The terror events around a decade ago believed to have a locus in West or South Asia and enacted in different parts of the world come to be known in media and academic parlance as the “failed plot”. At different times, London, Washington, New York, Hamburg, New Delhi, Lahore, the Philippines – and so on – have become the new, explosive location for the failed plot. In every case, the system, the network has failed to connect or ignite. As investigations get underway, the truth remains elusive, and its quest is abandoned. Fragments of the plotters lives, little bits of narrative float and beam through global media networks. Yet the whole plot is never known, and the narrative remains partially uncovered. In a million unrecorded ways, these narratives are completed, abandoned, denied, until they uneasily subside in the residue of public memory.