This evening the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant’s eating area was deserted apart from them. Brooklyn’s streets were quiet, everyone back home now that the last light of the evening had gone. All home, watching the news on their TV sets. Today’s sky had been divided all day by the thick column of black smoke from the collapsed Twin Towers, and New Yorkers were emerging from the fog of shock and dismay at the day’s events to a mood of contemplation and mourning.

They were lucky to find even this place open. Only a couple of staff seemed to be on, and they were busy half the time watching the news updates on a small TV set up right on the counter.

‘Edward Chan, as you guys will remember Foster telling us, is this bright young maths kid who went to the University of Texas. He graduated there, then went on to do some post-grad work.’

‘What is that… what’s post-grad?’

‘It’s just more studying, Liam. The kind of studying where you tell your teachers what specific area you intend researching, and they just check in with your work every now and then, and help out if they can.

‘So anyway,’ she continued, looking down at the printouts and reading, ‘at the university he sets out to do a research paper on zero-point energy.’

‘And what’s that?’

‘Jeez, Liam… are you going to keep stopping me to ask what stuff is?’

He looked hurt. ‘I’ve got to learn all these modern words, right? I mean, I’m still really just a lad from Cork who’s running to catch up on the last century, so I am.’

Maddy sighed. ‘It’s sort of like energy that’s supposed to exist at a sub-atomic level. It was still just theoretical mumbo… jumbo in my time.’

‘I think they started building something to do with that in India in my time,’ said Sal. ‘Experimental reactor or something, because we were running out of oil and stuff.’