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Show TERMINAL PROCEDURE Much is not clear about the way the dogs died. Events on the periphery of the deaths, like points on undulating, outward-moving circles, recede into liquid uncertainty. The origins of the event are obscure, and its effects dwindle onward into indeterminacy. Causality cannot be established, and responsibility becomes a meaningless conceit", of no concern and no question. Yet at the center remains the event itself, and it is fully clear; the dogs died. Pass I If we look, we can see the place where the dogs died: a small laboratory, assigned to an associate named Boaz, in a sprawling research institute. The place has not changed; it is the same simple, almost square room, hidden in an obscure wing of an old building far to one side of the institute's grounds. We see the usual furniture of science: two bulky wooden desks, an untidy bookcase, and a flimsy file cabinet cramped together on one wall; on the other side of the room, flanked by its recording and control apparatus, is the sound-proof experimental box. On the floor beside the box, centered on a stained and yellowed newspaper, is a small tin water dish. The lab has not changed since the dogs died there, except that the stack of data tapes grows no higher, and a half-cup of black coffee left in a mug marked Maia has dried into a thick brown crust. And there is a small stain, left by a few drops of blood-tinged fluid |