The big mediatron cut back to a new camera angle on the original scene of 
the crime. Across the bottom of the scroll was a bar graph depicting the 
elapsed time since the start of the incident, and the practiced Judge Fang 
noted that it had jumped backward by a quarter of a minute or so; the narrative 
had split, and we were now seeing the other fork of the plot. This feed 
depicted a solitary gang member who was trying to climb aboard his bicycle even 
as his comrades were riding away on contrails of sticky foam. But the bike had 
been mangled somehow and would not function. The youth abandoned it and fled on 
foot.