A temporary compensation scheme had been hastily arranged by a group of the less badly affected banks. Although seeming huge by individual standards the fund was hopelessly inadequate as a way of bailing out the banks and other companies, but it was a much needed resource for many citizen serfs. Thousands had found their lives and homes seriously in jeopardy because of the crash. Emergency survival payments acted as a lifeline for most of these people.

Some of the more articulate victims of the crash went on television to say that the whole thing was illusory. There was no evidence of financial weakness, they claimed, and added that the so-called crisis had been devised as a way of amalgamating certain of the banks and other finance houses to strengthen their position. The cost of this was being borne by the citizen serfs whose savings were at stake.

It suddenly struck me that there was a similarity with the landslides and avalanches that killed people on Dearth but were in fact illusory, a psychological delusion of some kind. How long before we found out that the financial crash had never really happened?

Meanwhile, the authorities continued to insist they were closing their net on the mysterious group of hackers responsible for everything.

Every day I went online to check my own bank account. Every day I read the reassuring notes that the bank was riding out the storm of uncertainty sinking all others around. I doubted that was true, but there was nothing I could do about it. I was able to pay bills from the account, draw small amounts of cash from a handful of nominated sites, and I could of course pay into the account as much as I wished.

That gave me a thought. I hurriedly exchanged emails with the accounts department of the literary agents who paid me my royalties and other income. They were off-island and therefore likely to be unaffected by the crash. I instructed them not to send me any more payments for the time being.

Far away on the metropolitan island of Muriseay, north of the equator, not far from the forbidden and to me unimaginable countries of the northern continent, Jo made the same simple precautionary arrangement. We were both freelance workers. We could request the credit transfers to be resumed when the financial situation had stabilized.