They were the four best computer geeks she could find, all culled from the Hartford area, given security clearance—a necessity, as much as it tested Howard’s patience—and then told some small parts of some very big secrets. The TRC had researchers who worked with computers, even some who could easily have been considered experts, but these new nerds knew the ins and outs of the real final frontier, the gallery of lost souls and hidden identities that made up current Internet users. Jessica barely understood or used the web herself, but she knew that for those who could navigate its landscape, it was a tool whose power was beyond measure. The goal of Jessica’s elite geek corps was simple: use this tool—and anything else they could think to ask for—to flush out TKs. To that end, Jessica’s analysts were combing both the black hole of the web and all available records of modern events for anything that might signal TK interference, either through a computer or from across a room.
