“Vespasian,” Detective Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer said, peering sidewise at Netherton over her greatcoat’s… — William Gibson
“Vespasian,” Detective Inspector Ainsley Lowbeer said, peering sidewise at Netherton over her greatcoat’s upraised collar, “our hobbyist of hellworlds. Recall him?”
“The one who made such horrific stubs? All war, all the time?”
“I’d wondered how he so quickly rendered them nightmares,” she said. “Eventually, I looked into it…Vespasian discovered a simple way of exaggerating the butterfly effect, or so it seems…On making contact, he’d immediately withdraw. Then return, months later, study the results, and very deliberately and forcefully intervene. He achieved remarkable if terrible results, and very quickly. Investigating his method, I happened on another of his so-called stubs, one in which he’d initiated contact in 2015, several years before the earliest previously known contact."
Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
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Netherton said nothing, something he’d only recently been learning to deliberately do.
“Turkey and Syria weirding you out?…Folks in Frankfurt made me feel like the Cold War never really went away. Somebody shoots down a couple of Russian jets, wham, it’s Cold War Atlantis, risen from the depths.”
“What’s going on?” asked Manuela, eyeing the container’s door. “Is this a cult? Kidnapping people and telling them somebody’s after them?”
“Let me think about it,” Verity said.
“You’re kidnapped too? Let’s fucking escape!”
