Senior engineer Carl Rodriguez pulled out his phone, frantically searching municipal records. His face went pale as he found the installation permits. "She's right. Installation permit was filed for October 23rd. How did she—"
"I pay attention," Zara interrupted. "When you live outside, you notice everything that changes in your environment."
The crowd's murmur grew louder. This wasn't a lucky guess; this was systematic observation spanning months of data collection.
James Mitchell stared at Zara with growing amazement. "But you couldn't have known the testing schedule. That's proprietary telecom information."
"I didn't need to know it officially; I watched the pattern." Zara pulled out her notebook and flipped to a page covered with timestamps and small sketches. "Every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:00 p.m., the tower's transmission intensity increases. You can see it in how birds change their flight patterns around the antenna. Electronics in nearby buildings start glitching. The pattern is obvious if you're looking."
Dr. Vasquez examined the notebook's crude but detailed observations. Each entry was timestamped and cross-referenced with weather conditions, traffic patterns, and observed electronic malfunctions in the area. "This is surprisingly thorough," she admitted.
Timer: 30 seconds.
Zara walked directly to the hypercar's front end, crouching beside the hood with practiced precision. She pulled a measuring tape from her backpack—a tool that seemed impossibly professional for a homeless girl to own.
"Third question: where exactly is your AI processing unit located in this vehicle?"
"Directly beneath the hood, center-mounted for optimal cooling and electromagnetic protection," Dr. Vasquez replied automatically.
"Perfect." Zara stood and drew an imaginary line from the 5G tower through the air to the exact spot where she'd been crouching. "Direct line-of-sight electromagnetic interference. No barriers, no interference dampening. The tower's test signals hit your AI processor at maximum strength."
She opened her notebook and held up a detailed diagram that made several engineers gasp. It showed the tower's position, elevation angles, the parking space coordinates, and the car's internal layout with mathematical precision.
"I've been calculating the interference vector for three days. Every time that tower transmits high-power test signals, your car's AI gets overwhelmed by electromagnetic interference and triggers its safety shutdown protocol."
Dr. Vasquez stared at the diagram with growing amazement. The drawing was crude but technically sophisticated, showing an understanding of concepts most high school students never encountered.
"But our electromagnetic scans didn't detect anything significant," protested engineer Sarah Carter.
"Because you scanned when the tower wasn't testing! The interference is intermittent, not constant." Zara flipped through her notebook pages, revealing charts that tracked scanning times versus interference windows. "Check your scan logs. I bet they were all done outside the 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. testing periods."
James Mitchell's face went white as he scrolled through diagnostic records on his tablet: every scan—morning sessions at 9:00 a.m., evening verification at 6:00 p.m.—never during afternoon testing periods.