In this chapter, Desdemona explains how she came to be a scientist at the Air Force's Center for Engineered Systems, or CEDS, in Maryland. She is a graduate student at the University of Maryland and has just returned from a five-year tour of CEDS with General Clarkson, the former head of the military's Air Weapons Systems Center. She asks Dr. Austin to show her around the facility, and he agrees to do so. He has been assigned to work on a new weapon that does not use gunpowder.