Why did they feel it was their duty to guard Mosala, though? What role did TOE specialists play in the Anthrocosmologists’ scheme of things? Revered gurus? Unworldly holy fools who needed to be protected from their enemies by a secret cadre of devoted followers? Sanctifying physicists would make a change from sanctifying ignorance – but I could imagine Mosala finding it even more galling to be told that she was some kind of precious (but ultimately, naïve and helpless) conduit for mystical insights, than to be told she was in need of being humbled , or healed .

Number 27 was a single-story house of silver-gray granite-like reef-rock. It was large, but no mansion; four or five bedrooms, maybe. It made sense for the reclusive ACs to lease themselves something out in the suburbs; it was certainly more discreet than booking themselves rooms in a hotel swarming with journalists. Warm yellow light showed through windows set to opalescent, a deliberately welcoming configuration. I walked through the unlocked gate, crossed the empty courtyard, steeled myself, and rang the bell. If Mystical Renaissance could don clown costumes and talk about “imagination-driven self-narratives” out on the street for all the world to see, I wasn’t sure I was ready for a cult whose practices had to take place behind closed doors.

My notepad emitted a brief, soft squeal, like a children’s toy impaled on a knife. I took it from my pocket; the screen was blank – the first time ever I’d seen it that way. The door opened, and an elegantly dressed woman smiled at me and extended a hand, saying, “You must be Andrew Worth. I’m Amanda Conroy.”

“Pleased to meet you.”

Still clutching my notepad, I shook her hand. She glanced at the dead machine. “It won’t be damaged – but you understand, this is off the record.” She had a west coast US accent, and unashamedly unnatural milk-white skin, smooth as polished marble. She might have been any age from thirty to sixty.

I followed her into the house, down a plushly carpeted hallway, and into the living room. There were half a dozen wall-hangings: large, abstract and colorful. They looked to me like Brazilian Mock Primitive – the work of a school of fashionable Irish artists – but I had no way of knowing whether or not they were the “genuine” article: self-consciously exploitative “remixes” of twenties São Paulo ghetto art, currently valued at a hundred thousand times the price of the real thing from Brazil. The four-meter wall-screen certainly wasn’t cheap, though, and nor was the hidden device which had turned my notepad into a brick. I didn’t even contemplate trying to invoke Witness ; I was just glad I’d transmitted the morning’s footage to my editing console at home, before leaving the hotel.