A remarkable thing happened at the match (two remarkable things, if you count the fact that Greece won). At halftime a thirty-second advert for honeyed nougats was shown. Within the hour, several freelance marketing analysts reported a spike-surge of nougat sales, beginning three minutes after the advert. That single advertisement had repaid its sponsor one hundred times over. Such was the stuff of dreams — at least for those unwhole-somely fixated on the marketing arts. Throughout the afternoon, these millions debated the remarkable event. The advertisement was analyzed in every detail. It was an uninspired thing, quite in keeping with the third-rate company that produced it. Importantly, it contained no subliminal messing about (though finding such was the main hope of those who studied it). The delay and abruptness of the surge were quite unlike a normal advertisement response. Within hours, all reasonable participants agreed that the Honeyed Nougat Miracle was just the kind of mirage that came from modern data-dredging capabilities: if you watch trillions of things, you will often see one-in-a-million coincidences. At the end of the day, the whole affair had canceled itself out, just another tiny ripple in the myriad conversations of public life.

Certain observers did not lose interest. Gьnberk Braun, like most in the inner circles of the EUIB, had an enormous (let's be frank: an apprehensive) respect for the power of open intelligence analysis. One of his teams noticed the Honeyed Nougat Miracle. They considered the discussion. True, the event was almost surely a mirage. And yet, there were additional questions that could be asked; some were questions that governments had a special knack for answering.

And that brings us to the second bit of dumb luck. On a whim, Braun called for a fire drill: the analytical resources of the CDD would be pointed at the public-health significance of the Honeyed Nougat Miracle.