Yeah. Just a coincidence. But she’d had the book for months now and hadn’t told a soul. So why had she felt so . . . so compelled to show her friend Brad the book today of all days? The urge had haunted her at the Exploratorium. It should have been just like any other visit. She and Brad had gone to the Exploratorium every few months since her father died. Brad was trying to interest her in the hands-on exhibits meant for children. He thought she’d be happier if she went back to school and got a degree in some kind of science, preferably particle science so they could work together. Like that was going to happen. Her doctorate meant nothing to him, both because it was in comparative literature and the because it was from Berkeley, not Stanford.

Still, she liked the Exploratorium, as much for the picnics they always had at the Palace of Fine Arts next door as anything else. The classic semi-ruin built for the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition held a strange attraction for her. Today the place was all torn up because the city of San Francisco was retrofitting it to withstand earthquakes. But the mysterious basement they’d uncovered below the Rotunda floor only seemed to make the attraction stronger. Why had it been built? Why was it empty? In the middle of her speculation, the urge to show Brad the book began to feel like she’d ordered Thai food extrahot—a burning sensation she couldn’t control. Finally, as the November fog rolled in through the Golden Gate and down the colonnade, she’d pulled out the book and let Brad page through it in the overhead light of the car.

Now, here they were, hurrying down the long corridor of the Super Collider Lab to see . . . what? An impossibility.

“I knew this was important, no matter what Casey said.” Brad had been under a lot of pressure since some guy from the government had come in to supervise his project. “He doesn’t give me the respect I deserve.” Brad glanced back to her. “Just like someone else I could name.”