Bonnie cranks back on the band throttle and the highway torrents out, snapping up old side roads and railroad tracks. Her vision ommatidizes: she flickers through a vast composite of Tennessee soft shoulders and medians. She races south.

It’s not until she’s collected in Mobile, trying to read fuel prices, that she notices her blind spot.

“Dropped a packet, huh?” says the quantum mechanic.

Bonnie, grumpy about it, just hands over her checksum. This shop smells like compressed air and beryllium, not the burnt oil of the old days, but for some reason he still wipes his hands on a rag.