"I thought you'd want to hear this as soon as possible," he continued. Then his smile faded a little as he noticed my remarkable lack of coherence. "Do you want to get a soykaf or something before we start?" he asked. I nodded wordlessly and stumbled into the apartment's kitchen nook. The process of nuking up a mug of soykaf gave me the time I needed to pull my mind back from the edge of sleep. And the first gulp of soykaf-too hot, on purpose-finished the job. By the time I sat back down at the telecom, I was feeling almost myself. "What have you got for me?" I asked.