“Science. We were doing science. It was the most altruistic— I don’t want to talk about it.”

Peregrine said something else, and Laurence didn’t even know what he was doing before he mashed the “off” button at the V of the big guitar pick. He wondered if Peregrine could override the shutdown—but either it couldn’t, or it chose not to. The screen went blank, and Laurence shoved it in his bag.

Laurence was so pissed, he ran and threw his shoes in the ocean, overhand, one after the other. Laurence wasn’t in his right mind, he knew, because what kind of asshole throws his shoes away miles from home? His eyes were occluded, he was breathing overtime. He wanted to throw the Caddy into the sea, too, but he needed answers more than he needed shoes. He yelled and shrieked and cried out. Someone came down from the street to make sure nobody had died, and Laurence calmed down enough to say, “I’m fine, I’m fine. Just having a … I’m fine.” They went away, that concerned man or woman, or whoever they’d been. Laurence roared at the ocean and it roared back. Another fight he couldn’t win.

There were no buses coming, no light rail. So Laurence walked on gravel and tarmac and scattered nails and rocks until his socks were tatters. I hope I step on glass, Laurence thought. I hope I shred my feet.

He flashed back to that meeting in the HappyFruit storeroom, where they’d all acknowledged a statistically nontrivial chance their machine could tear a huge chunk out of the planet. Maybe he should have found a way to tell Patricia what they were working on, especially after she saved Priya. Maybe she knew more than he did about what could happen. Maybe there was an actual crystal ball, for all he knew. But then again, they were going to be so careful. And only turn the thing on if all other hope seemed lost. They had this.

Walking barefoot came to seem too literal a martyrdom. Laurence sighed, pulled out the Caddy, and pushed the little point of its super-fat exclamation point. The Caddy spun back to life. “Laurence,” the voice said.

“Yeah, what?”

“Walk two blocks over, to Kirkham. A late-model Kia with broken headlights will be passing in about eight minutes. They will give you a ride.”

Laurence wondered how you could drive in the dark with both headlights smashed, but the Kia had someone in the passenger seat holding a floodlight in her lap, the kind you’d see at a rock concert in a small nightclub.