The last of the liquid flows into the dark well and disappears without a ripple. The nobleman dips his quill into the inkwell and continues writing his dispatches, but the bold, perfectly formed calligraphy is slightly different—not the original words sent out by the Renraku executives and managers, but information dictated by the virus implanted deep in the Renraku system. The messengers take the dispatches penned by the nobleman and carry them quickly to their destinations. As they do so, the information contained in those messages becomes a part of programs in other parts of the Renraku system, invisibly attaching itself to them and spreading outward to more and more parts of the system, carried around the world at the speed of light over Renraku’s network.