These things alone—the vast amount of money in play, the colossal size of the formation—would have absorbed the attention of even the most experienced and hard-core T’Rain player. And yet the scene was visually dominated by something even huger and more attention-getting: an incoming comet. At its core it was as bright as the screen of Marlon’s computer was capable of shining, and its brilliance was lighting up all that faced it with ghastly white brilliance while casting everything else into impenetrable shadow. An interesting psychological phenomenon kicked in here, having to do with perception of light and color. They were looking at a monitor screen in a dimly illuminated room. The monitor was a tray of black plastic with some fluorescent tubes in its back and a window covering its front. The window was etched with a few million microscopic light valves, made of liquid crystals, that could be turned on or off, or to various gradations in between. If every single one of those valves was opened up to let 100 percent of the light through, then they would simply be looking at a tray with some fluorescent tubes in the back, and it wouldn’t be all that bright. It would be like staring up at a light fixture in the ceiling of an office: certainly an ample amount of illumination, but nothing compared to the amount of light that the sun shed on the ground, even on the most heavily overcast day. Anyone walking indoors and staring at that tray of light going full blast would not perceive it as bright. They might not even be able to tell whether it was turned on.