Smooshy had been poking him in the bicep for the last twenty seconds. It wasn't until she called him Choder that Viral noticed that she'd been sitting behind him. "Do you care to offer your rupees on the subject?" she asked. Looking from Smooshy to Alan, Plank, Farooq, Aleph, and Gyn, Viral realized he'd been spaced out during a group meeting.
"Uh, what was the topic?" Viral asked. Alan shook his head with disappointment. Farooq gave him a look that seemed to say I told you so. Further toward the back of the bus Viral noticed the second group gathered together. Their heads nearly touched like a hub over an iPad that Emir was holding in the aisle. Ankur appeared to be explaining something with his mouth and finger.
"We wanted to know if you had an idea where the other group got their access to the data," Gyn said. Even more, now, Viral could sense her Turkish accent that sounded to him as if it had come from another time. Her voice could have issued from a character on Game of Thrones and Viral would have felt it was natural.
"I just assumed it was the internet," Viral said.
"Yeah, the kid's worthless," Farooq said, reclaiming the wheel of the conversation. "Obviously the internet was involved, but that kind of information isn't just hanging out on Reddit."
"Maybe he knows a doctor in Wuhan," Viral offered.
"Let's hope not," Alan said.
Viral asked why and Aleph explained. She said information coming out of China, especially information related to international embarrassment, was heavily embargoed.
"If Ankur has an in with the Communist Party of China then there's no way we stand a chance," Alan said.
"Chance for what?" asked Viral.
Smooshy filled Viral in on the discussion he'd missed while staring at Monica and the Highway Patrolman. "Didn't you wonder why she split us into groups?"
Viral nodded.
"It's an efficiency tactic from the Japanese zaibatsu system," Smooshy said.
"Zaiba-what?" Viral asked.
"Zaiba-who?" Gyn followed.
"Zaibatsu," Smooshy clarified. She explained how Japanese business kick-started its Renaissance in the 1980's by promoting competition within each firm. Management broke divisions into teams then incentivized them to compete for a single prize. The notion was competition within and competition without. The Japanese saw it as the pinnacle of efficiency; it was capitalism without the messy feelings of loyalty.
"So awesome," Plank - like the constant - gurgled under his breath.
Alan asked Smooshy how she knew this.
"Your game is football and murder, mine is anthropology," she said.
Viral remembered how Monica had shared the legal infractions incurred that put each of them in the debt of the criminal justice system. Smooshy, Monica had told them, had been responsible for nearly have a dozen arsons, including one at an animal testing laboratory in Cambridge. Plank, Viral recalled, had been some kind of pharmaceutical savant who'd managed to fashion his own generic amphetamines and sell them to the student body at UCLA. He'd avoided the most serious repercussions for dealing within a school zone, Viral learned from Alan during lunch, by leveraging his relationship to a church which counted as one of its members Justin Bieber. Apparently, the President's daughter had been a Belieber in her youth and the Canadian auteur's appeal reached the highest levels of the White House.
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"Well, what's the incentive for winning this competition against the other group?" Viral asked.
"That's what we're trying to figure out," Alan said. "What are we fighting for?"
"Does it even matter?" Plank asked.
Aleph asked him what he meant.
Plank said, "Like, who cares what the winner gets? We have evidence to assume that the loser will get chopped in the neck." He lifted his hand toward Highway Patrolman.
"Did we ever find out if she's okay?" Gyn asked.
"It doesn't matter," Plank said. "She could have been a plant for all we know, used as an example to set the boundaries on our own mental prisons."
Alan looked like he was about to call Plank a snowflake, but Smooshy interrupted. "Plank's right --"
"It's Plahnk, like the --"
"Whatever," Smooshy said. "Plahnk's right. It's a technique the SS used to great effect in the death camps toward the end of the War. They were low on men and weapons, but they maintained control of the prisoners solely through fear. Killing one at random for the smallest indiscretion caused a hundred to question whether a revolt was worth it."
"So we can bum rush the driver of this bus and United 93 our way to safety," Alan said.
"No, stupid," Smooshy said. Viral saw Alan's cheek turn red, but the boy also seemed to smile. Smooshy continued: "If what I saw on the news before they took our phones is correct, then this virus is also making itself at home on the East Coast. We manage to get out from under Frauline Little Head's custody, then we still have a virus that's closing down avenues for exit."
"So we're stuck," Gyn said.
"Unless we get Treyna what she wants and she releases us to our families."
The six of them fell into a synchronized silence as they each thought about the loved ones they hadn't seen. Viral had no idea how long some of the others had been sequestered from the world for their crimes. He imagined he was likely the one who'd had the most recent contact with his family, and already he could feel withdrawal of the familiar. He knew Monica had hit on the heart of their motivation. The woman was indeed good.
"There's no way we're going to get to the bottom of this virus' pathology before the other group," Farooq said. "You saw their resources. They had freakin' DNA sequences of 30 different bugs."
"But that's just information," Viral said. The group looked at him like he'd just said the most obvious thing imaginable short of Lemonade, the visual album, had been an instant classic.
"Getting the information is easy," he clarified, "It's processing it that's hard."
"They just did both," Aleph whispered.
Viral opened his mouth but Plank finished his thought. "I think what the Slumdog's saying is that the information, once it's out there, exists. It's not a rare resource if it's known."
Viral nodded. Gyn pinched her palm and jumped in. "So we just demand access to what Ankur and Helen gathered by claiming -- what? Discovery? Like it's a trial?"
"Why not?" Smooshy asked.
Gyn looked surprised that she'd even have to explain. "I mean, where to begin? For one, what incentive does that group have to share?"
"It all goes back to competition," Smooshy said.
No one in the group looked like they followed.
Smooshy said, "The Japanese managerial class knew competition between and within their divisions spurred productivity. To boot, its ferocity for status kept Communism at bay."
"Okaaaaaaay," Alan said, searching for Ada's conclusion.
"Soooooo," Smooshy said, playfully, "I'm sure Obama-hating Treyna over there would leap at a chance to make her competition more capitalist and less red."
Viral felt like he was catching on to Smooshy's angle. "Right," he said, "The information, or the data in this case, should be distributed evenly. That's what's fair."
"Forget fair," Plank said, "It's what's patriotic. Treyna's not going to let one group monopolize the source for resources -- data, information -- it it will mean less competition, less progress toward her cause."
The group seemed to be coming around on Smooshy's tact. "So what? We just complain to Monica that it's not fair that the other group has an advantage that for all intents and purposes they've earned through the development of contacts with networks in Wuhan?" Farooq asked.
"Why not?" said Alan. "It's not like Monica has any interest in protecting Chinese sources. Especially not if the cost is us not being able to do our job, which is, after all, what she really cares about."
"If it's good for us then it's good for her," Plank said.
The group nodded. Then Aleph spoke. She asked who among them was going to bring the topic to Monica.
With no time lost Smooshy said, "Easy." She went back to poking Viral in the bicep. "We'll ask her best friend."