He also revealed that Thisbe had murdered for fun. Three times. The first time, he said, he had not suspected anything. The second time he did suspect, but it was hard to call a sister ‘murderer’ so he failed (his words) to take action. The third time, brother informed sister that, if she tried anything like that again, he would execute her without hesitation. He also informed his president, who consented to spare Thisbe, because the O.S. bash’ was already dangerously small. Reactions to this were… mixed, but no one doubted Ockham would have carried out his threat to kill a sister, not after his calm admission of ba’parricide.

The next eruption came when set-sets hit the stand, Sidney Koons and the other poor Cartesian set-set Martin and Papa had hired to track down O.S. It came out that the hired set-set had only glanced at the transit computer data and instantly been tempted, even compelled, to cause a crash. The Nurturists erupted. This was proof the set-set process made kids into monsters! Stripped them of true sentience! Reduced them to machines! For days Earth talked of nothing else. Someone (we all know it was you, Lorelei Cook!) chose this moment to circulate photographs of Ganymede in prison, wasted and fragile against the sheets’ white like a crocus against snow. Ganymede himself was a poor lab rat, reared by an unscrupulous ex-Brillist, just like those who had first twisted Brill’s methods to create the set-set process! The terms “gender set-set” and “O.S. set-set” surfaced on the surge, and “experimental rearing” or “clinical rearing” struck ears as hotly as profanity. Even Jehovah, reader, a “D’Arouet set-set,” was twisted by his enemies into evidence for the set-set ban. And, of course, Utopians were set-sets, Utopians with their cult names and their blinding vizors, who, like the young Eureka, never saw the Sun. For a terrifying day the Censor’s numbers indicated that, if the Senate voted then on Cookie’s Black Law, it might pass.