Within seconds, though, awareness reappeared and they shook themselves like men and women awaking from a peculiar dream. Those who happened to be in company met the concerned or alarmed or curious looks of their companions with disarming smiles, forced in some cases, and comments such as, “Sorry, just drifted off there for a moment.” Two hundred and forty-three silvery metallic canisters were retrieved, either immediately or at the first opportunity to do so unobserved, and opened. The creamy powder, which had already been distributed through much of the densely-populated areas of the planet, now began to be smeared on banisters, door knobs and so on and so forth in cities like Pyongyang and Caracas, and in scientific and military outposts in far-flung regions. The powder appeared, though barely discernibly, in the thin air of mountainside villages and on oil rigs and in military island bases and other remote communities. Many of the two hundred and forty-three people in possession of the canisters also held positions as research and field scientists or high-ranking military advisors and personnel—army, air and navy—or civil servants or personal assistants.
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