The break room had satellite T.V., ostensibly for the news channels. However, it also received all of the free channels, so Sol and Beth could check that the forecast was accurate. They told Isabelle about it over lunch, and the three of them timed their afternoon coffee break to coincide with the end of the weight lifting coverage. They got a few strange looks, but Beth explained everything succinctly when somebody actually asked them about it.

"We put a bet on."

Sol looked incredulously at her, as did the enquirer. She continued.

"Oh, yes. It started off as a joke, but we've all got money riding on this."

Sol relaxed a little, but the enquirer just look more baffled, and, after a little interlude of Beth smiling cheerily, left to find a more sane conversation. Beth turned to Sol.

"You thought I was going to spill the beans, didn't you?"

"Well, erm..." he replied, hesitantly.

"Go on. Admit it."

"O.K., for a moment I didn't know what you were going to say."

Beth tutted, and turned back to the T.V. "I don't know. The lack of trust you have in me is terrible."

"Will you too stop it," asked Isabelle, "I'm trying to watch."

They stared at the screen for a second, captivated by the jerk and snap.

"I can't believe I'm watching this." said Isabelle flatly, without taking her eyes off the screen.

Professor Maxwell had taken to wandering around the office every morning, just checking on people's progress. He tried to make it informal, but he didn't do informal very well, and it seemed more like a general inspecting his troops than anything else. A lot of what Maxwell did took on a stereotypical military tone, which was odd, as he hadn't done a day's military service in his life. In any case, although he did his best to put his staff at their ease, they always stiffly and self-consciously presented their work for approval, and glossed over any problems they might be having.

This morning was no different. Although there were several problems, everyone told him that they were fine, everything was going great, would you like to have a look? They showed him demonstrations, potted examples that they knew worked, and he nodded and asked questions. Maxwell wasn't stupid enough to be even remotely convinced by any of this, but he thought he could spot any major problems, should they occur.

He thought he spotted one this morning. One his more junior recruits - fresh from his Master's degree - had been assigned to monitoring the take-up of the doctored information. Of course, he said that everything was fine, that there was nothing unusual, but Maxwell could see that he was squirming more than usual, so he pushed him a little further.

"There is one thing that's a little unusual." he admitted uneasily.

Thought so. "Go on."

"Well, it seems that there had been an unusual level of activity on the sources in question. It appears that one of the reporting sites has noticed that there is something unusual about them, and is monitoring them closely to find out exactly what it is."

"I see. Well, I doubt it is a cause for much concern; even if they've noticed that the sources are unusual, it would be highly unlikely that they will be able to find out what is happening to them. The only thing that may cause a problem would be if they chose to remove them from their model. However, if they chose to do that, they would have to involve the other sites, and I doubt that they could get a consensus without knowing the cause of the problem."

The novice nodded, still sporting the expression of a rabbit caught in headlights. Maxwell took pity on him, although he secretly wished he could find people with more backbone.

"Very good; excellent work. Keep it up, and if anything else unusual happens, be sure to let me know."

"Certainly, sir."

He breathed a sigh of relief as Maxwell turned and returned to his desk. Maxwell, on the other hand, was slightly more worried about this than he had let on. It all depended on who was the analyst at the site in question. Fortunately, the client had provided Maxwell with access to the Jupiter personnel records, so he could find out. As he tapped away at the keys, he vaguely wondered about the legality of accessing the records of another company, but concluded that it was probably O.K.; Minerva was, after all, a wholly owned subsidiary of Jupiter , so it was practically and internal matter. As he thought this, the staff list for the U.K. site appeared on the screen. He scanned down to find the Holistic Analyst, and read the name.

"Solomon Davies," he mused to himself, "He might present a problem."

Maxwell thought about this, and then shook his head to dispel the idea. The chances that anyone could connect the changes they had made with the goal they were seeking, and hence the client, were infinitesimal. There was nothing to worry about.

Sol decided to run the Crystal test from home, mainly so he didn't need to spend another late night at the office. He'd still not figured out what he was going to do when he found out. He could hardly tell people that he knew what the problem was because his magic machine that predicted the future told him so. Whenever he thought about this, he quickly decided to bank on it being something he could fix on his own, and move on to more practical matters, with which he was far, far more comfortable.

When he got home, he changed out of his work clothes, made himself a quick dinner, then sat down at his computer with a large, steaming mug of tea. Within a couple of minutes, he'd logged in to the server that housed Crystal, and checked that everything was in working order. It all seemed to be O.K., so he brought up the query interface and started to type.

Even though he had quite a speedy, and pricey, internet connection, things were still slow when compared to working at the office. He made a mental note to talk to Beth about this. Maybe she could change something and speed it up a bit. After all, they were probably going to be using it from home quite a bit.

He paused as he realized that that was the first time he'd thought of Beth, and not Ted, when he needed help with something technical. He wasn't sure what to make of this, so he employed his usual strategy of ignoring it and pressing ahead with the job in hand.

Trying to use Crystal to determine what was going wrong was substantially different to using it to make forecasts. The only reason it worked at all was that both tasks involved sifting through massive amounts of interconnected possibilities, all pulling in different directions. Despite this underlying similarity, the surface details of the problems had little in common, and Sol had to build up a lot from scratch just to get started. This made it long and tiring work.

Halfway through, he got up to make another in the long line of cups of tea. While he was stood in the kitchen, leaning on the work surface and waiting for the kettle to boil, his mind drifted. Why was he doing this? Did it really matter that a few of the sources were a little off? It didn't seem to be harming the WorldPulse predictions - they were the same, aside from a few minor, unimportant changes - when those sources were used as when they weren't. It was probably a glitch in the system. Than again, it would be useful to know what effect, if anything, those sources would have on Crystal if they were included.

His thoughts drifted away from work, and alighted on Beth. They'd been spending a lot of time together recently, and they seemed to enjoy each other's company. He certainly enjoyed being with her, and she appeared to feel the same way. However, before he could take this line of enquiry any further, the kettle boiled, and he was distracted by the mechanics of making tea. By the time he was back sat down at his desk, he had forgotten that he'd been thinking about anything other than WorldPulse.

He spent a little longer hacking away at the edges, then, when he thought he'd laid enough groundwork, he plunged into the task proper; finding out the root cause of the abnormalities in the sources. After a few minutes, he realized the he'd missed out some important parts of the preparation, so he swore, went back, and filled in the gaps.

After a cup of tea, the second attempt went far better, at least initially. He sped along, and the system showed every sign of this being the right direction. However, things started to go awry. The paths down which Crystal was taking him looked a hell of a lot like dead ends, aside from the fact that they showed no sign of ending. He went back and checked his working, and then double checked it. Everything was fine, as far as he could tell.

He sat back, literally, and tried to step back from the problem, figuratively. Why was it sending him down these paths? He was fairly sure that he'd got all of the preparation right, which meant it was something to do with the prediction itself. He'd checked for cascades, and found nothing. There was no good reason that the prediction should be wrong. He shrugged, and started to follow the paths, working on the assumption that they were, in fact, correct. The worst that could happen was that he would waste a little time, and he might, if he was lucky, find out a bit more about what was going wrong.

At first, it seemed like he was being led off on a wild goose chase, but then the paths began head in predictable directions, and Sol thought he could see the beginnings of a pattern forming. His confidence bolstered, he continued, quickening his pace but taking care not to make mistakes. He hadn't got this far to have the whole thing thrown out of kilter by a typo.

The system finally told him that he'd reached an answer. This startled him slightly; it hadn't seemed that he was anywhere close. He read through the text of the prediction, presented in a tab that had popped up to obscure the list of outstanding auxiliary queries. He read it through again, and scratched his head. He had absolutely no idea what it meant.

He got up, and paced around the room, thinking. He sat back down, and worked through a couple of the remaining auxiliaries, just to be sure. They lead him to exactly the same, nonsensical conclusion, as they always did (when Crystal had got an answer, it didn't change it's mind). Frustrated, and still baffled, he decided to call it a night. He logged out, switched off the computer, and went upstairs.

After he'd cleaned his teeth, got undressed, and got into bed, just before he turned out the light, he had a flash of inspiration. He leapt out of bed and ran downstairs, stark naked, slamming the lounge light on as he passed. He sat down, and jabbed the computer back on, and impatiently watched the seemingly interminable boot process. He hurriedly rushed through logging in and connecting to the Crystal server, then stabbed at a few keys to bring up the prediction.

He quickly skimmed the text, then made a conscious effort to calm down, and read through it again more slowly. It looked like his hunch may have been correct. However, now that he thought he understood it, he wasn't sure that he believed it. Leaving aside the small matter of how someone could do it, it was scary to imagine that anyone would even try it, let alone succeed. He read it though one more time, to make sure, then reached for the phone and dialed Beth's number. After a few rings, she answered.

"'Lo?"

"Hi. It's Sol."

"Sol? It's late." she stated, obviously. "What's up?"

"I've found out what's wrong with the sources."

"Is that all?" she sounded, not to put too fine a point on it, pissed off. "Can't it wait until morning?"

"No." Something in his voice made her take him seriously.

"O.K.; I'll be there in about quarter of an hour."

She hung up, and Sol dialed Isabelle. After an almost identical conversation, he put the phone back and started to head towards the kitchen, then paused. It occurred to him that, if he was going to have company, he ought to put some clothes on.