A quick search found him a forty-five-second piece on Peter Halasz. They were now treating the case as a homicide, a federal agent said. They now believed the 'telegenic congressman' had been the victim of a 'random act of violence'. Clever, as far as bullshit went. Few things had as little meaning as random acts of violence anymore. Thomas wondered if anyone in the Bureau appreciated the irony.

After bouncing around a bit, he stopped on CNN, arrested by some eerie post-apocalyptic footage of southern Moscow. The story covered the furor caused by a company called EA Games that was 'typing' the images for use in its latest 'real-time-topical' first-person shooter game. Soon, for $74.95 you could hunt Dagestanis (or Russians, depending on your sympathies) in the rubble before radiation sickness claimed the last real-world victims. He wondered what the earthly difference could be between that and the newscast itself, with its smoldering blue Volkswagen banner.

The following story chronicled the latest twist in the intellectual property dispute over Lucille's Balls, the wildly successful porno that used CGI versions of Lucy and Ricky to explore the mysteries of female ejaculation. Since the makers of the film couldn't be found, the plaintiffs were seeking damages from the sex-toy manufacturers who had paid, via blind offshore accounts, for product placements.

Something about that made him laugh.

He paused to watch Peter Farmer, MSNBC's notorious all-CGI anchor, interview some senator about the recent passage of the Biometrics Integration Act, which would link all public surveillance cameras to real-time online feeds. Certainly the recent Moscow disaster, the senator argued, underscored the need for even greater vigilance. 'Imagine,' he said, 'them making video-games of New York or Washington.'

Thomas lay breathless, pinned by the interplay of furious images and light banter, trying to summon the will to go collect Ripley. Marines with their SMAWS swinging heavy from their shoulders. Formations of drone helicopters sweeping across Iranian hillsides. Bottles of Coke morphing into extreme athletes. He did a search for something on Jackie Forrest and found a piece from a local Nashville station. Sure enough, a spokeswoman for the Nashville police insisted they were treating his case as a homicide. They feared the 'popular evangelical preacher' had fallen victim to a 'random act of violence'.

Thomas almost laughed. Why make the effort to be creative or ingenious, he realized, when you didn't have to?

When he was thirteen his mother had dragged him to church on several occasions, apparently overcome by the need to tame her precocious son. It seemed he could still smell the people and the pews. She forced him, as shy as he was, to sing the hymns with the others. The trick, Thomas had learned, was to pitch your voice low into the background drone—like humming with the tires of a car. That way no one could hear you.

Especially God.

Dreams of backbones and scalpels. He awoke disoriented, frightened.

Frankie?