“No.” Even without this inexplicable burst of contagion, I knew my targeted neuroactive mutant bioweapon theory wouldn’t stand up to any scrutiny at all. “But we can still both be wrong, can’t we?”

“Maybe.”

I hesitated. “If it’s this fast, now – then after the Aleph moment…?”

“I don’t know. It could sweep the planet in a week. Or an hour. The faster the better – less suffering for the people who see it coming, but don’t yet understand.” Akili closed vis eyes, began to put vis face in vis hands, stopped, clenched vis fists. “When it comes, it better be sweet. The truth you can’t escape had better be sweet.”

I moved closer and put my arm around ver, and swayed our bodies gently together from side to side.

#

Sarah arrived, barely a minute later than promised. She sat on my suitcase, and we talked for her camera eyes. Sometimes we had to shout to make ourselves heard – but software would bring the noise of the celebrations down to an atmospheric murmur.

Sarah and I had never been more than casual acquaintances – I’d only spoken to her in person a dozen times before – but for me, she came from the world beyond Stateless, the time before the conference; she was living proof of that era of sanity. And it only took one third party, there in the flesh, to anchor me to normality – to render me certain, again, that Akili was wrong. Distress was a mundane horror, no different from cholera. The universe was oblivious to human explanation. The laws of physics always had been and always would be solid – all the way down to the bedrock of the TOE – whether or not they were understood.

And – though we weren’t going out in real time – she’d brought her audience with her. Under the potential scrutiny of ten million people, what else could I do but think what they expected me to think, give in to their consensus, conform?

Akili, too, seemed to relax – but whether Sarah’s presence anchored ver in the same way, or merely served as a welcome distraction, I couldn’t tell.

Sarah guided us deftly through our roles in Violet Mosala: Victim of Anthrocosmology . The deposition I’d made for Joe Kepa had stuck to the legally pertinent facts; this interview pretended to probe the moral and philosophical depths of the ACs’ conspiracy. But Akili and I both talked of the fishing boat, and the moderates’ insane beliefs, as if we had no doubt that their whole world view – as much as their violent methods – deserved only contempt; as if nothing remotely similar could have crossed our own minds in a thousand years.