DeathWeb (Fox Meridian Book 3) by Niall Teasdale

passage of the resolution.’
    ‘I am really not surprised about that. I’d imagine that they see local people handling the policing of the local area, rather than needing to bring in contractors.’
    ‘Your mother states that explicitly in an interview on IB-eighty-three.’
    ‘Kansas Belt News? She was on KBN, huh? Go Mom. KBN is the main news channel for the whole of the Belt. They provide feeds on the area to the metro and national channels. Pretty big to get an interview on there if you’re a no one from Topeka.’
    ‘It would seem that they are no longer “no one.” Your mother in particular. I have found her on a number of local sites and channels. She has become something of a celebrity in the Topeka area.’
    Fox shrugged, mentally. ‘Well, I still think their politics are balls, but at least they finally got off their asses and decided to do something about it.’
    ‘Perhaps you should stop avoiding them and see what they have to say.’
    ‘Huh. I somehow doubt I need to go looking for them, but I guess if they haven’t turned up to gawk at their daughter in a suit before Friday, I’ll go find them.’
    ~~~
    Fox and Marie were tired and not entirely thinking straight, and they were running on low blood sugar levels since neither had eaten properly all day, but they were there for the rehearsal. Jackson and Terri were looking brighter, neither having spent a boring day on an exhibition stand. Vaughn was starting to look exhausted, but she was determinedly ploughing through, stepping through the entire proceeding, essentially taking the role of stage director.
    And they had an audience: Eaves and Jarvis were there, and Sam had arrived and been passed through security, apparently because Vaughn had got him the pass. He was sitting there in the front row with a slight smile on his face, dressed in a black shirt and suit which made it look a little like he was working. From the way he had greeted Vaughn on arrival, maybe he was.
    Fox was a little worried to discover that she was the main presenter for the show. She opened proceedings, gave the overview, and then brought on Jackson to give his ‘technology is a wonderful thing and here’s the clever idea we’ve had now’ speech.
    Then Fox would return with Marie and the harness, and Marie would be strapped into it and set to work. Vaughn made sure that everyone knew that they had to have that part of the presentation wrapped by twenty minutes past the hour so that Marie got thirty minutes to do her stuff, and then there would be ten minutes to see the results and take questions.
    ‘I’ve done this kind of speech so often I can time them to the second,’ Jackson said. ‘Teresa and I have written something I can adjust on the fly if necessary.’
    ‘Good,’ Vaughn said. ‘Once Marie is working, Fox will introduce Terri to explain the AI and give details of the way it interacts with the wearer.’
    The rear wall of the stage was rigged as a projection screen. Attendees could see the details closer if they wished via their implants or wearables, but the screen made it easier to watch the presenter, and Marie, and still see the data being shown. Vaughn ran Terri through the sequence to check the timing, and then moved on to the next part which was Fox and Jackson running through a brief overview of the various cyberframes MarTech was putting together, or already had in use, to handle Palladium’s needs.
    ‘And that should bring us back to Marie for the finale,’ Vaughn said.
    ‘What do we do if I can’t figure out whatever it is I’m supposed to figure out?’ Marie asked. ‘I mean, aren’t these demos usually rigged for this kind of thing?’
    ‘Yes,’ Jackson said flatly, ‘but we don’t need to.’
    ‘We’ve engineered the puzzle so that you can solve it if you follow the instructions,’ Terri said. ‘In that sense, it’s rigged. There’s no sense in putting something here which Fox couldn’t solve with all of Pythia’s resources.