Four Times Ten to the Ninth Power A.D.; Rumors of Apocalypse Reach the Berkshires Summary

Hiding in the Padang hotel, Tyler starts to recover from the Martian drug injection. The narrator feels intense pain because of the drug but he says that writing from memory keeps his mind off the pain. Diane goes out to the city to locate a contact that will help them emigrate illegally. She mentions to Tyler that she already contacted Jala, a Minang who runs an import-export business as a cover-up for an illicit emigration brokerage. Diane reads some of Tyler's writing and seems surprised by how much he thought of her back in the early days. Tyler reveals that he fell in love with her when he was ten, after her dog died.

In...