It began at approximately 7:15 P.M., August 11, 1955, when Dr. John O'Hara Smith returned with a bag of groceries to his house trailer in the Mira Mar Trailer Park, overlooking a long blue reach of the Pacific Ocean, some twelve miles south of Los Angeles. He put the groceries on the drainboard beside his spotless two-burner butane stove, carefully flicked away a speck of dust and then stepped eagerly toward the rear of his trailer, where an intricate assembly of tubes and wires occupied what normally would have been the dining area.
Dr. Smith flipped on a switch, and then received what he later called, in his precise, pedantic way, a split-second premonition of danger.
The Go-NoGo panel light flashed and went out; the transistor looked grey instead of red; the wires to the binary-coded digitizer were crossed; the extra module in the basic assembly had not been there that morning....
Dr. Smith methodically catalogued these details, and he stepped backward, just a breath of a moment before the low hum sharpened to a whine. He tripped, and in falling his left shoulder knocked open the door to the small toilet closet. Instinctively, he writhed the upper part of his body through the narrow doorway. His thick-lensed glasses fell underneath him, leaving him practically blind.
His elbows and knees were still making frenzied, primordial crawling movements when the detonation brought a wave of oblivion that almost, but not quite, preceded the pain.