1. This scenario could open by painting a vivid picture of Figurski and Nguyen, in sandals and shorts, still wired and tousled from a late night of drug-enhanced negotiations about pig parts, trying not to look conspicuous as they merged into the breakfast buffet line of Many Palms Oceanside Resort with silver-haired vacationers and Shower-Lourdes groupies and hungover pale-legged conference-goers carrying laptops.

2. Figurski and Nguyen would no doubt see fliers about the Confederation of Multidisciplinary Automaton Scholars and, just as likely, one of those floor signs with a chrome base and glass-framed black rubber rectangle with rows of white letters slightly askew announcing, for example, that COMAS 97 Session 2.2.10, Strand A, had been moved from the Harbor View Room to the Starfish Annex.

3. Perhaps for a moment they would imagine themselves as participants in the conference, presenting a paper at a concurrent session (something that Figurski, at least, had done repeatedly in his long, unsuccessful career as a graduate student), while in reality they would be interlopers with a different agenda.

4. After some white space and by the time Figurski and Nguyen edged out two grandmothers with gravelly, ginsoaked voices for a poolside two-top and started gulping their coffee and juices, chewing their bagels and kiwis, it would be clear that, in the four years since the protagonists had independently visited the central Florida coast, the new pig paparazzi (of which the COMAS scholars were just one breed) had overwhelmed the traditional Shower-Lourdes apparitional crowd.

6. The scene should peak and then conclude with a conversation demonstrating their dawning mutual recognition that if they couldn't agree to share, they might both — they might all three — end up with nothing, a dialogue in which Figurski would brag that he has both pig bodies and (once again) both servomechanisms, Nguyen would remind him that he (Nguyen) has the Prime Mover to (he claims) the original Rosellini servomechanism (without which it's useless), Figurski would point out that Nguyen lacks the other (possibly genuine) Prime Mover, Nguyen would counter that Figurski likewise lacks that other Prime Mover, Figurski would snivel that he (Nguyen) may have the Prime Mover but he has no hands to hold it, the two grandmothers would shush them in ginsoaked gravelly voices from their nearby table, three professors would topple all the coffee carafes trying to run a phone line under the buffet in order to connect a modem and check their e-mail, and so on.

7. How much had the COMAS scholars guessed about the real pigs?

8. Looking over the conference program, Figurski and Nguyen might (or not?) verbalize the fact that at some point they would have to get on the same page with Vieuchanger — who was in possession of that second, controversial Prime Mover — before they could complete their plan.