The story of "Shadowplay" is of an unseen character in a bar, where he is approached by a man-sized, walking, talking eagle. The eagle, from the emblem of the CIA, proceeds to drink alcohol and, in a drunken stupor, divulge all the details of The Agency's past. Early on a reference is made to the number of gallons an Olympic swimming pool can hold, and the fact that an adult human body has one gallon of blood; from then on, the victims of CIA activities (directly or indirectly) are quantified in swimming pools filled with blood, with each pool representing 20,000 dead.