Summary

In Thales' chapters, “Oublier” and “Intimacy of the Mundane,” he follows the woman into Club Oublier. He finds a door marked EXIT TO CENTRAL next to a steel door that looks like a bank vault. His phone announces that there has been an intrusion attempt and then it goes dark. He remembers the phrase Cloudbreaker and then watches the world vanish (220). He returns to consciousness and sees a stranger who tells him that "Cloudbreaker has touched you" but that he is still viable (223). The stranger says that he is from "the other city" (223). The stranger grants Thales three questions. Thales asks what is Cloudbreaker, asks for his identity, and whether his surgeon is an enemy to his family. The stranger answers that Cloudbreaker is a product of an evolutionary pathway, that he is a mathematician turned administrator, and that...