The lab suite appeared empty, the computers off and the probe stations unmanned, but Pierce picked up the familiar smell of cooking carbon. He checked the sign-in log and saw that Grooms had signed in but had not yet signed out. He walked over to the wire lab and looked through the little glass door. He didn't see anyone. He opened the door and stepped in, immediately being hit with the heat and the smell. The vacuum oven was operating, a new batch of carbon wires being made. Pierce assumed Grooms had started the batch and then left the lab to take a break or get something to eat. It was understandable. The smell of cooking carbon was intolerable.

He left the wire lab and closed the door. He went to a computer next to one of the probe stations and typed in the passwords. He pulled up the data on the switch tests he knew Grooms had been planning to conduct after Pierce had gone home early to set up his phone. According to the computer log, Grooms had run two thousand tests on a new group of twenty switches. The chemically synthesized switches were basic on/off gates that one day could -or would -be used to build computer circuitry.

Pierce leaned back in the computer seat. He noticed a half full cup of coffee on the counter next to the monitor. He knew it was Larraby's because it was black. Everybody else in the lab used cream but the immunologist assigned to the Proteus project.

As Pierce thought about whether to continue with the gateway confirmation tests or to go into the imaging lab and pull up Larraby's latest work on Proteus, his eyes drifted up toward the wall behind the computers. Scotch-taped to the wall was a dime. Grooms had put it up a couple years earlier. A joke, yes, but a solid reminder of their goal. Sometimes it seemed to be mocking them. Roosevelt turning the side of his face, looking the other way, ignoring them.