Five hours later and five miles east, Ryan Gonçalves stared into his drink at an airport bar in Nashville. The bar was disgustingly new and trendy, with its former earth tones phased out in favour of post-Starbucks decor, all garish off-whites and reds and blues, and the clientele was young enough that anyone old enough to recall the first Bush administration stuck out like a sore thumb, but the Wi-Fi was good and so were his headphones. The drink itself was some lime-green fluid, exclusive to the locale, and it tasted the way Muzak sounded.
He had been in Brazil – in fact, he had been living there, at the local branch of a social media network. But the coffee harvest had failed over the past year, partly from blight, partly from climate change, the real had collapsed in value two months ago, and the riots had started a week ago. When the government had demanded they turn over their records, which included the real identities of some riot leaders, it had pulled out of Brazil.
His phone rang. It was Mike.