Underneath was a crude sketch of a fire-breathing lizard surrounded by collapsing skyscrapers, while little stick figures fled in terror. I still hadn’t found out who among the Pathfinders felt driven to share their deep and, to my mind, inexplicable love for disaster movies.

I stepped past the deserted front desk and made for the glass door to the left, beyond which I could hear the sound of tinny animal roars and overdubbed screaming. Near the glass door, pinned to the wall, were about two dozen photographs, all of the Statue of Liberty. It wasn’t until you looked more closely that you realized they were not, in fact, pictures of the same Statue of Liberty. Some were half-drowned in ice, while others rose out of baking deserts. One lay on its side, its head separated from its body, while another was wreathed in jungle vines. Another Pathfinder’s idea of a joke.

I could also smell the beans and grits Yuichi had mentioned, and I suddenly felt ravenous. I hadn’t eaten since grabbing a snack in the EV a whole universe away.

I found the bar deserted. The monster movie was playing on a ceiling-mounted projector that threw the images onto a bare, cream-coloured wall. I paused for just long enough to see a man wearing a rubber monster costume manoeuvre his way past shoulder-high balsa wood skyscrapers. The scene cut away to Japanese and American actors in a room filled with fake computers, pretending to be thrown about as if by an earthquake.

The components of a still took up much of the top of the bar counter. Most of the liquor behind the bar had been brewed by Yuichi, who had set it up with the help of the Nuyakpuk cousins. A door to one side of the bar led into a room that had formerly been an office, and was now filled with vats of fermenting beer and wine. As well as all this, a couple of times a day either Tony or Jim Nuyakpuk dutifully fired up a portable gas stove to cook whatever was on the menu that day. I couldn’t see either of the two cousins around, so I ladled some of the beans and grits into a cheap plastic bowl before grabbing some lukewarm coffee to go with it. It was there for the taking; it wasn’t as if we had any use for money in a place like this, after all, nor a bank to keep it in. I’m pretty sure the Authority used cash wherever they came from, but for us at least, everything we needed was there for the taking.

I found Nadia sitting outside next to the pool, accessible through a sliding glass door. Another Pathfinder by the name of Selwyn Rudd was with her, his sailor’s cap pulled tight over his fleshy, balding scalp. They nodded wordlessly as I sat with them, bowl in hand.