A thin young man in bright floral shorts was putting on the scuba gear the woman had discarded. I introduced myself; he seemed nervous, but he didn’t mind talking. His name was Kumar Rajendra, an Indian-Fijian civil engineering student; he’d been on Stateless less than a week. I took a button camera from my wallet and explained what I wanted. He glanced over at the people gathered around the hole – as if wondering if he needed to ask permission of someone – but then he agreed to take it down. Fixing the camera to the top of the scuba mask, where it sat like a third eye, I noticed a faint chalky residue on the faceplate’s transparent plastic.

An elderly woman in a wetsuit came over and checked that the scuba gear was fitted properly, then went through emergency procedures with Rajendra. He listened solemnly; I backed away and checked the reception on my notepad. The camera transmitted in ultrasound, radio and IR – and if all those signals failed to get through, it had a forty-minute memory.

Munroe approached me, exasperated. “You’re crazy, you know. It won’t be the same. Why record someone else’s dive, when you could do it yourself?”

Just my luck; even on Stateless, I’d found someone who wanted me to shut up and do what I was told . I said, “Maybe I will; this way I get to see exactly what I’d be letting myself in for. Then again … I’m just a tourist, aren’t I? So my experience of a ceremony for new residents would hardly be authentic.”

Munroe rolled his eyes. “ Authentic? Make up your mind: are you covering the Einstein Conference, or making Coming of Age on Stateless ?”

“That remains to be seen. If I end up with two programs for the price of one … all the better.”

Rajendra climbed onto the edge of the well, took hold of the cable, then stepped onto the platform; it tilted precariously until he managed to center himself. The breeze ballooned his shorts and sent his hair streaming comically upward, but the sight was more vertiginous than amusing; it made him look like a skydiver sans parachute, or some lunatic balanced on the wing of a plane. He finally attached the safety line – but the impression of free-fall remained.

I was surprised that Munroe was so enthusiastic about what looked to me like just one more bonding-through-bravery ritual, one more initiation-by-ordeal. Even if there was no real pressure to take part, and even if the dangers were minimal … so much for the island of radical nonconformists.