What if the whole thing were a ghastly joke, a mistake or a misunderstanding?

Jorgen turned it over, conscious that he had no emotional reaction, only an intellectual sense of the ghastly joke on the human race.

It comes out in those ghastly jokes of his.

Or were his eyes playing some ghastly joke upon him?

If it is the Omni, and an elaborate ghastly joke, we're doomed no matter what we do.

Now, by this point Nick wasn't sure if it was all some ghastly joke or not, and then he realized what had happened.

"I know a better way to punish him for that ghastly joke."

Now he knew that it had happened but still thought it might be some ghastly joke.

It was a ghastly joke, she thought.

To Fred Sibley, it was a ghastly joke - and a grim warning to himself.