It's the summer break before she's off to college. Georgia Tech... Electrical Engineering. There's tuition, of course. And loans. She has a scholarship, but it's not really enough, and the lady administering it seemed very... Well. The performative charity service that seeks to convert money into feelgood soft reputation for whoever Zell Miller is kind of fucking grates, as a system, but it's giving her money for looking good and smart and clever- She writes sci-fi! She does robotics! What a geeeenius we are helping achieve her goaaaals! What a geeeenerous rich person!

...Bleh, but she'll take it. Selling her soul to the class system. Or at least a tiny bit of it. Overall, things are good. It's summer. She has a 2-liter of diet coke and an internet connection and thirty tabs open and she's rubbing her hands in anticipation at what the readers will think of the latest development in her sci-fi; The Drive Crew's long anticipated stealth spacewalk scheme, using the genetic treatment techniques to give themselves radiation and cold resistance in addition to their other enhancements, the whiskers and ears that help them pick up faint vibrations, so they can spacewalk right past the engine and get behind the firm front that the squabbling Hydroponics Clans put up, and force them to the negotiating table...

She leans back in her chair, wobbling it on two legs with her foot against the desk, bouncing, thinking.

The big emotional line here is the Drive Crew's attempt to do better, to fix things, but... Shouldn't they face issues in their own house, too? Some betrayal from within, warning the Clans? Or is that too pessimistic and cynical... Maybe instead they should suffer for their impetuousness, for not thinking things through enough... Recklessly breaking something irreplaceable? Unforeseen health complications from the vacuum mods?

She pushes a bit too hard and the chair tumbles backwards, sending her into a yelp and a fall.