It started the way most things started: quietly, and then all at once.
The first indication wasn't a broadcast. It wasn't an announcement or a press release or an official acknowledgment of any kind. It was a question, posted at four in the morning on a public forum by someone who went by a name that meant nothing to anyone, asking whether anyone else had seen a particular set of documents circulating in a particular sector of the network and whether anyone knew if they were real.
By five in the morning there were forty-three responses.
By six there were four hundred.
By seven the question had been copied and reposted in eleven different places and the documents themselves had been copied with it and the people who had been assigned to suppress the pattern were no longer suppressing a pattern. They were trying to suppress a flood with their hands.
Tal watched it from the terminal.
