She saw it at seven AM.
Not because she'd been looking for it—she'd been in the middle of her morning review, the stack of documents Vanessa had flagged for her attention, the ordinary machinery of a working day assembling itself around her. Her news aggregator had pushed the alert and she'd opened it with the distracted attention she gave most alerts before deciding whether they required her full focus.
This one did.
She read the headline twice. Then she opened the full article. Then she found the news segment and watched it with her coffee going cold beside her and her morning documents forgotten and her full, undivided attention on the screen.
ASHFORD TECHNOLOGIES AWARDED NATIONAL BROADBAND INFRASTRUCTURE CONTRACT.
She sat back.
