"Carlos is on the front entrance, to discourage him leaving," he said, unscrewing the caps on the three bottles of water. "Clovis on the rear and the inside route to Hong’s." He began to transfer the food to the three compostable plates Hong had brought with it, using two pairs of plastic chopsticks like a fork. Then he used a single pair to quickly reposition everything, so that it suddenly looked better than she would’ve guessed it was possible for Hong’s food to ever look. If she’d done it, she knew, she’d have wound up with three approximately same-sized messes of noodles and rolls. Watching him use the chopsticks to redistribute those little salty fake fish eggs, she remembered the robot girls prepping the snacks for the dead woman’s party. "Consider ignoring the placards our rent-a-zealots are displaying," he said. "They were designed by an agency that specializes in political attack ads, and are specifically intended to upset you personally, while turning the community against you."