Some readers have been kind enough to comment on the technology described in this story. It may be relevant to explain that the IBM research project mentioned in chapter 3 was real, and was the inspiration for this story. Thus, I began writing this in 1996. I never found a publishing home for it, so it has languished in my computer until now. Although much of the technology described up to this point and in future chapters may seem pretty 'old hat' by now, it was cutting edge then. If you wonder how authentic the science may be, I had a neighbor who was a physicist at Lawrence Livermore Labs who read it and reassured me that I was nearly exact in my explanations, and had some complimentary thoughts on my theory of how the TDM might be powered (black hole technology), although that is of course totally theoretical even today.