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bringing it to Dahl.
    “What is it, then?” Dahl asked, looking at Collins.
    “It’s the Box,” Collins said.
    “That’s it? ‘The Box’?” Dahl said.
    “If it makes you feel better to think it’s an experimental quantum-based computer with advanced inductive artificial intelligence capacity, whose design comes to us from an advanced but extinct race of warrior-engineers, then you can think about it that way,” Collins said.
    “Is that actually what it is?” Dahl asked.
    “Sure,” Collins said, and handed the vial to Dahl. “Put this in the Box.”
    Dahl looked at the vial and took it. “Don’t you want me to prepare the sample?” he asked.
    “Normally, yes,” Collins said. “But this is the Box, so you can just put it in there.”
    Dahl inserted the vial into the Box, placing it in the center of the ceramic disk at the bottom of the inside space. He closed the Box door and looked at the outside instrument panel, which featured three buttons, one green, one red, one white.
    “The green button starts it,” Collins said. “The red button stops it. The white button opens the door.”
    “It should be a little more complicated than that,” Dahl said.
    “Normally it is,” Collins agreed. “But this is—”
    “This is the Box,” Dahl said. “I get that part.”
    “Then start it,” Collins said.
    Dahl pressed the green button. The Box sprang to life, making a humming sound. On the inside a light came on. Dahl peered inside to see the vial turning as the disk he placed it on was rotated by a carousel.
    “You have got to be kidding me,” Dahl said, to himself. He looked up at Collins again. “Now what?”
    “You said Abernathy and Q’eeng said you had six hours,” Collins said.
    “Right,” Dahl said.
    “So in about five and a half hours the Box will let you know it has a solution,” Collins said.
    “How will it tell me that?” Dahl asked.
    “It’ll go ding, ” Collins said, and walked off.
    *   *   *
     
    Roughly five and a half hours later there was a small, quiet ding, the humming sound emanating from the Box’s carousel engine stopped and the light went off.
    “Now what?” Dahl said, staring at the Box, to no one in particular.
    “Check your work tablet,” Trin said, not looking up from his own work. He was the only one besides Dahl still in the lab.
    Dahl grabbed his work tablet and powered up the screen. On it was a rotating picture of a complex organic molecule and beside that, a long scrolling column of data. Dahl tried to read it.
    “It’s giving me gibberish,” he said, after a minute. “Long streaming columns of it.”
    “You’re fine,” Trin said. He set down his own work and walked over to Dahl. “Now, listen closely. Here’s what you do next. First, you’re going to take your work tablet to the bridge, where Q’eeng is.”
    “Why?” Dahl said. “I could just mail the data to him.”
    Trin shook his head. “It’s not how this works.”
    “Wh—” Dahl began, but Trin held up his hand.
    “Shut up for a minute and just listen, okay?” Trin said. “I know it doesn’t make sense, and it’s stupid, but this is the way it’s got to be done. Take your tablet to Q’eeng. Show him the data on it. And then once he’s looking at it, you say, ‘We got most of it, but the protein coat is giving us a problem.’ Then point to whatever data is scrolling by at the time.”
    “‘Protein coat’?” Dahl said.
    “It doesn’t have to be the protein coat,” Trin said. “You can say whatever you like. Enzyme transcription errors. RNA replication is buggy. I personally go with protein coat because it’s easy to say. The point is, you need to say everything is almost perfect but one thing still needs to be done. And that’s when you gesture toward the data.”
    “What’ll that do?” Dahl asked.
    “It will give Q’eeng an excuse to furrow his brow, stare at the data for a minute and then tell you that you’ve overlooked some basic thing, which