That design guy came out of Olympia’s office just as Gabe was going by. He stopped as soon as he saw her, a weird look on his face.

“Excuse me,” she said, pushing by. But he didn’t excuse her. Instead, he said, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” Thick, arty glasses, arty shoes: the kind you polish. “No, I don’t think so,” she said, but he was already trying to guess where he could have seen her before, snapping his fingers and saying, “Weren’t you at XactlySo’s concert the other night?” Fear electrified her shorthairs, but she kept her cool, saying calmly, “No. I don’t think so.” Dumb. How could she have given such a dumb answer? His face froze as though she’d just confirmed what he was thinking, and she continued on her way, trying to not look like she was running away.

“Hey,” he called, coming after her.

Then she was running away, hurrying down the stairs as soon as she was on the opposite side of the fire doors.

The doors opened behind her. “Wait a minute,” he called to her.

 

She could hear his footfalls on the metal stairs and rushed to get to the INSECTARIUM AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL only. She touched her ID, his footsteps growing louder behind her.

​

Then she was in. But just as quickly, the refrigerator-sized door opened and he was in the room with her, his eyes wide at the rows of lobotomized parrots and geese on the shelves all around.

“You’re not supposed to be in here,” she said.

He had his cell out.

“No photos!” But he wasn’t going to take a photo. His phone’s screen filled with his Vine App: Here’s all the New Vine-Friends you made at XactlySo’s Concert!!! Below the caption was a field of faces, color-coded polka dots, each with a face and connected by lines — less like those used by contact tracing during pandemics than those organization charts that didn’t really organize anything, just gave the impression of connectivity.

 

Among the smiling posers, avatars, cartoons, and other images people used as their stand-ins was a photo of her grimace, her eyes squint shut with the effort of smashing XactlySo’s sound system, her face hidden by the keffiyeh she’d found in the yard behind the concert.

She tried to grab the phone out of his hand but he held it up, out of her reach, and swiped to another photo: XactlySo’s hands over his shocked mouth, her with the mic stand raised above her head like she was about to give it to him in the face. “Sort of like Joan of Arc, don’t ya think?”

“No. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Lots of other people do. Overnight ‘keffiyeh girl’ gained like 90,000 followers. Now there’s like seven people claiming to be her.”

“If you’re trying to say that photo is of me….” Even as the words came out, she realized how useless it would be to deny it. She wasn’t sure how she’d gotten away with it as long as she had. In their rush to get to the anti-concert in the yard outside, every cop pouring out through the club’s back door had run right past her, every club-goer and camera lens in the place pivoting toward the cops as they continued into the lot where the NO.IT.AN.EVIL concert had become a riot. Somehow in the confusion, after she’d busted up XactlySo’s equipment, she just put down the mic stand and walked away. Walked out the front door. The wheel of the bike with the same lock as hers was bent double under a police van parked up on the sidewalk. Through dumb luck, though, her bike was untouched. She untangled it, pulled it from the others, and just pedaled away.

Say nothing, she told herself. Even if you could be identified from shoe-recognition software, or keffiyeh-recognition software, or ass-and-elbow-recognition software, it still wouldn’t hold up as a positive i.d. in court. Or was she just being naive? Last year, a weekly Stich ‘n Bitch meeting had been broken up by the police: the women, who met to crochet a replica of the Great Barrier Reef, had begun discussing other ways to help, and conversation had turned to supporting a kayak and Indigenous canoe blockade that was trying to prevent an Arctic drilling rig from leaving the harbor. The women were charged with forming an eco-terrorist cell, and she wasn’t so naive to think something like that couldn’t happen to her: and all for trashing a few guitar amps. You have the right to remain silent, she told herself, like a movie cop.

“It’s okay,” he told her. “I won’t rat you out. But there are people who will.”

And they’re closing in, he didn’t need to say. She stood there in silence, trying to think in the hum of the ventilation fans.

“…a witch hunt is a thing,” he was saying, “an Internet is a thing. A witch hunt with an Internet is a third, and dangerous, thing. But a witch with an Internet is also a thing. I can help you disappear. Even if you’re not a witch.”

She began to deny it, but before she could speak he said, “Don’t even tell me if you’re a witch or not. I don’t want to know. Did it matter in Salem?”

After ErthLib was declared a terrorist organization, anyone associated with them, that is, anyone in the same room, or even just listening to their music could become a Person of Interest. Did he know that?

“Help me? Why?”

“Is there somewhere else we can talk?” Already the humidity of the room had steamed up the screen of his phone. He wiped it on his sleeve, obviously worried about his gadget.