Sax ignored them. “But then, one of my…well, I suppose you could call him one of my creditors. A man I owed money to. I’d been borrowing from him in secret, for years. He wanted to fund my efforts against you, he said. And when I was at my lowest point, he came to me. He showed me the truth. He showed me how this place — this town — really works. There are things you cannot imagine, Danny, things beyond your concept of science. You think you are so smart. But you really are just a boy. You do not understand the depths of your own ignorance. You never would have given me the keys if you did.”

“I gave you a program that resets a clock,” Danny said.

“You gave me a back door into the computer of everyone who has loaded your Y2K software,” Sax said. “You’ve let me into their homes, their offices. But more than that, you’ve let me into their minds and souls. You do not realize it, but this town is a machine. It is a reality engine. And the person who controls it will be a god. He showed me that.”

It must have been a trick of the light: the sun through the window, casting a glare over Sax’s face as he sat there. Danny couldn’t explain it otherwise. But it looked as if Sax’s eyes suddenly went black, as if the hollows in his skull had filled with pools of darkness.

“Stretch out thine hand toward Heaven,” he said loudly, as if chanting, “that there may be darkness over the land.”

Danny felt something cold in the pit of his stomach.

This was more than Dan Sr. could take. “Holy shit, Edgar, you have lost it. Where did you get this garbage? Did someone give you a pamphlet? Or did you smoke something? I mean, really — ”

“Dad, I’m begging you, shut up,” Danny said. “Who? Who showed you this?”

“The Good Man,” Sax said, as if he was reciting Newton’s first law. “Your father should know better. He chooses to ignore the evidence he’s seen.”

Sax turned to his computer and tapped a few commands on the keyboard. “You see, I’m going to send a code through your software, across the Internet, to everyone who is subscribed to the Sharp Y2K updates. That is, what, approximately twelve million users at last count? The code will act as a virus, but one that works on people, not machines. It will burrow its way into their brains, and rewrite the operating systems in their minds. It will override their free will. It will turn them into living, breathing relays in a new network. My network. And they will do what is necessary to bring about the next world, the new age foreseen by the man who saved me. The Good Man.”