Chapter 8

1. Dana woke up in the hospital and reached for her phone.

Her face had been bruised by the explosion, and she was worried that her phone wouldn't recognize her. But after an extra half-second, her phone unlocked, and she navigated to the camera roll.

Dana exhaled in relief. The video she had taken before the explosion was still there. In it, you could clearly see the soldiers carrying an explosive device onto the stage before the rally. She had only noticed them because, as a volunteer working security, she had seen them slip in the back. They had convinced her that the device was for surveillance, to protect everyone there to see the candidate speak. But it seemed suspicious, and so she shot a short, furtive video of them walking with it backstage.

A few minutes later, her world went black.

From her phone, she opened Facebook and went to post a video. After the upload, a now-familiar message appeared on the screen: DETERMINING ACCURACY.

The Fake News Act of 2024 had required social networks to prevent the spread of false information. Anyone who attempted to violate the act could be subject to fines or prison. It was off to a rocky start — Facebook was using a new artificial intelligence tool to do most of the compliance, and the results could be unpredictable.

But Dana knew what she saw.

A moment later, a blinking red square appeared on the screen. "It appears that you are trying to share false news," the message read. "This is in violation of Facebook's terms of services and of federal law. Your posting privileges have been temporarily suspended while we investigate."

Dana's heart dropped. She searched for news of the bombing across social media using the hashtag that everyone seemed to be using. What she saw was unrecognizable.

Every video she saw showed a different person carrying a bomb into the rally. Some showed the candidate herself carrying it in, in terrifying detail. Others showed long-dead historical figures and pop stars sneaking into the facility, their arms laden with explosives. One showed a beautifully animated Mickey Mouse as the culprit.

Dana switched to Twitter, where the president had recently sent out a message. "Incredible to see my opponents bombing themselves at their own rallies. Awful!"

A small cry now from Dana. Even the bad deepfakes were better than anything she had seen before.

The phone started to glitch, then made a loud and unfamiliar noise. A message appeared on the screen: "Dana Hassan, you are now a suspect in an open false news investigation. This phone is now evidence. Do not attempt to dispose of this phone in any way."

A law enforcement officer, the message said, was en route to her location.

2. If anyone had known that the puppy was going to give little Jordan's entire first grade class diarrhea, her parents would never have let her take the dog to school. But Jordan begged to bring her new pet to show-and-tell, and Jordan's parents just couldn't say no.

And if anyone had known that Jordan's friend Sally would go home from school that day with diarrhea, Sally's parents wouldn't have volunteered to bring a dish for the neighborhood potluck. But even though the whole family got sick, they'd promised to bring their famous potato salad. And potato salad they delivered.

The diarrhea spread, and soon, everyone in the city became desperately sick. There was a run on toilet paper, lines for the latrines. A black market emerged in wet wipes and rehydration salts. Schools shut down, and the city government — the officials who were still standing, that is — put the town under quarantine. Because the terrible truth was that the bacteria that caused the diarrhea was resistant to every antibiotic the doctors tried against it, and there was nothing people could do except to stay hydrated and hope to survive.

Public health investigators traced the epidemic back to several puppy mills that had been overusing antibiotics to treat healthy dogs. And the dogs were long gone by the time investigators found the mills that were responsible. Too many antibiotics had created a hothouse of antibiotic-resistant bugs, and the dogs carried them to three towns... and counting.

Hysteria mounted. One family tried desperately to bleach themselves and their homes to keep away the contagion, blinding themselves in the process. Beloved pets were rounded up for extermination, even ones with no links to the contaminated puppy mills. But the disease kept spreading, including to the university campuses and pharmaceutical companies where scientists were testing new compounds as fast as they could, hoping to find something that would kill the puppy poop bacteria.

The government poured emergency funding into antibiotics research, even as the scientific workforce dwindled. The sick and dying couldn't work, and those who had recovered were too busy trying to keep sick loved ones alive. By the time scientists discovered an antibiotic that could kill the deadly bug, it was too late: the entire supply chain for making, testing, and distributing antibiotics had been felled by the bug. There was finally a cure, but no one could take it.