He stood looking at the machine. It was actually here. He had been promised so much. The investment had been risky but relatively minimal: only $6 million. And the speed of development had been unparalleled. He had seen so many research projects come and go. All hope and glory at the beginning but the fuse usually fizzled before anything came of it. It was par for the course. But early on during this unusual effort, his project manager had reported that this was no façade: the theory had a depth and solidity that shocked the diligent man whose task it had been to oversee.

But then this particular project had been unusual right from the very start. The two mysterious ladies that had approached him not long ago had come not with an idea, but with a fully fledged plan. More than just fledgling, in fact, the designs they had shown him had been thoroughly fleshed out and, apparently already realized, the product of research they said was being conducted in secret by the US government. Well, they had never actually said it was the US government, but even though the dark one might have been European, the blue-eyed one was most certainly an American, and she was the one who actually knew how the system was supposed to work.

Fearful of the recriminations of an angry US military, he had willingly and faithfully observed the strict censures of the two ladies. No e-mail, no telephone. Handwritten letters only, or personal visits. And here he was. A letter from the project manager Shinobu had assigned to oversee the development of the device had stated simply: “We are ready for you. Please come as soon as possible.”

He had rerouted the company’s private jet and had it whisk him from his estate outside Kobe to the research plant in North Dakota, deep in America’s Midwest. And now here he was. Staring almost lustily at the machine that promised to take his company to the next echelon.

The research lab was large. It was stereotypically oppressively white: white walls, white floor, white ceiling, with only some metal tables and several computers to add some limited color. Well, those and the big, ugly device that dominated the center of the big laboratory. Several things leapt out at the initial observer. Firstly, that the machine had a clearly spherical core, about one meter across. Next that the core was heavily ordained with various clamps and protrusions, none of which seemed to follow a particular pattern, but which were all hitched by various cables to a series of computers and transformers, all humming away with inconspicuous energy. But by far the most notable feature of the big, strange-looking machine was that the sphere at its center seemed to be made of solid, gleaming gold. Shinobu stood staring at it. His project manager, Ito Hanso, stood just behind him, wringing his hands and glancing at the lab’s hermetically sealed double doors.