An old event remembered

"It should be a cult," Adabeie said, smiling and rocking his chair forward to rest his palms on the table before him. "It's the only way to make sure that no one can call us credible."

Manahem considered Adabeie for a moment before laughing. "It's brilliant, really," he said, "And furthermore we should explicitly deny any association with truth or fact or whatever else have you..."

Adabeie filled his glass with more port before offering the bottle to Manahem. "I suppose the others would probably agree, don't you think?"

"Well, the basis of your guess seems to be the overhwelming reason this little philosophy of yours has gotten to be as interesting as it is. So why stop now?"

Jonathan came to the door and looked over to the seated men, his face blank.

"Yes?" Adabeie inquired.

"Something's happened. You should come and see for yourself."

Adabeie looked at Manahem before rising, his face tense with anxiety. "Let's hope it doesn't have anything to do with the core."

...............................................................................

The three of them entered the lounge.

"The problem's here?" asked Adabeie. "I thought we would end up in the lab."

"Nothing's wrong with the core, if that's what you mean," said Jonathan. "Although this might be worse." He pointed to the holoscreen and then out towards the horizon where the greater superstructure of Las Taoste lay. Adabeie could see smoke arising from the geometric monolith, smoke sufficiently thick to be clear from this distance.

"According to the news, there's a problem with the nullspace projects," Jonathan said.

Adabeie frowned. "I wasn't aware that those projects were made public."

"It was deemed in the public interest, but only recently. What they're saying indicates that there's been a slow meltdown for some time."

Manahem asked, "Isn't this something we would have known about even if they chose to keep it from us? Wouldn't we experience some blackout, some power drain, something?"

Jonathan shook his head. "It's not like that. We'd experience something in the lab if there was some issue with the feedback mechanism, but what seems to be happening... has nothing to do with that."

Adabeie looked to Manahem. "It could only be..." Adabeie stopped.

"No," he whispered.