Meemaw peeks in from the kitchen, holding a glass of sweet tea.

So is that why my pie is cold?

FADE TO BLACK.

(grinning) The future requires sacrifice.

Sheldon sits at the dining table, surrounded by torn-apart electronics. A DVD9 disc labeled “PROJECT TAU” spins in an external drive connected to his clunky Compaq laptop.

I’m going to the garage. Where things make sense.

(to himself) If I can fit the entire Illustrated Encyclopedia of Quantum Mechanics onto a single dual-layer disc, I will have achieved more than NASA did last Tuesday.