‘Why me, though?’ This was really the question foremost in my mind, not just for Quin. It’s a routine question for an addict, for whom self-pity comes naturally; and it’s a nasty, sticky question, because all too often there are a number of very convincing answers, and we’re inviting them to carousel around in our minds. What we mean is: Why not someone else?

‘You were pliant, as you say,’ Quin replied, with an apologetic shrug. ‘Sorry about that. After you made that dishonest dog’s dinner of an interview with me … I was annoyed, and I had people go through more of your articles, looking for inaccuracies and plagiarism – we found them, too. We were going to do quite a number on you.’

‘Pierce told me,’ I said. When he had told me, it had come as the most awful news, an abyss opening up. Days later, I hardly cared.

‘You got away with a lot. And it was seeping into reality, doing real harm. Your mistakes had made it through to Wikipedia, for instance. You were corrupting the record.’

‘If you think I’m the only one, you’re more naive than I imagined.’

‘It’s been a steep learning curve, for sure,’ Quin said. He didn’t seem at all annoyed or judgemental about it – a transformation from the infuriated, self-righteous F.A.Q. who had complained to Eddie an Ice Age ago. In fact he smiled, and I didn’t like it. ‘But learn we have, oh yes.’

He rose from his seat and walked around the desk, passing behind me to the door. At the door, he gestured again for me to follow, and left the office.

‘Jonathan, I’m taking her for a little ride, if you don’t mind,’ Quin said to his assistant as he passed. The statement did not leave scope for objection, but Jonathan gave a formal nod anyway.

Quin entered the seating area at the foot of the God Board and perched on a stool. His phone was in his hand and he was thumbing through menus and options at speed, looking up at the board as he did so. The board moved, tiling through overlays, then tracking in on Shoreditch, our location.

‘Here we are,’ Quin said. It was a skyscraper, in data terms, dwarfing the rest of the city, a spire of information. ‘As you can see, there’s a great concentration of active users here – my colleagues.’ His employees. He was scrolling through the pile of icons heaped at this address. ‘Anyone with a BunkMate ID is tinted purple, but – hello! – there’s you in the stack, the regular blue one.’