Turn or Burn by Boo Walker

the Convention Center was locked down.
    Up ahead, I could see the barricade where they had blocked off the street. A thick line of SWAT stood with shields and sticks, ready for the crowd to try to penetrate. We just had to get inside. Looking left, I watched two men get thrown to the ground and cuffed by police. Others were circling around the scene, screaming and throwing things at the cops. Another traffic light stopped us. We were the third car back. Two blocks to go...
    A loud boom.
    We all whipped our heads back. A giant of a man was trying to see inside our vehicle. I touched my gun, ensuring it was there. He started beating on the windows with both fists. I didn’t think he could break the strong glass, but it wasn’t worth the risk.
    Francesca was driving, and she didn’t need me to tell her to move. She held down the horn and started working her way to the wrong side of the road. Two cars had to stop and move onto the sidewalk to avoid hitting us. But she didn’t stop, like we’d all been trained to do. When you’re driving in that kind of situation, you must drive offensively. Don’t give other drivers the time to make decisions. Make the choice for them. Make them get out of the way or stop. She didn’t let up until we’d gone another block, and we passed through the last light before the barricade. Several other cars were in line to get in. We pulled up behind the last one and waited.
    I shut down for a minute. That had really put me on edge. This voice in my head kept telling me I wasn’t ready, but I pushed it away. I couldn’t let Ted down.
    I turned around and stared at the astounding sea of people and the great quantity of signs bobbing up and down over the mass. I cracked the window. A group was chanting, “Don’t play God! Don’t play God!”
    The guards finally let us in after checking each of our IDs and running a dog around the car and a mirror under it. It was a good feeling to be out of that mess. If someone had been gunning for the doctor, it would have been easy to strike with some sort of bomb. We were okay, though. For now.
    “There it is,” Francesca said. The Convention Center came into view. Massive silver block letters along the front read: The Seattle Convention & Trade Center. The walls were made mostly of glass. A sky bridge reached out from the fourth floor and rose over the street to an adjacent building. The Convention Center covered two full blocks. Plenty of exposure. If I was the one trying to cause problems during the Summit, I could have had my way quite easily. Simply put, I had a terrible feeling about what was to come.
    We rode down into the parking garage and wound our way to a spot three levels down. Lots of people that could have been clones of the doctor were working their way to the entrance. The real geek squad. All of them had probably memorized the periodic table before they could walk. The ones that everybody picked on during grade school who were now married to all the good-looking, smart women.
    We followed the crowd, flanking the doctor, not relaxing for a single second. Ted walked several feet behind us, and Francesca and I took either side. We rode to the first floor, and each of us worked our way through a security line, much like you’d find at an airport. As we got up to the front, we handed the officer our guns and papers. He let us pass without dealing with the detectors.
    On the other side, we were handed an off-white pamphlet. There was a quote on the cover by Raymond Kurzweil, who would be speaking later that day. It read:
     
    The Singularity denotes an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process that started with biological evolution and has extended through human-directed technological evolution.
     
    Inside the pamphlet, there was a list of events and speakers, including biographies and descriptions relative to each talk. On the third page, there was a picture of Dr. Sebastian, and