“This is impossible,” Dr. Thorne whispered. “This machine has no sensors. No AI accelerator. It has less processing power than a digital watch.”
The screen on the cash register flickered.
“Large. Black. Extra spite,” she mumbled.
Cautiously, she took a sip.
His team later found him in the break room, sobbing over a napkin on which he’d written the unified field theory. It took three assistants to convince him to eat a sandwich.