Marathe and Steeply: the Entertainment named (pp. 89–90)

Here the thing gets its name and its terms in a single spy's aside. Steeply christens it "the Entertainment" — the flattest, most generic word the language has for pleasure — and immediately gives the three attributes that make it a weapon rather than a movie: it arrives by ordinary mail, "without warning," and "without motive." No demand accompanies it, no manifesto, no target selection anyone can read; it simply shows up "out of the blue" and destroys whoever plays it. The namelessness and the motivelessness are the point the book will worry for eight hundred pages: a lethal object that wants nothing from you but your attention is a horror the strategic mind cannot get purchase on, which is exactly why two intelligence services are sitting on a rock in the desert trying to decide whether it's a weapon, a warning, or a hoax.