The meets always go down in different places, and I never know who my contact’s going to be. There’s no schedule either, because a schedule could be predicted. Sometimes I go for two, three weeks without checking in with anyone. That’s why they call this deep cover, I guess. The Star uses a couple of different channels to get word to me—and vicey versey—but the best is also the simplest. Among the Cutters, I’ve got a rep as a kind of techno-wonk. Other soldiers spend their spare time getting brain-fried, getting laid, or getting into fights. I do my share of that—the requirements of my cover, not because I enjoy it, ha!—but I spend at least some time every day logging onto UCAS Online, this big public bulletin board service on the Matrix. (I’m a nullhead—no datajack, just my chipjacks—so I use a low-cost, palm-size computer.) UOL has a drekload of chill features, but the big selling point’s the massive message base. Lots of slags from all over the continent—even some from Europe sometimes—log on to connect with special interest groups or real-time online free-for-alls about anything and everything. With so much message traffic, it’s easy to slip a coded message into the data stream. Nothing tricky—it doesn’t need to be—and nothing that resembles a code in any way. You’d really have to know what you’re looking for to spot the kind of messages we exchange. (Frag, sometimes I miss them myself; I’ve hosed a couple of meets that way, but sometimes that’s the price you got to pay.) The message telling me to show up at the Coffee Bon today read like a typical neo-anarchist rant against the monopoly on the news media—badly argued, badly spelled, and badly out of date.