Kottman had scheduled, at that very moment, and previously, a lunch appointment with his mother. Kottman regretted his submission to her demand that they must meet at once to discuss an urgent matter. For then and always Kottman regretted his regret, for he knew regret, futile though not, an impoverished…

And so he was. Leaning motionless upon the table in the dark room, resembling imperially one-third microsecond from-to original refraction plus ten centiseconds hence retinal annihilation, in the virtuality of the not-yet flickering monitored projection, he represented a colossal marble representation of Argus Panoptes, the watchman in the ossuary of…