“Our dreams are dead as the distant twinkling stars,” I said. “Mandibole and a man named Foote used the term ‘kaleidoscope’ in reference to the Jeffers Project.”

Dr. Ryoko stirred from dormancy. He clacked his whiteboard and clumsily drew an infinity symbol.

“The Kaleidoscope is a theoretical quantum engine,” Dr. Campbell said. “A figure of speech, really. The concept refers to a subatomic filter to bridge concrete and abstract reality. A figurative telescope that, in addition to seeing through time, could peer into multiple realities.”

Trapper of dreams and god-particles, Dr. Ryoko wrote.

“Oh,” I said. “Sean couldn’t resist attaching himself to the project.”

“It was the fulfillment of dreams he’d suppressed after college and his ongoing depression,” Dr. Campbell said.

Dr. Ryoko thrust his chin like a snapping turtle poking his head out of his shell, glowered at Dr. Campbell, and tapped the whiteboard image.

“Those tabloid news articles that the Hadron Collider posed a threat to humanity?” Dr. Campbell waited for me to nod. “It might create black holes and parallel dimensions, or destroy the fabric of space-time?”

“Apparently, the scientists were wrong,” I said. “Humanity is alive and not swallowed by a black hole.”

“The Jeffers Project was meant to fulfill one or more of those doomsday scenarios,” Dr. Campbell said.

“Where did you hear this?”

“Gerald Redlick. When we were younger, he mistook my distaste for aspects of civilization as tacit approval of his extremist views. An unctuous man. He deceived everyone involved with the Jeffers Project.”

“That’s zealots for you,” I said. “Always agitating for doomsday. Always laying in canned goods for Armageddon.”

“Which is why the Redlicks proposed naming the collider after a poet who preferred animals and the natural world to the industry and mores of mankind. Robinson Jeffers was a self-designated anti-humanist.”

A hell of a poet, Dr. Ryoko wrote. Correct about everything.

“The Redlicks and their allies don’t refer to the potentialities of global chaos as a ‘scenario,’” Dr. Campbell said. “They consider such an outcome to be a prophecy of salvation.”

Dr. Ryoko scrawled the collider.

Broken ring is their altar.

“Do you mean they pray to it?”

“I fear it prays to them,” Dr. Campbell said.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

We adjourned for a short break. Beasley wheeled in refreshments; finger sandwiches, cheese platter, and ginger ale.

Get on w/it, Dr. Ryoko wrote. He didn’t sample the delicious sandwiches or the tepid ginger ale. Evidently, he received nourishment via a feeding tube in his stomach. His dark eyes reinforced the impatience of his words.

“Sean’s death was dismissed as a suicide.” I nodded deferentially. “Feels wrong, but I can’t rule it out entirely. Murder? Well, there’s a hundred reasons to kill a man. I’m interested in two.”

Nobody in the room expressed a bit of surprise.

Not a suicide? Dr. Ryoko wrote.

Dr. Campbell stubbed his cigarette into a ceramic ashtray. He shook his head at Beasley, who’d taken a step forward, cigarette box in hand.

“To echo my colleague—not suicide? Your theory?”