The digital detonation happened at 9:01 AM on Tuesday. It wasn't fire and smoke, but data and bandwidth — a different kind of shockwave, one you could watch spreading in real time across a dashboard instead of a skyline. The summary of the Chen-Valerio Financial Transparency Act appeared on the foundation's server, and within seconds the traffic spikes triggered alarms in IT, red bars climbing where there should have been quiet green lines. By 9:05, the major networks had picked it up. By 9:15, the hashtags were trending globally, spilling across languages I didn't recognize. By 9:30, my phone was vibrating so continuously against the desk it felt like it was trying to crawl off the edge and escape the room entirely.
I sat in the new office on the top floor, glass walls offering a view of
