  An "analytic continuation" of a Hermitian matrix representing the
conventional fermion-number operator, leads to a new, and unconventional,
internal description of quarks and leptons. This phenomenological description,
unlike the conventional standard-model description, is capable of explaining,
among other things, why there are just three families of quarks and leptons.
These facts provide indirect evidence that the analytic continuation in
question somehow reflects physics at the Planck level where flavor
degrees-of-freedom presumably originate.
