope. This was hard work just to add a small footnote.

Feck it and go to bed, she thought ...

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