They go to hell to find Elliot Richards.
Hell has become some sort of cross between Disneyland and a prison camp - a mix of smiling attendants, armed guards, neon signs and free sweets.
They trudge up to the white house on the hill, where they find a party going on, are greeted by Bridget (Elliot's "sister"). She gets them drinks and takes them to Elliot's study.
Elliot claims to know nothing about all this "virtual reality" business. Egg tries to prove it by popping back to his body in the cave, where Pauline is keeping watch.
Egg conjures an image of the cave on a mirror.
Bridget flirts with John and Henry, asking them about this "non-virtual reality".
Henry "uploads" her to his PDA, and sees her face on the screen.
McKee confers with Elliot (while Egg and Henry are popping back and forth between Hell and their bodies in the cave), and then McKee snatches Elliot's scissors from his desk, stabs them into Elliot, and gets sucked into Elliot.
John tries to warn the others but finds his call blocked - he finds himself in some black abyss.
Henry (currently in the cave) tries to get back to Hell but finds himself blocked.
He finds the spot which would be the "camera eye" showing the image in the mirror in Hell and punches it, to no effect.
In Hell, Egg gets Wu Dun on Elliot - snapping him with his sash. Elliot snips the sash to ribbons.
Bridget comes at Egg with a halberd, and he blocks and sweeps her off her feet, then snaps back into the cave.
They sleep, get up, Egg does his Kata, Pauline complains and tells them it's time to get back to New York for some coffee.
She summons a Manhole (personal transport wormhole) by invoking some invisible user interface, and gets them to a rooftop in New York. They go to a coffeeshop and talk some more, explaining about different levels of technology - the 2050's tech of the mind-control wristwatches vs. the cutting edge wormhole-controlling nanotech she's using vs. the even more powerful and unguessed-at femtotech behind their powers. The discussion bogs down with Egg's question of how time travel works and how it can prevent rampant technological advancement (technological development running along a loop).