Right now, across the Pacific Ocean, in a small, tasteful Victorian town located a third of the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles, computers are seizing up, crucial files are disappearing, and e-mail is careening into intergalactic space, because Randy Waterhouse is not there to keep an eye on things. The town in question sports three small colleges: one founded by the State of California and two founded by Protestant denominations that are now actively reviled by the majority of their faculty. Taken together these colleges—the Three Siblings—comprise an academic center of middling importance. Their computer systems are linked into one. They exchange teachers and students. From time to time they host academic conferences. This part of California has beaches, mountains, redwood forests, vineyards, golf courses, and sprawling penal facilities all over the place. There are plenty of three- and four-star hotel rooms, and the Three Siblings, taken together, have enough auditoria and meeting rooms to host a conference of several thousand.