But she still wasn’t ready to give up. “You were talking about the Voluntary Autists, before? If you wanted something spectacular to illustrate that … we could image your own Lamont’s area – while you brought to mind a sequence of different people. We could record it all, and play it back for you. Then you could show your viewers a real-time working copy of the thing itself. Not some glossy animation: flesh and blood, caught in the act. Neurons pumping calcium ions, synapses firing. We could even transform the neural architecture into a functional diagram, calibrate it, identify trait symbols. We have all the software—”

I said, “It’s very kind of you to offer. But … what kind of tenth-rate journalist would I be, if I started resorting to using myself as the subject of my own stories?”

Chapter 7

Two weeks before the Einstein Centenary conference was due to begin, I signed a contract with SeeNet for Violet Mosala: Symmetry’s Champion . As I scrawled my name on the electronic document with my notepad’s stylus, I tried to convince myself that I’d been given the job because I’d do it well – not merely because I’d pulled rank and begged for a favor. There was no doubt that Sarah Knight was inexperienced – she was five years younger than me, and she’d spent most of her career in political journalism. Being a self-confessed “fan” of Mosala might even have worked against her; no one at SeeNet would have wanted a gushing hagiography. But for all my alleged professionalism, I’d still only glanced at Sisyphus ’s briefing, I still had no real idea what I was taking on.

The truth was, I didn’t care about the details; all that mattered was putting Junk DNA behind me, and running as far away from Distress as I could. After twelve months drowning in the worst excesses of biotechnology, the pristine world of theoretical physics shone in my mind’s eye like some anesthetized mathematical heaven, where everything was cool and abstract and gloriously inconsequential … an image which merged seamlessly with the white coral snowflake of Stateless itself, growing out into the blue Pacific like a perfect fractal star. Part of me understood full well that if I took these beautiful mirages to heart, I was certain to be disappointed – and I even struggled to imagine the most unpleasant ways in which I might be brought back down to Earth. I could suffer an attack of multiple-drug-resistant pneumonia or malaria, a strain to which the locals were immune. High-level pharms which could analyze the pathogenic organisms and design a cure on the spot would be unavailable, thanks to the boycott, and I’d be too weak for the flight back to civilization… It wasn’t an impossible scenario; the boycott had killed hundreds of people over the years.

Still, anything had to be better than coming face-to-face with a victim of Distress.