All the way home, I turned over this memory and the thought of what I would do about "Masha," in case she was playing me. I needed some insurance.
And by the time I reached my house -- to be swept up into melancholy hugs from Mom and Dad -- I had it.
#
The trick was to time this so that it happened fast enough that the DHS couldn't prepare for it, but with a long enough lead time that the Xnet would have time to turn out in force.
The trick was to stage this so that there were too many present to arrest us all, but to put it somewhere that the press could see it and the grownups, so the DHS wouldn't just gas us again.
The trick was to come up with something with the media friendliness of the levitation of the Pentagon. The trick was to stage something that we could rally around, like 3,000 Berkeley students refusing to let one of their number be taken away in a police van.
The trick was to put the press there, ready to say what the police did, the way they had in 1968 in Chicago.
It was going to be some trick.
I cut out of school an hour early the next day, using my customary techniques for getting out, not caring if it would trigger some kind of new DHS checker that would result in my parents getting a note.
One way or another, my parents' last problem after tomorrow would be whether I was in trouble at school.