“Come on, you little fucker,” he whispered. “Look out, eh? Can’t you feel it? Crisis coming for you . . .”

The plunger edged sadistically closer and closer to the cheese. The pressure in the pipes was growing dangerously high. Isaac hissed in frustration. He slowed the pace with which he threatened the cheese, moving the plunger inexorably down. If the crisis engine failed and the cheese did not show the effects he had tried to programme, Isaac would still crush it. The crisis was all about potentiality. If he had no genuine intention to crush the cheese, it would not be in crisis. You could not trick an ontological field.

Then, as the whine from steam and singing pistons became uncomfortable, and the edges of the plunger’s shadow sharpened as it bore down on the base of the belljar, the cheese exploded. There was a loud semi-liquid smack, as the nugget of cheese blew up with speed and violence, spattering the inside of the belljar with crumbs and oil.

Lublamai yelled up, asking what in Jabber’s name was that, but Isaac was not listening. He sat gawping at the destroyed cheese like a fool, his mouth slack. Then he laughed with incredulity and joy.

“Isaac? What the fuck you up to?” yelled Lublamai.

“Nothing, nothing! Sorry to bother you . . . Just some work . . . Going pretty well, actually . . .” Isaac’s reply was interrupted as he broke off to smile.

He turned off the crisis engine quickly and lifted the belljar. He ran his fingers over the smeared, half-melted mess inside. Incredible! he thought.

He had attempted to programme the cheese to hover an inch or two above the floor. So from that point of view, he supposed this was a failure. But he had not expected anything to happen! Certainly, he had got the maths wrong, misprogramming the cards. It was obvious that specifying the effects he was aiming for would be extremely hard. Probably the tapping process itself was appallingly crude, leaving all sorts of room for errors and imperfections in the process. And he hadn’t even tried to create the kind of permanent feedback loop that he was eventually aiming for.

But, but . . . he had tapped crisis energy.

This was totally unprecedented. For the first time, Isaac truly believed that his ideas would work. From now on, the job was one of refinement. A lot of problems, of course, but problems of a different and much lesser order. The basic conundrum, the central problem of all of crisis theory, had been solved.

Isaac gathered his notes, leafed through them reverentially. He could not believe what he had done. Immediately, more plans came to him. Next time, he thought, I’ll use a piece of vodyanoi watercræft. Something already held together by crisis energy. That should make life a whole lot more interesting, maybe we can start getting that loop going . . . Isaac was giddy. He slapped his forehead and grinned.