TURNING HIS ATTENTION back to matters inside the plane’s cabin, Richard resumed reading the T’Rain Gazette, a daily newspaper (electronic format, of course), created by a microdepartment operating out of the Seattle office, which summarized what had been going on all over T’Rain during the preceding twenty-four hours: notable achievements, wars, duels, sackings, mortality statistics, plagues, famines, untoward spikes in commodity prices.