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dead, in a matter of hours. An unconfirmed report was just coming in of a record-breaking hurricane hitting New Orleans, of dikes failing and half of the city underwater.
    After absorbing the disturbing information, Benitar dictated a weekly staff bulletin summarizing the events, including his own updated orders. Then, sending a mental command through the VR headset, he transmitted the notice to four electronic bulletin boards around the seed repository.
    Remaining in his office, he watched from a surveillance camera as four lunchtime diners in the cafeteria went over to the wall-mounted board and read it. Abe, Belinda, and Peggy were among them.
    Suddenly, Peggy pointed at the screen and exclaimed, “Look! The words are changing!”
    Using the camera, Director Jackson zoomed in on the screen, and to his horror he saw that a number of words were not what he had transmitted. Another electronic glitch, he thought at first. But he began to think otherwise, when Abe laughed, and said, “This is great. Can you believe what it says now?” The others laughed with him.
    Then someone said, “Director Jackson doesn’t have a sense of humor.”
    A murmur of concurrence went through the small group, and Belinda Amar glanced back at the surveillance camera, nervously.
    In a mounting rage, Benitar focused on the perverted, blasphemous damage that a saboteur had done to the last three sentences of his message. In the original version, which he had on hard copy, it read:
    We must all take the utmost care to safeguard the seeds, for they represent the future of humanity, the resurrection of the human species. I shall permit no dereliction of duty on my watch. If anyone violates my rules, there will be severe repercussions.
    The perverted sentences were quite different, and he felt his blood pressure rise as he read them:
    Don’t bother to safeguard the seeds, for they represent nothing more than the demise of the human species. I shall permit no attention to duty on my watch. If anyone violates my rules, there will be no repercussions whatsoever, not even a spanking.  
    Even worse, the perpetrator had added a postscript:
    Blow it out your alimentary canal, Director. And stop snooping on people.
    Quickly, Benitar hit an override code, and darkened the bulletin boards entirely. Other than himself, there were five people in the facility, and three of them had been in the lunchroom at the time the changes appeared. He considered it unlikely, but not impossible, for any of them to have committed the atrocity. Of the two others who had not been in the lunchroom, he studied surveillance screens in his office to determine their whereabouts. Static filled one of the screens, providing no images, but the other screens showed the remaining employees at work.
    All except Jimmy Hansik, whose record had been spotty at best. When he paid attention to his duties, he did passable, even good, work, but there had been noticeable lapses, and Jackson had come down hard on him. Could this be Hansik’s way of getting even? He did have strong computer skills, but so did some of the other staffers. He wondered where Hansik was now, and why one surveillance screen had been filled with static. Had Hansik sabotaged that screen, as well as the bulletin?
    For several moments, Director Jackson sat back in his chair and considered what to do next. He didn’t feel especially close to any of his workers, and would just as soon wipe all of them out now. He had more than enough bullets to accomplish the task, and to his knowledge none of them had their own guns. But before doing that, he would like to know the identity of the traitor.
    I must be discreet , he thought, and not do the expected. I won’t raise my voice to anyone about this, not at all. In fact, I’ll act like it never happened. Maybe I’ll even laugh about it. That will throw them off.
    Even so, I hate to do it. Maybe there’s another way.
    After calming himself with a sedative, Benitar checked the