"# Echoes start as a cross in you #" "# Trembling noises that come too soon #" "# Spatial movement which seems to you #" "# Resonating your mask or feud #" "It's September, and I'm looking at four letters, written by four of the greatest minds of the 20th century." "Hightower, Knox, Newberry, Beiderman." "Each one had this office before me, and each one wrote a letter to the professor who would come after." "Now it's my turn." "I'm writing a letter to the faceless, nameless professor who will take this office after me." "Who are you?" "# And then you cut #" "What questions are you wrestling with?" "# You cut it out #" "Where are you looking for your answers?" "# And everything #" "# Goes back to the beginning #" "Do you take this office at the end of a long and distinguished career?" "# Silence seizes a cluttered room #" "# Light is shed, not a breath too soon #" "Or are you on the ascent... your greatest work waiting for you amid an infinity of possibilities?" "# Darkness rises in all you do #" "# Standing and drawn across the room... #" "Do you hover above the chaos, looking for your answers in patterns and trends, or do you need to be at ground level, walking through the problem?" " Hey." " Hey." "Looks like you jumped the gun, Charlie." " Nobody's been shot yet." " I know, but, uh," "Don said that you guys were doing VIP security for a big rally, and I figured I'd slap together some, uh, crowd flux dynamics, a dash of covering sets, Tóth it all up a spanning tree." "G..." "G. Fejes Tóth and, uh, L. Fejes Tóth... they're the leading authorities on, uh... on covering sets." "I told you... it's not funny." "You know, in certain circles," "I am considered to be really funny." "FBI circles?" " Who's the VIP?" " Benjamin Polk." "The, uh, political family?" "Yeah, Benjamin's the apple that fell off your spanning tree." "This guy walked away from a trust fund to be, uh, one of these people that just protests just about everything." "Caused a riot in Portland during the 2005 Trade negotiations." "You know, a lot of people in New Orleans said he was a hero during Katrina." "I mean, he brought in food to neighborhoods that the cops abandoned." "I'm not exactly sure what he is, except our problem for the next few days." "This place is a nightmare from a security standpoint." "I mean, there are a zillion good sniper positions." "There's no way to control entry and exit from the park." "For our purposes, th-that's where crowd flux can help." "You know, the same algorithms that are used to keep your car at a steady speed when you're on cruise control can be applied to the flow of people coming in and out of a rally area." "And you guys remember when we used covering sets, right?" "Yeah, that was the fishing net, right?" "No, I think fishing net..." "no, brute force." "It could've been our fireworks." "You guys, this is the dog chasing the cat," " chasing the mouse." " It was lighthouses." "I made an analogy to the positioning of lighthouses." "Get down!" "Get down!" "Everybody stay down!" "You all right?" "60-74 to Control, we have sniper fire in MacArthur Park, vicinity of the band shell." "Colby, you see anything over there?" "Sounded like a.308..." "semiauto fire, so maybe an M1A1." "Okay." "What's the muzzle velocity on an M1A1?" " Like 700-800?" " 853 meters per second." "Effective range of 460 meters." "That accounts for a roughly... quarter second delay." "Wind's out of the southeast..." "what, at ten miles an hour?" "Maybe 15." "Angle of declination..." "assuming a male... national average height of at least five-foot-nine..." "In the trees!" "David, moving." "Covering!" "When I make my move, you just make your way to the band shell, okay?" "LAPD?" "FBI." "You want to tell me what that was all about?" "That was fair warning." "Don't get between Benjamin Polk and the bullet with his name on it." "My mother had this photo of the Parthenon from a trip she'd taken with my father before I was born." "And one day, I, uh..." "I scribbled all over it with a crayon." "She was understandably upset until my Dad pointed out that I had covered it with rectangles within rectangles, retracing the Greeks' use of the golden ratio." "Does that speak to the mathematician's need to understand beauty or to the child's need to tear it apart?" "People don't want to admit that the government's broken." "That's a big idea." "It's a scary idea." "This turnout makes me happy, but it makes them nervous." "Change starts today!" "The government has an interest in keeping you comfortable, in keeping you from asking questions." "They can gas us, they can club us, they cannot ignore us!" "We don't espouse violence." "I'm not resisting!" "The hard reality is that confrontation is the most effective way of shaking people out of their stupor." "I get a dozen death threats every week." "The right hates me because I'm a Commie pinko agitator." "The left hates me because I'm a sellout." "This threat was backed up with gunfire." "He was smart enough to shoot at the FBI and get away unidentified." "You should be smart enough to be concerned." "Why?" "That's what I got you guys for, right?" "No, we can't guarantee your safety in that park." "Let me guess." "You want me to change the location of the rally?" "Some airplane hangar in the Valley or a warehouse in San Pedro?" "Only if you're worried about getting shot." "All right, let's get it out in the open." "You're wondering if I was behind it." "Some kind of PR stunt." "Oh, you're capable of that." "Probably too smart to risk getting caught, but..." "I know that you don't want to see past the guy who threw bricks and talked revolution... maybe I don't even blame you... but I'm not him anymore." "Look, I was lucky enough to survive my mistakes." "Now I'm just trying to convince people to turn over some of their time to helping others." "You guys give your whole lives to that." "I don't like a lot of the things that this country has done, but I have nothing but respect for the people who risk their lives for it." "And the least that I can do is risk my own." "Is that a preview of Tuesday's speech or, uh, just the long way around to saying no?" "It's a little bit of both." "Man talks a pretty word..." "or seven." "What do you think?" "Keep your eyes open." "Stay with him." "Don seemed... different." "Uh, preoccupied." "When he got in his car to chase after that sniper, he hesitated." "The expression on his face was almost pained." "You think maybe he hasn't fully recovered from the stabbing?" "I think, if he were hurting, he wouldn't let anybody know." "Well, you know, sooner or later, everyone slows down." "Speaking from personal experience?" "No." "I'm the exception to the rule." "And on the topic of slowing down," "I seemed to notice the, uh, absence of a certain beautiful young professor around the house these past few days." "What's going on, Charlie?" "I've been here the whole time." "Amita has been really busy, actually." "She's just been incredibly busy with classes." "And I've been busy, too, frankly." "Busy time for busy people." "You know, the least challenging thing about being Charlie Eppes's father is knowing when he is lying." "It's a clean shot at the dais." "A clean shot at us." "What do we have?" "A male, white... 20s, 30s, 40s?" "No prints, uses burner phones." "I mean, everything about this guy says pro." "Except for the fact that he shot at us in the first place." "Why even give himself away?" "Why not wait till the rally, then take your shot?" "Maybe he was trying to spook him." "Polk's been shot at before, beaten up by the cops." "I don't think he's the kind of guy that's going to flinch." "All right, see, this is why we don't talk politics." "We're not talking about politics, man." "We're talking about a guy who gets threatened every time he opens his mouth, then he opens it anyway." "I mean, my dictionary..." "that's... that's brave." "There's just no way we can cover every problem here." "Forget about the buildings surrounding the park." "There's buildings behind those." "It's like he was shooting at us to point out the obvious." "Yeah, he was definitely pointing out something." "Any word from CERN?" "The Max Planck Institute aimed a radio telescope at the particular cloud in the middle of the Milky Way." "They were looking for amino acids." " Do you know what they found?" " Ethyl formate." "Which happens to be the same chemical that gives raspberries their flavor." "The Milky Way tastes like raspberries." "So, no word from CERN." "No." "I expect my invitation to the Hadron Collider is coming soon." "You have second thoughts about spending six months in Geneva?" "Just thoughts." "And that is Charlie asking for help with some aperiodic tiling." " You want to come with?" " Actually, I have some low density parity check code that isn't writing itself." "I am going to make an effort to leave without running, screaming from the room." "What?" "Come on, that subtle yet impossible to ignore breath followed by the half-hearted evasion." "This can only mean one more chapter in the unending romantic serial of Charlie and Amita." "And I have no desire to reprise my supporting role." "Larry..." "No!" "You're a poor little rich boy from what, four generations of politicians?" "It's kind of hard to generate a populist message from your summer home in Kennebunkport." "So you throw on a flannel shirt, and you grab a mic at a couple of our protests." "Six years of being gassed and clubbed doesn't sound that dilettante." "He's played the part longer than most, but what's he doing now?" "Fund-raiser luncheons, community center openings." "Celebrity activists always end up being more celebrity than activist." "Yeah, 'cause there's nothing worse than a community center." "So he leaves your movement, now you want to shut him up." "We're planning to exercise our rights to free speech and lawful protest." "You know, there are rumors that Polk was an FBI informant." "That's a good reason to take a shot at him." "And turn him into a martyr?" "We don't need to shoot Ben Polk." "He's gonna impale himself on his own hypocrisy." "If we move the barricades back here and here, we're gonna maximize Finger Effect and minimize edge crowding." "So we'll have bomb dogs and CTX units here, here and here." "And then two aerial units, one of ours, one of LAPD's." "I'm more worried about the snipers." "We're going to cover as many rooftops as we can." "And hopefully we can help you pick the right rooftops." "Of course, you realize this may be exactly what he wants." "Allocate more resources toward counter-sniper tactics, leave ourselves vulnerable somewhere else." "Which presupposes a level of guile and lucidity." "Yeah, but a lot of these guys, they just get off on one-upping the police and who they kill is beside the point." "Which presupposes a level of amorality." "He could've waited, he could've taken his shot." "But he leaves a phone, he warns us, he talks to us." "Setting the rules." "A prisoner knows that he's going to be hanged and the hangman tells him two things:" "That he's gonna be hanged at dawn one day next week, and that it'll be a surprise." "If the prisoner's alive on Thursday, he can't be surprised on Friday and so he knows he can't be hanged on Friday." "And if he's alive on Wednesday, and he knows he can't be hanged on Friday, then Thursday's out as well." "So the reasoning continues backwards." "Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday." "And the prisoner concludes he's not gonna be hanged." "But next week, the prisoner is hanged anyway." "Which is the surprise." "So the prediction has come true despite his reasoning." "And that is called the Unexpected Hanging Paradox." "The rules we're hearing may not be the rules he's setting." "Two years ago, I would have been out on the street, screaming through a bullhorn, probably arranging for someone in the kitchen to tamper with the hors d'oeuvres." "I believed that being prosperous meant you couldn't appreciate the problems of the less prosperous." "That compassion couldn't exist without suffering." "I was wrong." "Prosperity does not make you evil, but it can blind you to the way other people live." "Children go hungry in East L.A." "Honest people are denied justice every day on the same streets that you speed past." "But tomorrow night, we're going to come together in MacArthur Park." "We will embrace sacrifice and decency, the most fundamental of American..." "Down!" "All clear." "Firecracker." "Call our techs, see if we can get a triangulation." "Hello?" "I would've thought that this morning would've bought me a little more credibility." "Room full of windows, no extra security." "I counted five agents, assuming the African-American woman with the fast reflexes was one of yours." "Five agents doesn't seem... you know, respectful of my intentions." "We are... we are taking you very seriously." "You have my word on that." "Listen, my name is David Sinclair, okay?" "You are?" "Not yet." "Soon enough, but not yet." "Okay, well, is, uh..." "Is there something you'd like me to call you?" "It wasn't your decision, was it?" "It was Polk." "He's so arrogant." "The world exists to serve him." "There's a threat on his life, and he makes it your problem." "That's what they pay us for." "You know, it could be anyone." "Anyone could just walk up and shoot him." "Yeah." "If they were willing to die." "Is that what you want to discuss?" "The depth of my conviction?" "My willingness to die?" "You have something you want to say, why don't you just tell me, you know, what it is?" "I've shown you my hand twice now." "The third time... it'll be for real." "John von Neumann once said that, in mathematics, you don't understand things." "You just get used to them." "I wish I could have debated that point with him, because it seems to me that, in mathematics, we find the power to refuse fate." "In understanding the way things are, we give ourselves the means to change them." "Hey." "So, the techs say the firecrackers were rigged to a model rocket ignition set, set off by remote control." "So he has technical expertise." "Or a DSL connection." "Took me three minutes to find instructions on the Internet." "Profile on the shooter?" "Male, Western European descent." "Only, use of the term African-American suggests he has a college education." "That's it?" "He knows not to leave physical evidence." "He also knows not to leave much of a profile, I guess." "You're sure this is your man?" "He delivered six cartons of napkins and paper cups." "Chef said he didn't order it." "Yeah, see where he unloaded?" "There, there... there." " The firecrackers were in the box." " Oh, you're right." "He did a pretty good job of avoiding the cameras." " And?" "And... consider a barbershop pole, seen through a camera lens." "If we see only a portion of the pole, we infer movement up and to the right." "This is called the aperture illusion." "But remove the obstruction, we see the end of the stripes, and then we're looking at one side of one spinning pole." "Unless the camera itself is rotating." "Now, kinematically, there's no difference between a moving camera on a still object, and a still camera on a moving object." "Or a series of still images, which we can use then to infer a rounded image of your guy." "And that would take?" "Well, less time with Amita's help." "I'm sorry." "Something just occurred to me." "Charlie's way of changing the subject?" "You know, I think there's something going on between him and Amita." "No." "No, no, no, no." "Out." "Out!" "Out!" "Out." "Out." "Out, out, out." "We're pulling more assistance from LAPD, the marshals, the sheriff's office, but we have got to seriously consider a change of venue." "Been through this already." "There's no time." "This reminds me of this joke that my dad tells about a guy... he's sitting on a roof in the middle of a flood, and a boat comes along, and he's, like, "No, thanks." "God's going to save me."" "Another one comes, same thing." "Helicopter comes." ""Pass." "God's on his way."" "And of course, he drowns." "And he says to God, "Why'd you let me down?"" "And God says, "What the hell do you want from me?" "I sent you two boats and a helicopter."" "You're supposed to be God in this story?" "I'm the guy in the boat, wondering why you won't get on." "Look, whoever this guy is, whether he silences me with a bullet or with fear, it amounts to the same thing." "Think I got to stay on the roof." "Bodyguards." "He's getting scared." "Kind of stuff he talks about... volunteerism, compassion... that's not the kind of stuff you shoot somebody over." "Yeah, well, someone disagrees with you." "So, what occurred to me is that this assailant must have clearly scouted this park prior to shooting at you." " Uh, us, actually." " He was shooting at me?" "He was shooting at me." "So, what occurred to you?" "He must have identified a number of desirable locations for firing on this band shell." "And assuming that he plans to make good on his threats..." " He's not gonna give away his favorite spot." " Yeah." "I actually managed to get that far without a single algorithm." " What do you bring to the party?" " Geomatic survey." "Okay, we actually have 3-D maps of the whole area." "Yeah, we have maps of buildings and streets, but we're going to build a thematic map with a bias for accessibility, distance from the park..." "Target visibility, practicality of the shot." "Right." "What you bring to the party." "Check this out." "Hey, man, you... you can you keep a secret, right?" "I was a Chinese spy and a double agent for two years." "Managed to keep that one under wraps." "Well, uh, all right." "I need some advice about me and Amita." "Well, it's about me and my dad and Don and Amita." "Um, I, uh..." "Yeah." "Pass." "Pass?" "Oh, yeah, pass." "Can I ask you a question?" "Does this touch upon anything of a personal" " and romantic nature?" " No." "It's strictly case-related." "Okay." "Fire away." "We have a man who shoots at the FBI, shows them flaws in their own security." "Irrational actions, right?" "Yeah, ostensibly..." "Yet, he's intellectually rigorous, even thorough in evading identification." "Now, maybe he's a high-functioning psychopath." "Or, when faced with an opponent of superior strength and resources, he's opted to wage unconventional warfare." "Like Douglas Lenat's Eurisko program." "You know, I should run some simulations of my own." "Applied game theory." "You know who..." "Never mind." "Shepard Crater." "Teaches high school science in Elko, Nevada." "No arrests." "But from 1978 to '81, the Intelligence Unit had an interest in him." "He ran with a group called Resist First." "The leaders were arrested for the bombing of a construction site, though Crater was never implicated." "Well, any connections to Polk?" "No, and if you believe the sheet," "Crater got scared somewhere between straight and amazingly dull after his buddies got busted." "He's been teaching longer than Polk's been out of high school." "Never been married, no immediate family on record." "Now, Crater hasn't shown up for work for the last three weeks." "The Las Vegas office is knocking on doors." "They're doing a deeper background search." "Show his picture to Polk?" "No, hold off." "I want to see what else we can hit him with." " Okay." "Colby and I did... well, we did an assassination map of the rally area." "It yielded seven high-desirable sniper perches, another 12 with rough parity to the location he shot at you..." "or shot at us from." "Colby's already working on this." "He's, uh, doing deployment adjustments, so, unless you need me here?" "No." "Go ahead." "I keep thinking about this, uh, hangman's thing..." "In retrospect, th-that seems like it might have been an extemporaneous thought." "No." "I think you're onto something." "I just..." "I don't know what yet, but..." "Anything you want to talk about?" "No, not really." "Is there anything you want to talk about?" "No." "Okay." "I'm glad we cleared the air then." "No." "You're okay, though, right?" "You're not dealing with any residual pain, or?" "You saw me hesitate in the park." "Maybe you seemed to be moving a little slower than usual." "You got stabbed." "You... you almost died, so..." "You think, uh, it's possible that you pushed yourself back to work too fast?" "I mean, it's just... how many things have we seen done to the human body?" "Punctured, burned, broken." "You know, we're just so ridiculously fragile." "Somehow, you know, you don't relate it to yourself, but..." "I'm just a bag of blood and bones like everyone else." "Boy, I'm not sure any of us would get out of bed if we all felt that way." "Yeah, well, I got to get out of bed anyway." "I can move fine, buddy." "Maybe I'm just starting to think before I do." "So, I know we agreed not to talk politics..." "But?" "You got radicals shooting other radicals for not being radical enough." "There's got to be a moral in there somewhere, right?" "Yeah, like, don't talk politics." "Here we go..." "number seven on Charlie's list." "Fourth floor, south windows." "I mean, let's just say I ran for office." "You'd vote for me, right?" "What are you running for?" "I mean, why does that matter?" "What, you wouldn't vote for me?" "I've seen you balance your checkbook with your fingers and your toes." "Well, come to think of it, you could be governor." "All right, yeah, we're not talking politics." "Wait." "What's wrong with this staircase?" "It's the seventh one" " I've walked today?" " No." "The one leading up is covered with crud, right?" "No one's been up that way in a couple of weeks at least." "Look at the one leading down to the basement." "Yeah, it's clean." "Ten bucks says it's wet and dark down there." "Don't move!" "Please." "I'm trying very hard not to kill you." "Agent Sinclair, right?" "Yeah." "You're Shepard." "Shepard Crater." "You know who I am, then you know about Resist First, about my skill set." "I know that you walked away from violence 20 years ago." "Why now?" "Why Polk?" "Because he doesn't deserve the things that he says." "Ask him about Portland." "Ask him about people that did anything he asked them to." "People he sacrificed like cannon fodder." "Portland?" "The riots?" "Who got sacrificed?" "Shepard, who did he sacrifice?" "Come on!" "If Polk were standing there right now, would you put yourself between him and a bullet?" "Told you before." "That's our job." "Right, your job." "Well, that means that you're better men than him, which means your lives are more valuable, which means you shouldn't be standing in front of that bullet." "I've warned you." "I've shown you." "Anything that happens now isn't my fault." "Come on." "We're trying to understand what it is you want, okay?" "You got to help us out a little bit here." "Give us one good reason why you're doing this." "Okay?" "Give us two reasons." "Three." "The bomb squad says the detonators found in Crater's crash pad were for something considerably bigger than firecrackers." "So, what have we got here, a shooter or a bomber?" "Or both." "From Nevada." "Crater had a son by a common-law wife..." "Richard Sloan." "Now, in 2007, Sloan's at a Trade protest, and guess who's on the bullhorn." "A young Mr. Polk." "Yup." "This is still Polk 1.0." "The protest ended in tear gas, a whole lot of arrests and six dead." " What?" "The kid?" " No." "Richard Sloan got arrested, and four days later, he was stabbed to death in a jail fight." "So Crater's putting it on Polk?" "There were rumors Polk planned the violence." "Okay, so the next day, he has a press conference, denounces his own people for getting out of hand, and then takes half of the movement with him to a much more media-friendly Polk 2.0." "Okay." "Now you hit him." "All right, I-I guess I've missed you guys again." "Um... it's-it's no big deal, but if you could please call me back, that would be great." "Thank you." "You on a new diet?" "New train of thought... the flavor of the cosmos." "Ethyl formate." "Where's that train taking you?" "You know, it's hard to say." "Right now, I am suspended in this... this maddening, thrilling moment just prior to the exhilaration of epiphany." "It's the intellectual itch about to explode into a sneeze." "How about you?" "Well, I already did my FBI deed for the day, so, uh..." "Yeah, you know what?" "I'm gonna start banging around on these boards." "Oh, hey, that was good work you did on the optic flow." "Um, you and Amita." "Raspberry seeds... they're arranged in a Fibonacci sequence," " are they not?" " Yes, they are." "Aren't you curious about what's-what's going on with, uh..." " with me and Amita?" " Well, given your historical trends, you factor in age, career dynamics, uh, concomitant cultural pressures, it's fairly self-evident that one of you has proposed marriage." "And assuming that as my given, it's observable that neither of you is as yet prepared to share the outcome of said proposal, but it's a position I intend to respect." "Richard Sloan." "He was killed in Portland, 2007." "Trade protest." "I could feel myself spinning off in the wrong direction." "We were building day-care centers, reaching out to the homeless." "All anybody ever saw were the overturned police cars." "That day it... just got all out of control." "Did it?" "You couldn't walk away from The New Way, 'cause everyone would know you were that flaky rich boy you were trying so hard to convince them you weren't." "But a tragic riot, well... that gave you an excuse and a new platform." "A way to go respectable and keep your street fighter cred." "You've been reading the blogs." "I've been watching the video." "They can gas us, they can club us." "They cannot ignore us!" "Five seconds later, first round of garbage cans go through a department store window." "Almost as if on cue." "And that guy looks like he's just given the cue." "It's not exactly the Zapruder film." "Seven people died." "It was a tragedy." "A tragedy that led to a lot of good and saved a lot more lives." "We can shut you down, revoke your permit." "Eight hours before the rally?" "A couple hundred cops try to kick 10,000 people out of the park?" "That guy would eat it up." "Play victim for the cameras and blame all the violence on the FBI." "Now, I don't see your boss or the governor or the mayor having a big appetite for that kind of risk." "All that crap you said yesterday... you believe any of it?" "I believe all of it." " Next time you offer to buy me lunch..." " Yeah?" "Remind me to ask for specifics." "Well, I-I am a retiree on a fixed income in these rather uncertain economic times." "Mmm, hot dog is good." "I'm gonna have to head back in a few minutes." "Okay?" "Oh, I know you're very busy." "I just, uh, I was just checking in with you." " Don is doing fine." " I know that." " I meant with you." " Me?" "Well, since your promotion, you've been shouldering more and more responsibility, but you never complain, David." "Well, if you ever need someone to complain to..." " Thanks." "I'll keep that in mind, okay." " Okay." "Actually, can I ask you a question?" " Some..." " Yeah." "A... a father's point of view?" "Well, I do have that." "Say that your son is killed, a-and you know who's responsible... a-at least you think you do, anyway... and he's not getting justice, so you decide to get it for him." "What else am I going to do?" "It's my son." "See, my life stops until he's spoken for." "Okay, all right." "You spend two years planning to kill this guy, right," " and you're waiting for..." " Well, I'm afraid" " I can't help you there, David." " Why not?" "Well, because..." "I-I'm not a killer." "If I allow my rage to change who I am, then this man has taken two lives." "SOG 4 is clear on Wilshire, heading into the Frozen Zone." "You kind of liked the Kool-Aid, huh?" "Turning your life around, using your own mistakes to help other people." "Guess I'm a sucker for that story." "Your fans." "When you lead, you have to sacrifice your soul." "You make decisions you know will haunt you, sacrifice the few to benefit the most." "Anyone who tells you any different hasn't studied history." "You know, I've studied a little bit of history, and I've led." "Think I'll try to hang on to my soul, though." "I thought they were pulling out all the garbage cans." "Garbage cans and mailboxes." "Yeah, we've got possible explosives on Wilshire." "Pull off." "Get down!" "Liz, talk to me." "There's a lot of smoke and flame, but almost no concussion." "It was more like pyro than serious explosives." "Let's get the bomb squad here anyway, and let's start shutting down that rally." " We're going back to the hotel." " You can't shut us down." " That's what Crater wants." " Yeah, well, then he won." "You heard what happened at the rally, right?" "Yeah, I was just applying the attack" " to some war game scenarios I've been running." " And?" "Well, it makes perfect sense with Crater's strategy, which has been making no sense." "How so?" "Crater and the FBI are playing an imperfect information game like dominoes." "Right, where they only see their own tiles, not their opponents'." "But Crater is playing checkers, exposing not only his own strategy but the weaknesses in ours." "In the hangman's paradox, there's one school of thought that argues that the problem itself is flawed." "Right, just because the judge sets a rule doesn't mean the prisoner should assume he's going to follow that rule." "Every time Crater exposes a flaw in our strategy, he forces us to behave reactively." "Closing the holes by moving the resources on the terms that he set." "Moving Polk toward Crater's terrain." "He never intended to kill him at that rally." "Put the gun down, Shepard." "Does he know you used him as a decoy?" "No." "Maybe you're not that good a man." "I could tell you how all this wouldn't bring your son back and how you would have made a hero out of him." "It just comes down to the fact that we can't let you pull that trigger." "I visited Richie in jail two days be... befo... befo... before..." "I tried to bail him out, but, uh, there were so many arrests that it took them a week to arraign everyone." "By then..." "Richie told me Polk planned the whole thing, used them." "I've been carrying his story around for two years." "So put down the gun and tell it." "Sure... sure." "The words of a ghost through the voice of a... of a what?" "What?" "What am I?" "What?" "You're a father that lost his son, right, that does not want to lose himself." "I told Richie all those stories about, uh, who I'd been, what I'd done." "I told him..." "I told him that a man was the things that he believes in." "I did everything but drive him to that rally." "Shepard, when everyone else was arrested in 1978, there's a reason that you were not." "Okay, I don't think you could have taken it that far." "Listen... you... are not a killer." "I killed my son!" "Polk was just..." "He was just the thing I didn't protect him from." "But it doesn't matter." "No, it doesn't matter." "Doesn't matter at all." "Doesn't matter to anyone but me." "It matters to us, Shepard." "Come on." "Listen, just put the gun down." "Come back." "Please." "Ple..." "Control, we need a medic." "Ambulance is on the way." "Nah." "My son's story belongs to you now." "Hightower, Knox," "Newberry, Beiderman." "Each of their signatures is a self-swallowing set, a name that shorthands a body of thought, a life's work." "The question isn't who you are." "The question is:" "Who did I turn out to be?" "Okay, you ready?" "Yeah." " Hey." " Hey." "Hi." "What's up?" "We, uh, we have something to tell you." "We're getting married." "We're getting married." " Oh." " You guys are the first to know." "After my parents, which is my fault, because I wanted" "Charlie to ask their permission." "It's just a formality, but it's a family tradition." "Yeah, it's a formality that required a four-day game of transatlantic phone tag, which is why I've been a little, you know, evasive." " Oh, I see." " But it feels really good to get it out." "Uh, I actually..." "I kind of almost spilled the beans more than a few times, but, uh..." "It's hard keeping a secret, but it's kind of fun..." " It was fun." "...keeping a secret." "I think we did good." "Congratulations." "What do you say?" "I think we get the," " the good stuff out, huh?" "Yeah." "What, you-you already knew?" " How did you already know?" " Your parents told me." "Come on, it's what I do for a living." " So I told him." " All right, he might have mentioned it, but..." "Come here, sister-in-law." "Congratulations." "Big secret, huh?" "Who am I to you?" "Are faded chalk marks and scratches on the floor the only evidence that I was here, or did some scribbled note, some fragment of a proof invert your perception of the world..." "# And then you cut # even confirm it, cementing what you knew in your heart to be true, with the balance of left column to right?" "# And everything #" "What footprints have I left behind?" "Do they endure, or has the ocean of discovery washed them away already?" "# Goes back to the beginning #" "# Silence seizes a cluttered room #" "How many lives have I touched?" "# Light is shed not a breath too soon #" "Have I touched yours?" "# Never said it was good, never said it was new #" "# Muted whisper of the things you feel. #"