But Otis Lord — who's watched the exchange, ashen, and has called up something relevant on EndStat's TREEMASTER metadecision subdirectory — now, to everyone's horror, removes from around his neck a shoelace with a little nickel-colored key and bends to the small locked solander box on the food cart's bottom shelf and as everyone watches in horror opens the box and with near-ceremonial care exchanges the white beanie on his head for the red beanie that signifies Utter Global Crisis. The dreaded red UGC beanie has been donned by an Eschaton game-master only once before, and that was over three years ago, when human input-error on EndStat tallies of aggregate SUFDDIR during a three-way SACPOP free-for-all yielded an apparent ignition of the earth's atmosphere.

Now a real-world chill descends over the grainily white-swirled landscape of the nuclear theater.

Pemulis tells Lord he cannot believe his fucking eyes. He tells Lord how dare he don the dreaded red beanie over such an obvious instance of map-not-territory equivocationary horseshit as Ingersoll's trying to foist