In the Virginia countryside, Wednesday…

Wednesday evening RP1 and SW2 snuck into Dr. Tyler's office. It was GW3 who had figured out how to trick the videocams using an alternate feed from a memory stick that played the same video scene over and over again. He was able to do it all via computer.

GW3 was probably the most intelligent one in their whole group. He wasn't much interested in the Center's classes - they were too slow for him. He would spend hours on end in the library, though, absorbing ideas, mostly technical ones, from the computerized system that had most of human knowledge stored in its terabytes of memory. That same system was supposed to go with them to the stars, receiving periodic updates from Earth via transmitters already positioned in space.

GW3 wasn't really a rebel, either. He just liked an intellectual challenge, so fooling the Guardians was more of a game for him, rather than anything serious.

For RP1 and SW2 it was serious, though. GW3 had taught them both how to break into Dr. Tyler's computer.

RP1 had become obsessed with two questions. What happened to SW1, FS2, and HJ1? And why were most of them twins, or even triplets and quadruplets? The first question was related to his suspicion that the Center's official story was, at the best, misleading, in spite of learning about nuclear ramjets and astral navigation. As for the second, neither he nor SW2 could think of any particular reason why having a duplicate would be advantageous on a voyage to the stars.