Dr. Alan Jorgenson, undisputed commander and chief of the Accelerati, rang the doorbell of the old house, ready to meet with his superior—because in this world, even the boss has a boss. While one may presume to be the big cheese, there is always a larger, more pungent one to contend with.

And as big cheeses go, few could be more pungent than the one who gave Jorgenson his marching orders.

The housekeeper opened the door and beamed at him as he stepped in. “A right pleasure to see you, Mr. Jorgenson,” she said.

“Doctor Jorgenson,” he corrected.

“Yes, yes, ’ow silly of me.”

Jorgenson looked around. The house hadn’t changed in years. It never did. There was comfort in that for an agent of change like himself. Knowing that some things were forever gave him a bit of grounding.

“’E’s been waiting for you, ’e ’as,” the housekeeper said with a pronounced cockney accent, as if she’d been dragged from the gutters of industrial England.

To the best of Jorgenson’s knowledge, the housekeeper had never been to England, much less come from there. If anything, she should’ve had a Germanic sensibility, as her gearworks had come from a fine watch factory in Düsseldorf. Her owner, even though he was American, preferred a British touch to his domestic life. Even the air in the house smelled of musty Victorian sensibility.

“’E’s in the parlor. Would you like a spot of tea, dear? I ’ave some nice Oolongevity, or English breakfast.”

“Just water will be fine, Mrs. Higgenbotham.”

“Would you prefer your water transdimensionally filtered, or just from the tap?”

“Tap will do, thank you.”

“Quantum-chilled or—”

“Just bring it.”

“As you wish, guv’nor.”

The parlor, as always, was dark. The aged man in the tall red leather chair was surrounded by his perpetual cloud of cigar smoke. “Good evening, Al,” he said.

Jorgenson sat down. “And to you, Al,” he said back.

Such was their standard greeting.

Jorgenson waited for his eyes to adjust to the dimness, but he knew they never would, so low was the light. What irony, thought Jorgenson, that this man, a luminary, would come to despise light. Or perhaps he just couldn’t bear to see luminaries who shone even brighter than he.

“I suppose I should congratulate you,” the old man said, “for the fact that your team’s incompetence did not bring about the end of the world.”

Jorgenson grimaced as he recalled the massive asteroid that had come so close to wiping out all life on Earth only a few weeks earlier. “I take full responsibility for that debacle.”

“Noble of you to accept the blame,” the old man said from within his cloud of smoke, “but there were other forces at play. It was out of your control from the beginning.”

For Jorgenson, the idea of anything being out of his control was like a slap in the face. Yet he had to admit that even with a mass of technology, money, and influence at his fingertips, he could not have affected the Felicity Bonk incident. “This Nick Slate boy and his friends are shrewder than we gave them credit for.”

“Yes, the boy,” the old man said with a sigh. “We will deal with him when the time comes. An honor I shall leave to you.”

Jorgenson smiled. “Believe me, it will be my pleasure.”

“But only when the time comes. In the meantime, there are other things to consider—”

At the creak of a floorboard, Jorgenson turned to see Mrs. Higgenbotham walk in with a glass of water that had hardened into ice the color of a glacier. “We’re ’avin’ trouble with the quantum-coolin’ thingamajig. But you know what they say: ‘When everything is right with the world, even squirrels sing.’ And who wants singin’ squirrels?” She patted him on the shoulder. “It’ll melt eventually.”

“Don’t you find it curious,” the old man asked, once the housekeeper had left, “that the Bonk asteroid has settled into an orbit as stable as the moon’s?”

Jorgenson knew where this was going, but he played along anyway. “Some call it luck. Some say it’s divine intervention—”

The old man waved his hand at the very suggestion. Smoke eddied in a lazy whirlpool. “It is neither, and you know it. Rather it is part of a plan—a very human plan—devised by a great mind. Unfortunately, that mind was not great enough to know what was good for it.” Then the old man smiled. “Which is why we will be reaping the benefits of Tesla’s greatest endeavor.” He pointed his cigar at Jorgenson. “In the short term, it is your efforts that will make all the difference, however.”

Then the old man blew smoke with such force that it bridged the distance between them, filling Jorgenson’s nostrils and stinging his eyes. “I expect you, as the head of the Accelerati, to impress me,” the old man said, with a fair measure of threat in his voice. “I will settle for nothing less.”

Jorgenson gripped his chair as if it might fly out from under him. “And in the long term?” he asked. “I suspect you have a plan of your own, do you not?”

“I do,” said the old man, leaning forward for the first time. “A spectacular one.”