The six months passed with agonizing slowness. Dr. Markram did what he could on the project with the budget he had, sometimes setting priorities that puzzled his comrades as he knew what they didn’t: in six months, the cloud computation results should begin to come in, and he had to be ready.

At last the fateful day arrived, and Dr. Markram sat at his computer watching the clock display tick off the seconds until 0:00 Universal Time. 23:57…58…59… He stared at the screen expectantly.

Nothing.

He waited a full minute, then another.

Still nothing.

What was going on? He’d kept up on the virus alert bulletins, and his cloud virus had never shown up. Had something gone wrong? Had some hacker noticed his virus and subverted it to his own ends?

Markram frowned. There was only one way to find out—take a look at one of the virus processes itself. And he knew where at least one copy of it should be running.

Markram grabbed his coat on the way out the door. He had a date at the public library.