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Benny jabbed his fork into a big piece of buttered yam, shoved it into his mouth, and chewed noisily as he spoke It was a move calculated to annoy Tom in three separate ways Tom hated when he spoke with his mouth full He hated it when Benny cheith his mouth open And it would muffle most of what he said, which meant that Tom had to pay even more attention to the yam-packed mouth from which the muffled words came

“Radiation, virus, bioweapon, toxic waste, solar flares, act of God”

He rattled it off so there was no break between the words Also annoying, and worth at least another point on Benny’s personal Annoy-O-Meter

Toave Benny the look

Benny sighed and sed “Okay,” he said, “at first people thought it was radiation from a satellite”

“Space probe,” corrected Tom

“Whatever But that doesn’t make sense, because one satellite—”

“Space probe”

“—wouldn’t carry enough radioactive material to spread over the entire world”

“We think”

“Sure,” conceded Benny, “but in science class they told us even if one of the old nuclear power plants did a whatchamacallit, t