Joselyn walked from the student housing complex, a series of two-story, L-shaped, ultra modern apartments connected by a winding, narrow asphalt path, across the equally modern and stark campus of Mira Pavo College to Cornelius Agrippa Hall, the Chemistry Building. Though the Pacific Ocean was just over the rolling hills less than a half mile to the west, it offered no respite from the sweltering, early fall heat. Southern California was experiencing what is known as a Santa Ana condition, which meant that the prevailing wind was coming from the east, from the desert. It was hot enough and dry enough to make her nose burn each time she took a deep breath.

When she stepped into the shade of the fifteen story monolith that was Agrippa Hall, the air temperature hardly dropped at all. When she pushed through the double glass doors of the building's lobby, however, the icy cold, air conditioned air hit her like a sledge. It was little wonder, she thought, shivering, that so many students came down with pneumonia. Agrippa Hall had not been designed with their comfort in mind; it was the comfort of the gigantic computers housed in the building's core that mattered. She walked briskly to the open elevator and rode it up to the eighth floor and the Theoretical Chemistry Department.

All the floors in the building were laid out exactly the same; the only difference in the exterior of the rooms was the numbers on the doors. The elevator opened onto a small foyer and from there one had the choice of rounding a corner either on the left or the right. Both choices eventually led one back to the elevator as the corridors ran the full perimeter of the floor and were actually the ends of the same hall. On the left side of the hall, in the… building core, were all the research labs and to the right, with windows to the outside, were the offices of the professors and grad students.