Jonathan makes his way to Geneva to access the world's central supercomputer, known as Zero. While revered as the repository of all human knowledge, Zero's memories are lost or corrupted, which is revealed when the librarian mentions that Zero has "lost" or misplaced the entire 13th century wiping out for all time inconsequential literature including Dante's Inferno. Zero, "finds things, and loses them, and confuses itself." Jonathan's goal is to find out how the corporations make their decisions, instead of finding an explanation he encounters doubletalk, exposing the fragility, imperfections, and impermanence of volatile memory, electronic records, and digitized encyclopedic knowledge.