He spends about twenty-four hours sitting there, stripped to the waist, his undershirt wrapped around his head like a turban so he won’t drop sweat into the works and cause short circuits, flicking switches on the digital computer’s front panel, swapping patch cords on the back, replacing burned-out tubes and bulbs, probing malfunctioning circuits with an oscilloscope. In order to make the computer execute Alan’s random number function, he even has to design a new circuit board on the fly, and solder it together. The entire time, he knows, Goto Dengo and Enoch Root are at work somewhere in Manila with scratch paper and pencils, encrypting the final Arethusa message.