"Fact two. My story got pulled by CIA, NSA or someone that pushed the AG's buttons. And this Tempest thing gets heads turning too fast for my taste." Doug nodded briefly. Scott made sense so far, both things were true. "Three," Scott continued, "First State has been the target of hackers, plus, we have Sidneys . . ." "Sort of. McMillan hasn't caved in on that yet." "Agreed, but it's still good. You and I both know it." Doug grudgingly nodded in agreement. "Then we have all those papers that came from a van, or more than one van I would guess, and not a damned thing we can do with them according to Higgins." Again, Doug nodded, but he wondered where all of this was going. "Then the EMP-T bombs, NASA, the Phone Company, and all of these viruses. What we have is a number of apparently dissimilar events that have one common denominator: computers." Scott waited for a reaction from Doug that didn't come so he continued. "Don't you see, the van with the computer data, the endless files, the Sidneys problems, pulling my stories, the hackers? Even the viruses. They're starting to get a little out of hand. It's all the same thing!" Doug rolled his head from side to side on his shoulder. Rather than boredom, Scott knew that Doug was carefully thinking through the logic of it. "Aren't you acting the engineer instead of the reporter here? Miss the old line of work 'eh?" "Give me a break! You and your viruses are the ones who got me into this mess in the first place." Scott knew it would come up, so he had been ready and grabbed the opportunity Doug had just given him. "That's exactly the point!" Scott leaped off the desk to his feet. "All we have are technical threads, pieces of a puzzle. It's a classic engineering problem." Although Scott had never been a brilliant engineer, he could argue the issues fluently. "Let me give you an example. When I was in defense electronics, whenever someone built something we had to document, without failure, it didn't work. Radar, navigation, communications, it didn't matter. The engineers forever were releasing products that failed on the first pass." Doug stopped rolling his head and looked at Scott with a blank stare.