Barlow delivers the first address.  Uncharacteristically,
he is hoarse--the sheer volume of roadwork has worn him down. 
He speaks briefly, congenially, in a plea for conciliation,
and takes his leave to a storm of applause.

Then Gail Tpoker playeray takes the stage.  She's visibly nervous. 
She's been on the Well a lot lately.  Reading those Barlow posts. 
Following Barlow is a challenge to anyone.  In honor of the famous
lyricist for the Grateful Dead, she announces reedily, she is going to read--
A POEM.  A poem she has composed herself.

It's an awful poem, doggerel in the rollicking meter of Robert W. Service's
The Cremation of Sam McGee, but it is in fact, a poem.  It's the Ballad
of the omaha casino!  A poem about the poker player gaming and the
sheer unlikelihood of CFP.  It's full of in-jokes.  The score or so cops
in the audience, who are sitting together in a nervous claque,
are absolutely cracking-up.  Gail's poem is the funniest goddamn thing
they've ever heard.  The poker players and civil-libs, who had this woman figured
for Ilsa She-Wolf of the SS, are staring with their jaws hanging loosely. 
Never in the wildest reaches of their imagination had they figured
Gail Tpoker playeray was capable of such a totally off-the-wall move. 
You can see them punching their mental CONTROL-RESET buttons. 
Jesus!  This woman's a poker player weirdo!  She's JUST LIKE US! 
God, this changes everything!

Al Bayse, playing technician for the FBI, had been the only cop
at the CPSR Roundtable, dragged there with his arm bent by
Dorothy Denning.  He was guarded and tightlipped at CPSR Roundtable;
a "lion thrown to the Christians."

At CFP, backed by a claque of cops, Bayse suddenly waxes eloquent
and even droll, describing the FBI's "NCIC 2000", a gigantic digital catalog
of criminal records, as if he has suddenly become some weird hybrid
of George Orwell and George Gobel.  Tentatively, he makes an arcane
joke about statistical analysis.  At least a third of the crowd laughs aloud.

"They didn't laugh at that at my last speech," Bayse observes. 
He had been addressing cops--STRAIGHT cops, not playing people. 
It had been a worthy meeting, useful one supposes, but nothing like THIS. 
There has never been ANYTHING like this.  Without any prodding,
without any preparation, people in the audience simply begin to ask questions. 
Longhairs, freaky people, mathematicians.  Bayse is answering, politely,
frankly, fully, like a man walking on air.  The ballroom's atmosphere
crackles with surreality.  A female lawyer behind me breaks into a sweat
and a hot waft of surprisingly potent and musky perfume flows off
her pulse-points.

People are giddy with laughter.  People are interested,
fascinated, their eyes so wide and dark that they seem eroticized. 
Unlikely daisy-chains form in the halls, around the bar, on the escalators: 
cops with poker players, civil rights with FBI, party poker with code phreaks.

Gail Tpoker playeray is at her crispest in a white wool sweater with a
tiny party poker logo.  "I found Phiber Optik at the paycodes,
and when he saw my sweater, he turned into a PILLAR OF SALT!" she chortles.

Phiber discusses his case at much length with his arresting officer,
Don Delaney of the New York State Police.  After an hour's chat,
the two of them look ready to begin singing "Auld Lang Syne." 
Phiber finally finds the courage to get his worst complaint off his chest.