“Many years ago, for my own dissertation,” he nodded. “What was it she called Phillip?”

“The surpassing woodenhead of all sovereigns,” said Nguyen.

Sheehan smiled in remembrance. “That’s right, she did . . . Anyway, reload the software, then get some sleep.” She started to protest, but the look on his face stopped her. “I don’t want to see you back here for at least six hours.”

JRV NAGOYA, 1156 HOURS, 15 JANUARY 2021

Morley and Dunne were hunkered down in front of the snack machine, trying for a casual look, but everything about them screamed conspiracy. They were fixated on a jumbo Snickers bar that had been half dislodged and was threatening to fall into the dispensing bin for free.

“You can rock the machine five degrees off the perpendicular,” said Morley, who was overweight, out of shape, and physically incapable of doing any such thing. This wasn’t the first jumbo candy bar he had encountered.

“Or we could just buy another Snickers,” protested Dunne. “Then we’d get two for the price of one.”

“Jeez, Sharon, you’re such a narc. You won’t boost a fucking freebie, but one word from Doctor Frankenstein back there and you’d sell out your own grandmother to make him happy. He’s evil, I tells ya! E-e-e-e-e-v-i-l.”

“Knock it off, dickhead,” she hissed. Sharon Dunne was the youngest of Manning Pope’s team, a Caltech graduate with a first-class thesis on quantum foam manipulation. She was also a far-distant descendant of the poet John Donne, and a goth lesbian with a hard-on for the oeuvre of Johnny Depp. As she contemplated the chocolate bar, she drummed her fingers on the snack machine. They were covered in black nail polish and chunky pewter death head rings.

“And anyway, Jonathon,” she chided, “I didn’t exactly see you stepping forward to make your big speech about how he’s Meddling With Powers Beyond His Control.”

At that Morley lost interest in the chocolate bar. He grimaced and whispered theatrically, “Yeah, well, I didn’t fancy getting my head torn off again. Dude went ballistic when I pointed out that hole in his last solution. I thought he was gonna throw me over the side of the fucking boat.”

They both glanced around the small canteen as though Pope might suddenly materialize, like Hannibal Lector with a knife and fork.

“Well, what’s the worst that could happen?” Dunne countered. “We could brown out the fleet again. That was fun, really, watching Kolhammer tear Pope a new asshole. I’d pay good money to see something like that again.”

“Yeah, or we could rip open the Hellmouth and let out all kinds of orcs and vampires and shit,” said Morley.

“Oh, give it a rest, you geek. You know, the guys on the Manhattan Project thought there was a chance the first A-bomb would blow up the whole world, with a blast that would ignite the atmosphere, then just keep getting bigger and bigger. But it didn’t, did it? It was never going to.”