The room’s sole occupant looked up as Futurity entered. He sat on the one piece of furniture, a low bed. Futurity was immediately reminded of Mara, in another plainly furnished room, similarly trapped by her own mysterious past. The man was bulky, small - smaller than Futurity had imagined. His hair was black, his eyes dark brown. He looked about forty, but this man came from an age of the routine use of AntiSenescence treatments, so he could be any age. The muscles of his shoulders were bunched, and his hands were locked together, big, powerful engineer’s hands. He looked tense, angry, haunted.

As Futurity hesitated, the man fixed him with an aggressive gaze. ‘Who in Lethe are you?’ The language was archaic, and a translation whispered softly in Futurity’s ear.

‘My name is Futurity’s Dream.’

‘Futurity—?’ He laughed out loud. ‘Another infinity-botherer. ’

It shocked Futurity to have this man speak so casually heretically. But he had had enough of being cowed today, and he pulled himself together. ‘You are on a world of infinity-botherers, sir.’

The man eyed him with a grudging respect. ‘I suppose I can’t argue with that. I didn’t ask to be here, though. Just you remember that. So I know who you are. Who am I?’

Futurity took a deep breath. ‘You are Michael Poole.’

Poole raised his hand, and turned it back and forth, studying it. Then he stood up and without warning aimed a slap at Futurity’s cheek. Poole’s fingers broke up into a cloud of pixels, and Futurity felt nothing.

‘No,’ Poole murmured. ‘I guess you’re wrong. Michael Poole was a human being. Whatever I am it isn’t that.’

For a second Futurity couldn’t speak. He tried to hold himself together against this barrage of shocks.

To Futurity’s surprise, Poole said, ’Sorry. Perhaps you didn’t deserve that.’

Futurity shook his head. ‘My needs don’t matter.’

‘Oh, yes, they do. Everything goes belly-up if you forget that.’ He cast about the tetrahedral cell. ‘What’s a man got to do to get a malt whisky around here? . . . Oh. I forgot.’ He looked up into the tetrahedron’s squat spire, and held out his hand, cupping it. In a moment a glass appeared, containing a puddle of amber fluid. Poole sipped it with satisfaction. Then he dipped his fingers in the drink, and flicked droplets at Futurity. When they hit the acolyte’s cassock, the droplets burst apart in little fragments of light. ‘Consistency protocols,’ Poole murmured. ‘How about that? Why am I here, Futurity’s Dream? Why am I talking to you - why am I conscious again?’

Futurity said bluntly, ‘I need your help.’

Poole sat down, sipped his drink, and grunted. ‘More of your decadent dumb-ass theology?’

‘Not theology,’ Futurity said evenly. ‘A human life.’

That seemed to snag Poole’s attention. But he said, ‘How long this time?’