A/N: Not my characters. As usual.

This is going to be interesting. The main plot point were dreamed up at 12:30 in the morning as I was nodding off to sleep. God only how this might turn out.

This does not follow anything else I've written, so the universe has magically hit the reset button to some point shortly after "Objects In Space". The BDM does not exist here, because I love Wash and like writing his dialogue.

Thanks to all you guys who pointed out my various oddities setting the plot up. I've now given Mal and Co. something to do while Simon and Zoe play doctor.

*******

The Cortex, like most human endeavors, had pros and cons. On the plus side, it held the codified knowledge of the Union of Allied Planets - a girl could find information, opinions, and advice on nearly anything she might dream up, as long as she knew where to look. The amount of data was staggering if you tried to think of it in the whole; most people contented themselves with knowing only a small portion of what went flying through the 'verse on microwave beams, not caring what else might be happening to their data so long as it left them alone.

The down side, of course, was the content of that "else". Every page read, database accessed, and query sent over the ether was logged at dual processing centers on Londinum and Sihnon. It was ultimately fed through giant data analysis algorithms, where suspicious usage patterns were flagged for operators to follow up on. Parliament had any number of uses for this information: keeping tabs on opposition parties, ensuring that state secrets remained secret, and, in some cases, identifying dissidents and fugitives from their surreptitious data usage. It was by no means perfect - machine analysis of human action rarely was - but it took a pretty smart surfer to completely avoid detection.

Unfortunately for the Alliance, River Tam was very, very smart. And today, she was feeling rather lucid and had a lot of time on her hands.

With a little help from Wash, she'd man