Albert shook his head. That must have been why the lawbots had come for Tweedledum. It had nothing to do with the conversation, after all, or even the chap’s own conspiracy theories. The man had been a dissident. Imagine that. Not that you could ever tell—he knew that; he would have known it even if it hadn’t been part of the tenets, drummed into him from day one at the Academy. Perfection is vigilance. Nobody is perfect until everybody is. Everybody is guilty until nobody is.

He shook his head again and sighed, feeling a spreading, constricting melancholy—more than melancholy, a pale, watery anger at the pointlessness of it all. The world might well need changing, but it wouldn’t change, not till people started figuring out that whether you called it the Way, or the Code or Virgil or whatever, chasing magic medicine wasn’t the answer. Only they wouldn’t, not until it was too late, at least for him and everyone else around at the moment. It was already too late for Tweedledum. He was gone now, reduced to an even smaller statistic, just another life down the drain, flushed away in the wake of a dead man’s dream.

‘Damn!’ he shouted, bringing his fist down to crash violently into the armrest of the chair.

Behind him, the screen blinked to life again.

ALBERT, YOU APPEAR TO BE HAVING AN EMOTIONAL OUTBURST.

He didn’t answer, and didn’t turn around either.

ALBERT, WHAT IS THE PROBLEM?

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ he said bitterly, still not turning around.

MAY I RECOMMEND A HISTORICAL VIDEO? PERHAPS SOMETHING ON ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS? OR PERHAPS ONE ON PRIMITIVE SOCIAL STRUCTURES? INDULGING A HOBBY IS A PROVEN METHOD OF CONTROLLING EMOTIONAL REACTIONS TO STRESS.

He sighed again. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m not stressed.’

THEN PERHAPS YOU SHOULD LOG INTO THE NETWORK? YOU HAVE BEEN OFFLINE FOR TWO DAYS.

‘I know how long it’s been.’

MAY I REMIND YOU THAT YOUR DUTY AS A CITIZEN REQUIRES—

‘No, you don’t need to remind me of anything!’ he snapped, turning away from the screen.