The morning began with a breakfast of hörnchen and liverwurst, served by a girl wearing matching psi bracelets on each of her slender wrists.

The conference dining room was on the second floor, and if Nicolaus angled his chair correctly, he could just about see the towers of the Berliner Dom across a leaf-strewn park.

“I’ve been thinking about immortality,” Nicolaus announced, and that much was true; he had woken up at 5 a.m. to a violent intrusion of metaphysical thoughts, possibly driven by anticipation of today’s grand announcement.