“In a hurry? No, I was just going out for some air. If you’re not busy yourself, you’re welcome to join me.”

I accepted gratefully. I’d been planning to eat, but I still had no real appetite – and it occurred to me that Lee might have some professional insights into technolibération which she’d be willing to share.

As we stepped through the doors, though, I could see what she’d really meant by “going out for some air”: Mystical Renaissance had decided to show themselves, crowding the street outside the hotel. Banners read: TO EXPLAIN IS TO DESTROY! REVERE THE NUMEN! SAY NO TO TOE! T-shirts displayed Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Joseph Campbell, Fritjof Capra, the cult’s late founder Günter Kleiner, event artist Sky Alchemy – and even Einstein, poking his tongue out.

No one was chanting slogans; after Janet Walsh’s confrontationist salvo, Mystical Renaissance had opted for a carnival atmosphere, all mime artists and fire-jugglers, palmists and tarot card readers. Tumbling firesticks cast oscillating deep-blue shadows everywhere, giving the street an oceanic cast. Bemused locals threaded their way through this obstacle course with expressions of weary resignation; they hadn’t asked to have a circus shoved down their throats. So far as I could see, it was only a few badge-wearing conference members who were availing themselves of the free entertainment, or giving money to the buskers and fortune-tellers.

One of the cultists who’d stolen Albert was singing “Puff, the Magic Dragon”, accompanying himself on a keyboard – a common brand, like his T-shirt; both had IR programming ports. I paused in front of him, smiling appreciatively, while I invoked some notepad software I’d written several years before, and quietly typed instructions. As we walked away, his keyboard fell silent – every volume level set to zero – and Einstein sprouted a thought balloon which read: “Our experience hitherto justifies us in believing that nature is the realization of the simplest conceivable mathematical ideas.”

Lee gave me an admonishing look. I said, “Come on! He was begging for it.”

Further down the street, a small theater group were in the middle of a compressed version of The Iceman Cometh , rewritten in contemporary MR vernacular. A woman in a clown costume tore at her hair and declaimed: “I’ve failed to be psychically attuned! Everyone in my net-clan would have remained closer to the healing numen, if only I’d respected their need to continue to be nourished by their imagination-driven self-narratives!” Images of tears flowed down her cheeks.

I turned to Lee. “Well, I’m convinced. I’m joining up tomorrow. And to think: I used to take the fragile beauty of the sunset and reduce it to ugly technical jargon.”