cultural/technological "flotjet" of the modern era. Around the same time as the nuclear tests were occurring, a Japanese scientist in Hiroshima was attempting to invent a radio with which the thoughts of animals could be heard. One year exactly before the nuclear bombing, his son, Yukio Komodo, is born. On Komodo's first birthday, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima occurs. Two versions of this event are related. In the first version told at the opening of the novel, Komodo has a premonition of the incoming attack, and his parents die in the blast. Wandering through the blasted cityscape, he sends a supplication to Gojiro, who appears before him. In the other, his father has the premonition, and forces Komodo and the radio deep into a hole. The heat of the blast causes the radio to burn three concentric rings into his chest above his heart, which Komodo later takes to be the emblem of his bond with Gojiro. Mostly unharmed by the blast, he is nonetheless stunned into a catatonic state in which he is aware of the outside world but does not move. He becomes a celebrity after the war, meeting many famous people, including Victor Stiller. He is diligently nursed by a black soldier, Walter Crenshaw, who also keeps safe the radio he was found with. When Komodo is 10 years old, he receives a psychic supplication from Gojiro on Radioactive Island, and offers to be his friend. This awakens him from his coma, and Walter helps Komodo to escape on a fishing boat. Walter tries and fails to give the radio to Komodo as he escapes, but he keeps it safe from American authorities, entrusting it to his wife, never revealing it or Komodo's location. Komodo's death is then faked. At around the same time, Joseph Brooks drives around America with his daughter Sheila on the lam, eventually being captured, his death also being faked, and he is taken back to the Encrucijada, where he lives unknown to Sheila, and daily assumes the pose his wife had painted of him. Komodo arrives on Radioactive island, where he quickly becomes friends with Gojiro. Gojiro remembers this time as the highlight of his life, and they pledge to be together forever. Gojiro begins to expound philosophic dialogues, inspired by a muse he names "Budd Hazard", which act as an extension and elaboration of the philosophy of the lizards, centred around