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the remote again. A series of error messages appeared on the viewer. “I’m terribly sorry,” he apologized, becoming somewhat flustered. “The images were supposed to be…” He looked at Hanna, and then at Graham. “Maybe we should stop?”
    From; Arielle: Keep going, we’ll fix it in post.
    “That’s all right, Doctor,” Hanna assured him, “we can cut this part out in editing. Don’t worry.”
    Doctor Benarro pressed a button on his desk, causing the view screen to go dark and his desktop display to come to life. Hovering over his desk was a pale blue, transparent display, with the same error messages flashing in and out of view. The doctor slid the messages out of the way with a swipe of his hand as he pulled a command console out of the left side of the display with his left hand. He rapidly touched transparent buttons floating in the air over his desk as he spoke. “This same thing happened last week,” he explained as he struggled to resolve the glitch. “IT said it was the Twister virus, but they promised they had cleared it from our systems. They even had to reboot all our systems from an earlier backup. We had to go back to an image from a month earlier before we found a clean one. Lost an entire month’s worth of work.”
    The image of the world map, with all its red, green and yellow dots flashed into Hanna’s memory. She called the map up again in her personal visual space. The dot over Boston was yellow, and it was dated a week ago.
    From Arielle: What are you doing, Hanna?
    “Doctor Benarro, is it true that the majority of the outbreaks of the Klaria virus have coincided in both time and location with reported outbreaks of the Twister virus?”
    “Excuse me?”
    Graham looked at Hanna, then at Arielle. Message; Arielle: What the hell is she talking about?
    “The Twister virus, Doctor,” Hanna explained.
    Reply: Don’t ask, Arielle’s answer appeared in Graham’s visual space. We’re not connected to any local systems, are we?
    “Is it possible that the two viruses are somehow related?” Hanna continued.
    Message: Of course not. My gear is self-contained, Graham assured her. Hell, I don’t even do direct uploads. I do everything by data cards. Reformatted after each connection with the net. Why do you ask?
    “That would be quite impossible,” Doctor Benarro said, dismissing the thought with a wave of his hand.
    Reply: Just checking, Arielle messaged. We didn’t get a chance to talk about procedures yet. The doc’s problems made me think of it.
    “Why?” Hanna asked, continuing to press the idea. A message flashed in her visual space. From Arielle: Don’t go there, Hanna.
    “Well, for one, Klaria is a biological virus, and Twister is digital.” The tone in the doctor’s voice was becoming somewhat condescending.
    “I understand that,” Hanna assured him, “however, one cannot help but notice that the majority of the outbreaks of both viruses have been simultaneous.”
    From Arielle: Don’t do it!
    “Mere coincidence,” Doctor Benarro insisted, becoming more agitated. He looked at Arielle. “I was told that this interview was for a legitimate news agency…”
    “It is, Doctor, I assure you,” Arielle replied. “Miss Bohl is just exploring all possibilities…”
    “I don’t see how there is anything wrong with asking a few questions, Doctor Benarro,” Hanna interrupted. “That’s how we learn, right? By asking questions?”
    From Arielle: You can’t badger this one, Hanna, Arielle’s message flashed across Hanna’s visual space, and batting your eyelashes and playing coy isn’t going to work either! Just drop it and move on!
    “Are we still recording?” Doctor Benarro demanded to know. “Stop recording, please. I insist.”
    Graham looked at Arielle, who nodded. “As you wish,” he replied. He pressed a button on his controller, and the little red lights on all the orbs changed from red to flashing orange. “Recording is paused.”
    Doctor Benarro