Bandwidth (Analog #1)

by Eliot Peper

Nothing undercut an expert’s aura of omniscience more than ignorance of the latest piece of journalistic trivia.

It had all seemed so elegant and justifiable in the abstract. Seeking atonement for the sins of his past, Dag would leverage his history with Lowell to win the work but throw the fight, cementing the Island’s carbon tax campaign. But up on that mountain, getting browbeaten by Hsu, knowing he was sinking the deal by underselling it, was so very different. A global carbon tax would castrate us. No matter how much he might have grown to despise his own role in Lowell’s success, betrayal was much more difficult in practice than in theory.