Part VIII:

'But won't a crack-anticrack reaction be catastrophic?' I asked.

'You won't believe how they've solved that problem.' said Pete.

'I'm not sure I believe anything I've seen so far, either.', I said.

'Shut up.' said the only Brown Op who was saying much himself, other than explaining the experiment.

'We believe we have solved that problem,' he continued 'with paraphotoic catalysis'.

'Para... who the fuck... what the fuck?!' I said, having not had the foresight to have doubted that it was even possible I could become
less clear on the situation that I had been a few seconds earlier.

'Exactly' said one of the other Brown Ops.

'You shut the fuck up, too.' said the loquatious one.

'Paraphotoic catalysis is...', began Pete.

'I'm sorry... did I somehow forget to mention SHUT THE FUCK UP?' interrupted the agent, jiggling the ball gag first in front
of Pete's face, and then, just in case, in front of my face.

He paused before continuing, eyeing Pete, myself and the other agents, who all remained so silent you could almost
hear streams of slow, indiscriminate profanity leaking out through our fillings, later to bounce off of the tinfoil beanies
of Tenderloin liquor store employees.

'Paraphotoic catalysis is...' began the agent, pausing again, ever so slightly, '... is a process in which light-like energies
are focused on a region in which is occurring a quantum event which can be accelerated or retarded...' (pausing again after retarded)
'OR retarded...' he continued (clearly emphasizing that 'OR' was being reiterated before the word 'retarded'),' OR retarded through the
direct application of these light-like energies.'

He seemed to make a point of pausing here just long enough for us to get what he had said, and not long enough for anyone to
comfortably interject anything.

'The pertinent light-like energy in this case...' he tried to continue..

'This the the really fucked-up part.' said Pete, facing me, apparently unable to restrain himself, as if he were looking forward, vicariously
to my further confrontation with anything that could possibly be even more fucked-up than what I had already seen and heard.

The agent ignored the interruption; '...is from one of our classified hydrogen anion lasers which produces a powerful medium taupe-colored beam at the contact point inside the vacuum chamber, between the crack rock and the crackpipe made of anti-crack, at the very moment of their physical contact, slowing down the reaction to a point where the product of the reaction can be safely vented out the vent on the end of the chamber and into the waiting mouth of your pet crackhead, at which point we shall observe and notate his behavior, thus technically concluding the experimental part of our experiment are there any questions', he respectively first spat out and then respectively segued, his eyes rolling wildly and his voice modulated to a tone of desperate mockery, as if, simultaneously. both to allow us a chance to speak and to steal our fire in this regard.

'Is the medium taupe colored beam dangerous?' I asked, not interested in the answer, but merely to create the possible impression that I was oblivious to the agent's profound and indubitable tone of intellectual condescention.

Pete's jaw dropped in his own silent response to my question, in that dramatic way that suggests one is using conspicuous overstatement to conceal some expression only slightly less extreme, which one does not wish to be understood as expressing in earnest.

'Awright...' the agent softened more than a little, 'lemme tell you about hydrogen anion lasers.'

For better or worse, we could see that this was an area of some special personal interest to him.