Breakfast comes from a baker’s cart, hot dough on a hot day, a scone to munch as he walks. But a chill washes over him when he sees what’s written in spray paint on the blank concrete wall he’s passing. In great dripping red letters it reads: DOUBLE TROUBLE LIVES. TORTURE FOR TORTURERS. Recalling the director’s anecdote about the bomb materials and his own experiences last night he’s at first surprised this hasn’t been taken down, but then, looking around at the nonchalant students, he realizes tags like this must be common in NYU territory.

At the CNS he’s scheduled for a tour of the lab, and he finds Karen bent over a computer talking quietly to a graduate student. While waiting he surveys the graduate students working at their computers, and watches as a group of researchers wearing lab coats slip booties on their feet and peel on gloves and head to the doors marked ANIMAL ELEVATOR. Carmen waves briefly to him from the far side of the lab. She gestures—one second—so Kierk prepares himself. Yesterday Kierk had noticed the effects of Carmen’s looks, both on himself and also in the obvious paralyzation of others. He too had felt mesmerized by those impossibly blue eyes, that perfect grin. Instinctively he knew he would have to approach Carmen from sideways on, never for too long or too directly, like she was a monster he could look at only in the reflection of his shield else he be turned to stone.

Karen greets him with a surprising hug.

“All the faculty heard about last night! I am so sorry that happened to you. What a crazy thing. Just horrible. We have the police investigating and the university is going to crack down. What those people will stoop to!”

“I’m not sure it was . . .” Kierk trails off when he sees her face. “Yeah, it was terrible. I’m just glad I was there I guess.”

A hand on his arm, she shows Kierk his computer terminal.

“I’m going to have to make some modifications,” he says, examining it.

“Why don’t you have a look first . . .” but already Kierk is hunting around for CPU towers to drag over to his desk. Carmen comes over and clears chairs out of the way as Kierk lugs over the last one.

“We’re in the same lab!” she says, brushing off the desk as he sets it down with a grunt.

“Yeah, it’s great,” Kierk says, sorting out a cord, then diving down underneath the desk into a forest of wires.

“So,” Carmen says, perching up on the desk above him, “what exactly are you doing with all these?”

“. . . network . . . neural sim . . . need . . . blue wire? . . . little doohickey on the end . . . look?”

She opens the drawers of nearby desks until she finds a tangled bunch of different covered cables to hand down to Kierk.

“So what are you doing?”