Sitting on filthy pavements, amid the garbage and broken stones of a week of street fighting, they have drawn up a list of 25 political personalities to negotiate for a new political leadership and a new constitution to replace Mubarak's crumbling regime.
They include Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League - himself a trusted Egyptian; the Nobel prize-winner Ahmed Zuwail, an Egyptian-American who has advised President Barack Obama; Mohamed Selim Al-Awa, a professor and author of Islamic studies who is close to the Muslim Brotherhood; and the president of the Wafd party, Said al-Badawi.
Other nominees for the committee, which was supposed to meet the Egyptian Vice-President, Omar Suleiman, within 24 hours, are Nagib Suez, a prominent Cairo businessman (involved in the very mobile phone systems shut down by Mubarak last week); Nabil al-Arabi, an Egyptian UN delegate; and even the heart surgeon Magdi Yacoub, who now lives in Cairo.
The selection - and the makeshift committee of Tahrir Square demonstrators and Facebook and Twitter "electors" - has not been confirmed, but it marks the first serious attempt to turn the massive street protests of the past seven days into a political machine that provides for a future beyond the overthrow of the much-hated President. The committee's first tasks would be to draw up a new Egyptian constitution and an electoral system that would prevent the president-for-life swindle which Mubarak's fraudulent elections have created. Instead, Egyptian presidents would be limited to two consecutive terms of office, and the presidential term itself would be reduced from six to four years.
But no one involved in this initiative has any doubts of the grim future that awaits them if their brave foray into practical politics fails. There was more sniping into Tahrir Square during the night - an engineer, a lawyer and another young man were killed - and plain-clothes police were again discovered in the square. There were further minor stone-throwing battles during the day, despite the vastly increased military presence, and most of the protesters fear that if they leave the square they will immediately be arrested, along with their families, by Mubarak's cruel state security apparatus.