Lumic's airship touches down, met by the President and his two men, and by Peter, who's already there. "Mr. Tyler," the President greets him. "What the matter couldn't wait until tonight?" Peter shakes the President's hand: "Honored. I'm on the fast-track program. Cybus Industries have pulled up my company, so I'm part of the firm now." The President "jokes" that Cybus has bought his government, and Peter laughs (and again, I was about to make the joke he makes just now): "I've never heard anybody say that. Never. You can trust me on this!" With the thumbs up. The President confides that he's tried the Vitex: "Tastes like pop." Pete's like, "Um, it totally is." The President's amazed but not as bothered as you might think, or hiding it well: "You made money by selling a health-food drink into a sick world." (It's alive! Or it works! Selling health-food soda to a sick world, robot bodies to a sick hiving mind.) Pete is caught off-guard, and the President sighs, "He does like to keep us waiting..." He stalks off, and Peter follows him to the foot of the airship jetway. "Tell me," says the President as they wait. "You've had a chance to observe John Lumic more than most. What's your opinion?" Our Peter Tyler was a good but imperfect man. And in the Age of Steel? "He's very sharp, I'd say. Sharp as ever. Very clever man. Brilliant, in fact." Lying or co-opted or both or neither? "Then, you don't think he's insane?" presses the President. Peter answers truthfully: "That's not the word I would've used, no." The President says only "I see," and begins to climb the stairs up. Pete follows. I keep having visions of making out with Matthew McConaughey and how gross that would be. I'm not even a lesbian -- though the simple thought of making out with Matthew McConaughey might manage to accomplish this unlikely transformation -- but it makes me want to move to Hell or Norway. I can't imagine what filming was like on Contact. Gross me out.

Mickey walks around a Cybus factory; the military is blocking the road ahead. He asks if he can get past their barricade, looking for a particular neighborhood, and the soldiers are like, "No bother. Curfew doesn't start 'til 10." He's surprised that there's a curfew (I'm surprised there are soldiers; I thought they only hung out in American airports, with their bandoliers and hatred of all liquids), and the soldiers are incredulous: "'Course there is. Where've you been living, mate? Up there with the toffs?" He nods up at the airships, and Mickey shrugs: "I wish." He and the soldiers part on good terms; one of them lifts the barrier for him. He goes home.