T he search for information on topopoleis turned out to be one of those good news/bad news things. Good news: I’d found an expert. Bad news: he was dead. Good news: he’d arranged to be replicated. Bad news: he’d gone right back to work and was really hard to get hold of. The whole Keystone Kops act would be giving me a headache if I were still subject to such things, so I decided to take a break and do some work on a personal side project I had going.