The final invention is exploding children made to kill important politicians and scientists to goad major world powers into attacking each other so the United Kingdom, left standing, could rule the world. Beverage had already sent exploding children, but they largely detonate prematurely and the mutual retaliation fails to materialize. However Babe's wife, Melissa, dies after a cache of children explode in her workplace in the UK; she had been sent there ostensibly to fine-tune speech of amusement park props. Scylla was tricked into destroying the cache thinking it was the only major cache, and he was unaware she was there; Beverage knew she would be there. When Babe and Scylla meet, they embrace and cry.