Conversation was interrupted by the beep-beep-beep of a backup alarm, loud and growing louder. Someone pulled the front door open, letting in a wash of wet, cool Pacific air, to reveal a Ryder box truck backing up onto the lawn, heading straight for the front door. Some unkillable instinct in Doob’s head made him glance disapprovingly at the muddy ruts it was leaving in the lawn, made him issue a little tut-tut-tut at these irresponsible youth for damaging the grass—grass that in two years would be a thin smear of carbon black over a lifeless cake of hardened clay, presuming it didn’t suffer a direct hit and become part of a huge glass-lined crater.