Saul stared at him, dressed in his immaculate white suit, looking so incongruous in this dark and filthy place. Everything Saul had done appeared absolutely clear in his mind: the way the viral nanite had been modelled on his own individual DNA, therefore was in many ways equivalent to the bespoke magic bullets already used by the medical profession; the way he altered the fix so that some parts of it worked more slowly, thus allowing the virus to finish its work before sealing it perfectly. The whole wonderful complexity of what he had achieved lay there opened up to the inspection of his inner eye. But he could not explain this to Smith: the man was just too stupid to understand, and Saul didn’t possess the words to make it clear. Furthermore, at the core of him lay a rebellious stubbornness and a disinclination to communicate which just locked him into continuing silence.

The enforcer started the grinder rotating and brought it up close to Saul’s chest.

‘As a consequence of the antishock drugs we have injected into you, you will undoubtedly stay conscious for an appreciable period of time,’ Smith explained, in his usual laborious fashion. ‘Blood loss resulting from this treatment will not be sufficient to render you unconscious.’ He indicated a set of blood bags tubed into his victim’s arm, which Saul hadn’t noticed before.

The sanding disc came down against his chest, producing an unbelievable explosion of agony. Saul shrieked, and struggled against the restraints, blood and skin spraying all about him. He now wanted to tell Smith, wanted to tell him everything, but the words remained locked up inside him. And even in his agony he noticed that not one fleck of the bloody detritus had marred Smith’s pristine white suit.

Saul retreated from this nightmare of pain, but just couldn’t locate himself in time or space. His groping mind tried to incorporate a thousand cam views, tried to get a grip on the huge traffic of computer code surrounding him, yet found it frustratingly slippery to his mental grasp. He sensed robots stirring in recollection, from wherever they crouched amid the inner-station substructure like roosting birds, felt others blocking him out as they began to move under someone else’s instruction. Such exploration was almost instinctive to him, yet at least it gave him his own location.

I am aboard the Argus space station.

An outside view suddenly of a space plane coming in to dock. He felt a sudden surge of panic at the sight, but had no idea why. He needed to take control, needed access, but it all now seemed far too confusing. First he needed to return to himself and locate himself precisely in space and time. He needed to rediscover his fleshly ego, and from that firmer basis regain memory and purpose. But which of these thousands of views came through his own human vision? The only way to find out was to disconnect from all obvious cam-signal traffic, which he did as rapidly as he could, and finally he opened his eyes.