“Yes, sir.” The door banged shut; Cole opened his eyes and waited for them to adjust to the relative darkness. Joshua stood in front of him, his goggles now down around his neck, his hand reaching into his fur coat. “What’s your name?” he asked Cole.

“Mortimor,” Cole said, looking down at the patch on his suit.

“No, it’s not.” Joshua pulled something out of the folds of fur—two cylinders of wood, bright and polished. “I recognize the getup. I know you’re not him.”

“You’ve got me confused for someone else,” Cole said. “Where I come from, it’s a common na—”

“Do you know what this is?” Joshua asked. He held the two cylinders up for Cole to see, gripping them in a single fist, side-by-side.

Cole shook his head.

“Ever heard of the Luddites?”

“I know what a luddite is,” Cole said. He snuck a quick glance at Riggs, who seemed livid and confused by the discussion—his forehead was full of wrinkles, but his jaw kept clenching and unclenching.

“The Luddites,” Joshua said. He held one of the glossy cylinders away from his body. The other one dropped toward the ground and then stopped, hovering in mid-air less than a meter below its twin.

“The terrorists?”

All three of the men laughed. “No, not terrorists, my friend. Freedom fighters. We were once devoted to liberating mankind from the tech-nology that blinded them to a good life.”

“You preferred to die toothless and young, is that it?”

Cole regretted saying it as soon as it came out. He tensed for a blow, but none came. Eying Joshua warily, he saw a thin smile creep across the man’s face.

“There were some . . . flaws in our worldview, sure, but we have a much higher purpose now. We now know and understand mankind’s failings, and we’re working to fix them. However,” he twisted his outstretched hand slightly and the levitating stick swung in the air, “we still loathe technology. Deep down—the original members who are still with us—we prefer the simple things in life.”

Carefully, Joshua reached below the hovering wooden handle and grasped it with his other hand. He then brought both of the cylinders parallel to the ground while keeping them apart.

“Simple is always better, don’t you think?”

Cole raised his eyebrows.

“The wire between these two pieces of wood is constructed almost entirely out of carbon. Lovely, beautiful carbon. The matrix of life.”

He moved the handles closer, but Cole still couldn’t see a thing.

“The strand is just a few atoms wide, and yet, it is nearly unbreakable, held together by the natural forces of electromagnetism. Gorgeously simple, really.” Joshua’s eyes changed focus, away from the nothingness and fixed on Cole. “Do you know what that makes this lovely wire?”

“Easy to lose?” Cole joked.