“What happened to the silencer?” Sill asked. “It’s so much cooler with a silencer. That was just plain loud.” He turned to the rest of us. “Well, still exciting, right? I didn’t need him anymore. I just hate anyone who can’t be trusted. I mean, I trusted him, but you couldn’t. How long before I couldn’t? You understand what I’m saying.”

I looked at the vice president, then to Sill. “You’re telling me the government’s in on this?”

The VP and his Secret Service detail laughed.

“Professor Kitu, I’d like to introduce you to the vice president, Neal Shilling,” Sill said. “Behind him over in the corner is Farnsworth K. Farnsworth, owner and CEO of Meganational Foods. He owns ninety percent of the world’s food production. Over there is Hotswath Bajaj. Mr. Bajaj has quietly, and with a bit of my help, acquired over seventy-five percent of all pharmaceutical manufacturing on the planet. Arms maker, arms dealer, religious leader.” He pointed at person after person. “Names really don’t matter. Let’s do this thing. To the telescope.”

We were ushered down the hall to the observatory. Jean Luc Monfils was decked out in an extra-crisp white lab coat, towering over everyone. “The window is about to open,” he said.

Sill stood next to the big monitor. “Adjacent to the city of Boston, Massachusetts, is a township named Quincy. I don’t like it because the way the people who live there pronounce it.”

“The window is opening,” Monfils said.

“A lot of White racists live there,” Sill said. “I could have chosen any number of places, but I was once called a nigger in Quincy. Quinzee, they say. Quinnnnzzeee. A speech defect?”

“Now,” Monfils said.

I saw this as my moment. They were all watching the screen. I ran to the eyepiece of the giant telescope. I tried to focus. It took me a few seconds to realize that I was seeing nothing. I was too late.

“Too late, Wala,” Sill said.

“Quincy is no more. Milton is now adjacent to Weymouth and Braintree. I love that name, Braintree. I’ve been there. Pure irony.”

Shilling cleared his throat. “Sill, are you trying to tell me that all of those people in Quincy are dead?”

“What people?” Sill asked.

“The people in Quincy?”

“There is no Quincy. Look at the GPS on your phones.”

The men did. At the same time Monfils brought up a satellite image of Massachusetts on the screen. The shape of the state was changed. Hull and Allerton at the tip of Nantasket were now nearly touching South Boston.

I felt hollow. I felt grief. I was too slow. I couldn’t recognize nothing until it was too late.

“This is fantastic,” Shilling said. “The power. Can you do it again? Say, to China or North Korea.”

“No, we’ve shot our wad this time.”

“You mean we wasted that on Quincy, Massachusetts?” Shilling said.

“Thanks to Professor Kitu,” Sill said. “But you also have him to thank for the thing working. Before he could recognize nothing, it found its way here. If he hadn’t seen it coming, nothing couldn’t have happened. As it is, nothing happened and therefore nothing has changed.”