Metafire

"I was at Vandenberg Air Force Base, seeing some of my people off. The company now has two manned capsules in space and two service capsules."

"Yes. I have one more question." Ferguson was concerned he might give away something so he decided this would go nowhere, except, "Have you ever heard the phrase 'metafire is the fire that burns the fire'?"

Dr. O'Leary didn't think this was important. This was Stan Firestone's way of talking about his purpose, but he knew that Stan would say it publicly to people. So he said, "Yes. The President, Stan Firestone, that died, used to say that to people. I heard it. I don't say it."

"Do you know what it means?"

"No. I never figured it out. Never really tried to." He had no problem with lying at all. Furthermore, he could make up pretty convincing lies on the fly. "I think it must have had something to do with how we can reconstruct stuff that gets deleted. I showed an agent last week what we do. I think this agent was there," he looked at the agent at the desk who then nodded.

"Excuse me," the Attorney interrupted, "the FBI visited last week?"