Pain caught up with me, and I almost froze – I imagined spending my life as a Bonaparte, or a self-doubting Thomas – but I jerked my hand free and then leaned against the plastic barrel of the washbasin, punching the side.

I wanted to stare into a mirror and proclaim: This is it. I know who I am, now. And I accept, absolutely, my life as a machine driven by blood, as a creature of cells and molecules, as a prisoner of the TOE.

There were no mirrors, though. Not in the latrines of a refugee camp, not even on Stateless.

And if I waited a few more hours, the words would carry more weight – because by dawn, I’d finally know the whole truth about the TOE which enabled me to speak them.

#

On my way back to meet Akili, I took out my notepad and scanned the international nets. The anarchists’ strike against the mercenaries was being talked about, breathlessly, everywhere.

SeeNet’s coverage was the best, though.

It started with a view of the lagoon itself, huge and eerily calm in the moonlight, almost a perfect circle – like some ancient flooded volcanic crater, an echo of the hidden guyot below. I felt, in spite of everything, a pang of sorrow at the death of the mercenaries whose faces I’d never seen, who’d been betrayed by solid rock, and had drowned in terror for nothing but money and the rights of EnGeneUity’s shareholders.

The journalist spoke – a woman, out-of-shot, a professional with optic nerve taps. “It may take decades to reveal exactly who funded the invasion of Stateless, and why. It’s not even clear, as I speak, whether or not the desperate sacrifice the residents of this island have made will save them from the aggressors.

“But I do know this. Violet Mosala – the Nobel laureate who was evacuated from Stateless in a critical condition, less than twenty-four hours ago – had intended to make this island her new home. She had hoped to lend the renegades enough respectability to enable a group of nations opposed to the UN boycott to speak their minds, at last. And if the invasion was an effort to silence those dissenting voices, it now seems doomed to failure. Violet Mosala is in a coma, fighting for her life after an attack by a violent cult – and the people of Stateless will be struggling harder than ever to survive the next few years, even if peace has come to them tonight – but the astonishing courage of both will not be easily forgotten.”

There was more, with some of my footage of Mosala at the conference, and this journalist’s own coverage of the shelling, the dignified exodus from the city, the establishment of the camps, and an attack by one of the mercenaries’ robots.