Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.

She was crouched over an open laptop, her scowl lit up by the screen as she stabbed cmd+R repeatedly. The browser blinked frantically as it reloaded the same white text area on the same light blue background over and over and over again.

"It's past midnight in the U.S.," she muttered. "Why hasn't the prompt been updated yet?"

She scrolled down the rest of the page, cmd-clicking every link until the Twitter page popped up.

"GODDAMMIT," she cried, 'THEY'RE ON THE WEST COAST."

Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway.

After a carefully judged amount of time she stood up and retied the bow at her waist.

"Sure, you stood me up at prom, Adam," she said, "but THIS is for calling my dissertation 'feeble-minded and a stunning waste of recycled pulp' in front of my advisor."

She retrieved her bike and stuck a hardbound volume titled "AN OPTIMIZED PROGRAMMABLE BINARY ARCHITECTURE FOR A SCALABLE DIGITAL THEOREM ITERATOR" into the handlebar basket.

Then, whistling, she hiked up her skirts, straddled the seat, and biked off into...