In another excerpt from the secret Senate hearings, Senators March and Wright question Jonathan Fitzman about his ergonyms. Laughing and singing, Fitzman boasts that it took two and a half years, $500 million in funding, and many failures before he created an ergonym with the ability to reproduce. His initial ergonyms exploded when their cells divided. Now, the population of ergonyms doubles every 36 minutes. The day after the first ergonym divided, he had over a trillion ergonyms.

Tamaya arrives home two hours late. Fortunately, her mother is still working, so Tamaya has a chance to clean her cuts and wash her dirty clothes. She realizes that Marshall’s shortcut was foolish. It would have been safer to face Chad somewhere public. Tamaya puts her mother’s healing hand cream on her hand, which is now covered in red bumps and feels “tingly.” Tamaya’s mother brings home pizza and questions Tamaya about a school report. Tamaya got stuck researching Calvin Coolidge because she followed Ms. Filbert’s instructions to quietly raise her hand, but Ms. Filbert gave the first assignments to kids who shouted out. Ms. Filbert compared Tamaya to “Silent Cal,” which irritated Tamaya because she was doing what Ms.