Meanwhile, a lovesick young Brit called Alex is mooching his way across the States in order to hook up with his American girlfriend and propose to her. However, strange things keep happening in his wake, and two DEI agents are sent to track him - and, at the same time, save him from the attentions of two much nastier agents from Britain, who also want the coincidence engine and, being ex-army, are happier about using violence to get it. And so begins a romp across America, a sort of road movie which riffs off Alex's fascination with Americana, some maths-based philosophising (all very light; don't be frightened. As Leith says in a brief author's note at the beginning, "I don't know any maths") and the secret machinations of a panicked secret department; spooked spooks, as it were. (A nice touch is the notion that all the mad, babbling vagrants in America actually do have transmitters installed in their heads, with the DEI monitoring their ravings in order to spot any emerging patterns.)
