Juravenators are nocturnal, so that means you keep night hours too. Suits you. You haven’t seen the right side of nine am since leaving home and you don’t aim to start now. Night’s a different color of daylight these days anyway, all bright lights and moving pictures. Midnight’s noon with a billboard deal.

Brainwashing this time, maybe, or maybe just poorly-timed religion. Either way, you’re both sharing space in the back pew of a box store that they’ve turned into a church, listening to the pleasant female voice of a robot reading the day’s lesson, which is from Sirach. Apparently there’s a book called Sirach.

“Send new portents, do fresh wonders, win glory for your hand and your right arm,” it reads. “Rouse your fury, pour out your rage, destroy the opponent, annihilate the enemy.” The crowd’s not really into it, or maybe they’re just too ground down for either wonders or fury. Alphonse keeps one saurian eye on the priest while you scan the crowd for your pigeon.

“I don’t see him,” you whisper. “Think we’ve got the wrong one again.”

“Name of a name,” says Alphonse. “I am full up of this nonsense.” He gnashes his teeth with frustration and the sinosauropteryx to his right edges uneasily away, forelimbs wheeling placatingly. “All right. Pack it in.”

You slide out of the pew, heading for the next night sermon on your list. Behind you the lesson goes on, give those who wait for you their reward, let your prophets be proved true, that placid robotic voice as perfect and unchanging as the face of god.