on the 164th. At the 131st, below her, is the old Stock Exchange, hung upside-down now as a hipster den. Now the mites are finally closing in. A silver swarm coalesces around the 164th, and she vanishes into it, like a snip of scallion into cloudy miso soup. When the cloud disperses, she’s standing on one of the Stock Exchange’s upside-down overhangs. She waves, antlike, then crawls through a dormer window. “It’s not funny,” Derya says. “They’re a huge drain on emergency preparedness. Ripple effects are causing project slowdowns ...” “Freeloaders drive systemic evolution,” you find yourself saying. “Don’t you quote the founders at me,” Derya snaps. “The Free Society is fragile. The minute enough people find anticontributive behavior cool, the party’s over — it’s back to capitalist