Chapter Five: The Flood That Never Happened

The Bureau compressed the city's perception of the flood into the laboratory fire, then released a smaller volume of water at reality's edge to give the disaster's causes somewhere to settle. Three hundred seventeen people who could not be evacuated were deleted from registries, relatives, and public memory. Xingyao found them. She tried to write their names into a civilian core. Gu caused the fire to retrieve it. [CROSS-VALIDATION COMPLETE. CONFIDENCE: 72%. INDEPENDENT ANCHOR MISSING.] Seventy-two percent could not defeat civic history. At the launch Chenzhou projected his conclusion. “The code contains no fraud.” Gu smiled. “But this isn't a forecast system.” Chenzhou advanced the slide. “It's a disaster-pricing system.”