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Samoan by birth, he
     had used his college football scholarship to accomplish his true goal of becoming a scientist.
    Reggie took a bite and continued to talk while he chewed. “I thought you might go with your friends to the beach. Teresa is
     hot, by the way.”
    “You know, sometimes you almost convince me that you’re not a nerd,” Kai said. “But then you open your mouth to talk and remind
     me. Besides, I couldn’t leave you alone with all those impressionable sixth graders. You scared the bejesus out of the last
     group.”
    “I was just telling it like it is.”
    “But did you have to show those pictures from Sri Lanka? I think ten-year-olds are a little young to see photos of dead bodies.”
    “Hey, if it keeps them from running down to the shore during the next tsunami warning, I’ve done my job.”
    “Yeah, well, maybe I’ll do the next few tours. Where’s the bulletin?”
    Reggie handed Kai a sheet of paper. On it was the date followed by a standard tsunami information message:
    TSUNAMI BULLETIN NUMBER 001
    PACIFIC TSUNAMI WARNING CENTER/NOAA/NWS
    ISSUED AT 1858Z
    THIS BULLETIN IS FOR ALL AREAS OF THE PACIFIC
    BASIN EXCEPT
    ALASKA—BRITISH COLUMBIA—WASHINGTON—
    OREGON—CALIFORNIA.
    … TSUNAMI INFORMATION BULLETIN …
    THIS MESSAGE IS FOR INFORMATION ONLY.
    THERE IS NO TSUNAMI WARNING.
    OR WATCH IN EFFECT.
    AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE
    PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS
    ORIGIN TIME—1858Z
    COORDINATES—7.1 NORTH 166.4 WEST
    LOCATION—NORTHWEST OF CHRISTMAS ISLAND,
    KIRIBATI ISLANDS
    MAGNITUDE—6.6
    EVALUATION
    A DESTRUCTIVE TSUNAMI WAS NOT GENERATED
    BASED ON EARTHQUAKE AND
    HISTORICAL TSUNAMI DATA.
    THIS WILL BE THE ONLY BULLETIN ISSUED FOR
    THIS EVENT UNLESS ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
    BECOMES AVAILABLE.
    THE WEST COAST/ALASKA TSUNAMI WARNING
    CENTER WILL ISSUE BULLETINS
    FOR ALASKA—BRITISH COLUMBIA—
    WASHINGTON—OREGON—CALIFORNIA.
    Kai looked at Reggie. “It doesn’t seem like anything to be concerned about.”
    Normally Kai would consult with Harry, but today Reggie and Kai were on their own. Although Kai was growing more comfortable
     with his responsibilities, he was still fairly new. This was the first bulletin issued while he was in charge.
    The previous assistant director had left for NOAA headquarters in Washington to coordinate the development of a worldwide
     tsunami warning system. Kai’s position at NOAA’s Center for Tsunami Research put him on the short list of replacement candidates.
     From Kai’s perspective, the job had seemed perfect. He could move his career forward while still doing interesting research.
     Rachel had plenty of job opportunities at Honolulu hotels. And Kai could finally get out of Seattle’s rainy climate and back
     to warm, sunny Hawaii.
    “No, it shouldn’t be anything to worry about,” said Reggie. “But it
is
pretty exciting.”
    “Why?”
    “I’ll get to that in a minute. But the threat of a tsunamiis almost negligible because the event was not tsunamigenic.” The statement was made as a fact, not an opinion.
    “You seem pretty confident.”
    Reggie smiled. He always smiled when he was about to explain something that was perfectly obvious to him. “It barely triggered
     the alarms. The reading was just 6.6. A couple of ticks down, and we wouldn’t have even sent the bulletin.”
    “Remember the Asia tsunami?” Kai said. “The initial readings on that were 8.0. It ended up being a 9.0.” Because the moment
     magnitude scale for earthquakes—a successor to the Richter scale—is nonlinear, the power of an earthquake goes up exponentially
     the higher it is on the scale: an earthquake measuring 9.0 releases over thirty times more energy than an 8.0 earthquake.
    “I’m just checking with NEIC now, but I don’t see it going up much.” The seismic equipment at the National Earthquake Information
     Center monitored data readings from stations around the world, allowing them to determine the location of an earthquake to
     within a