Anyway, that would be the largest centrifuge ever built… and why would anyone build it? Plus, something like that would be loud as heck. Whizzing through the air at 200 miles per hour? At the very least there’d be some turbulence here and there, not to mention a lot of wind noise. I don’t hear or feel anything like that.

This is getting weird. Okay, what if I’m in space? There wouldn’t be turbulence or wind resistance, but the centrifuge would have to be bigger and faster because there’s no gravity to help out.

More math, more graffiti on the wall. The radius would have to be 1,280 meters—close to a mile. Nothing anywhere near that big has ever been built for space.

So I’m not in a centrifuge. And I’m not on Earth.

Another planet? But there isn’t any planet, moon, or asteroid in the solar system that has this much gravity. Earth is the largest solid object in the whole system. Sure, the gas giants are bigger, but unless I’m in a balloon floating around the winds of Jupiter, there’s just nowhere I could go to experience this force.

How do I know all that space stuff? I just know it. It feels like second nature—information I use all the time. Maybe I’m an astronomer or a planetary scientist. Maybe I work for NASA or ESA or—

I met Marissa every Thursday night for steak and beer at Murphy’s on Gough Street. Always at six p. m., and because the staff knew us, always at the same table.

We’d met almost twenty years ago in grad school. She dated my then-roommate. Their relationship (like most in grad school) was a train wreck and they broke up within three months. But she and I ended up becoming good friends.

When the host saw me, he smiled and jerked his thumb toward the usual table. I made my way through the kitschy décor to Marissa. She had a couple of empty lowball glasses in front of her and a full one in her hand. Apparently, she’d gotten started early.

“Pre-gaming, eh?” I said, sitting down.

She looked down and fidgeted with her glass.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

She took a sip of whiskey. “Rough day at work.”

I signaled the waiter. He nodded and didn’t even come over. He knew I wanted a rib-eye, medium, mashed potatoes on the side, and a pint of Guinness. Same thing I ordered every week.

“How rough could it be?” I asked. “Cushy government job with the DOE. You probably get, what, twenty days off a year? All you have to do is show up and you get paid, right?”

Again, no laugh. Nothing.

“Oh, come on!” I said. “Who pooped in your Rice Krispies?”

She sighed. “You know about the Petrova line?”

“Sure. Kind of an interesting mystery. My guess is solar radiation. Venus doesn’t have a magnetic field, but positively charged particles might be drawn there because it’s electrically neutral—”

“No,” she said. “It’s something else. We don’t know exactly what. But it’s something… else. But whatever. Let’s eat steak.”