"What then?"

    "I beg your pardon?"

    "Suppose you find King Solomon's Gold in Shive Tor and bring
it home to your laboratory, and extract the Philosophic Mercury
from it -- that's it, then, isn't it?"

    "That's /what/, then?"

    "It's the End of the World or something, it is the Apocalypse,
you've solved the riddle, found God's presence on Earth, the
secret of eternal life -- really this entire /conversation/ is
idle, in a sense -- none of it /matters/, does it?"

    "There is no telling," Isaac said, in the soothing tones of
one who is trying to calm a madman.  "My calculations from the
Book of Revelation suggest that the End of the World will not
occur until 1876."

		-- Daniel Waterhouse and Issac Newton, in
		   Neal Stephenson's "The System Of The World"