I went to my room and took a shower, instinctively shielding the freshly bandaged wound although I knew there was no need to keep it dry. The luxury of hot water, the solidity of the plain elegant decor, seemed surreal. Twenty four hours before, I’d planned to do everything I could to help Mosala smash the boycott, reshaping the documentary around the news of her emigration. But what could I do for technolibération , now? Buy an external camera, and proceed to document her meaningless death – while Stateless collapsed in the background? Was that what I wanted? To claw back my delusions of objectivity, and calmly record whatever fate befell her?

I stared at myself in the mirror. What use was I to anyone, now?

The room had a wallphone; I called the hospital. There’d been no problems with the operation, but Akili was still sleeping off the anesthetic. I decided to visit ver anyway.

I walked through the hotel lobby just as the morning sessions were breaking up. The conference was still running on schedule – although screens announced a memorial for Yasuko Nishide later in the day – but the participants were visibly nervous and subdued, talking quietly in small groups, or looking around furtively as if hoping to overhear some vital piece of news about the occupation, however unreliable.

I spotted a group of journalists, all people I knew slightly, and they let me join in as they swapped rumors. The consensus seemed to be that foreigners would be evacuated – by the US (or New Zealand, or Japanese) navy – within a matter of days, although no one could offer any firm evidence for this belief. David Connolly – Janet Walsh’s photographer – said confidently, “There are three US Nobel prize-winners here. Do you really think they’re going to be left stranded, indefinitely, while Stateless goes to hell?”

The other consensus was that the airport had been taken by “rival anarchists” – the infamous US gun law “refugees.” Biotech interests didn’t rate a mention – and if Mosala’s plan to migrate was common knowledge on the island, nobody here had bothered to talk to the locals long enough to find out.

These people would be reporting everything that happened on Stateless to the world – and none of them had the slightest idea of what was really going on.

On my way to the hospital, I spotted an electrical retailer. I bought a new notepad and a small, shoulder-mounted camera. I typed my personal code into the notepad, and the last satellite backup from the old machine flowed down from deep freeze and started catching up with realtime. The screen was a blur of activity for several seconds – and then Sisyphus announced, “Reported cases of Distress have exceeded three thousand.”