Reading about mutability again had raised in me the uncomfortable feeling that I knew more about mutability than I would admit, even to myself. The long-term stability of the financial sector on Raba, much as I loathed it, was an undeniable fact of life on this island. Yet the present devastating collapse of major parts of the sector had followed soon after I played around with the software I discovered on the hotel key card.

A mutability safeguard – what was the harm in that? What indeed?

The authorities had been saying for a long time that the banks’ secure computer systems had been hacked into somehow. Was I indirectly responsible for that? Even directly?

Money and high finance were a system of belief. The price of shares rose or fell, not only because a corporation was doing well or badly, but because enough investors expected it to do well or badly. Or thought it would. Or were willing to gamble that it would. It was an activity that was purely abstract, psychological. They speculated with opportunities and options. They never saw or handled money – they just lived for the idea of it.

I was a hands-on user of money: I earned it, spent it, lost it, saved some of it. In this I was a true citizen serf. I had no belief in money unless I could see it or count it, an entirely practical matter.

The onset of mutability was a kind of belief system similar to high finance. There were practical effects and consequences (the events were real), but afterwards only the results counted, so no one believed that the process had really happened (the events became abstract).

Did my hands-on spending of my earnings, and that of hundreds of thousands of citizen serfs like me, eventually build up to such a total that our spending gained a psychological dimension in the glass and steel towers of the financial district? That my weekly buying of groceries encouraged or discouraged those who would run a pension scheme, or an insurance policy, or who were moneylenders? So that money was both real (actual spending) and abstract (a belief system)?

Feeling stiff with fatigue I went to my study and booted my desktop. When everything had loaded I looked for the icon on my desktop called Mutability Safeguard. Then I remembered I had deleted it. Only the icon had disappeared – the program was still installed. I located it, opened it and waited for it to load. I entered the password. I went to the main menu.

At the top there was a message: Salay Raba, Financial Services Protocols – Mutability Safeguards installed. Beneath that it said: Upgrade available. Install now? [y/n]

I hastily clicked on No.

I noticed another pulldown menu headed Settings. Among its many options was: Remove Salay Raba, Financial Services Protocols – Mutability Safeguards? [y/n]

I clicked on Yes.