Five minutes later I realized that the tiredness was really a result of hunger, which I could readily put right. It was a relief to be myself again: not play the role of celebrated visiting guest, nor a pseudo academic, nor a lecturer, and so on. I sat up, temporarily refreshed.

I booted my computer and logged on to the hotel wifi. This was swift and painless, but I did glimpse a message that appeared as a clickbox at the bottom of the page of Terms and Conditions:

I accept and understand the conditions of Broadband Mutability. The risk level is currently 6 per cent. To proceed click here.

I clicked there, and after a welcome screen and some options about long-term use, which I did not need, all went ahead normally. I glanced at incoming email, at the Salay news feed, at the web pages and social media I always scanned, then contacted Jo by email. I simply wanted to reassure her I had arrived and all was OK, but there were difficulties from the start. When I typed the word ‘Dearth’ the email server would not for some reason accept the letter ‘h’. ‘All OK, here in Deart,’ I was forced to type, even after several attempts. Jo did not appear to notice, and did not comment in her reply. The letter ‘h’ appeared normally in ‘here’ and everywhere else I needed it. As I was signing off, the letters ‘d’ disappeared from my name: ‘To’.

I closed down. I wanted dinner. I put my computer on to battery recharge. I freshened up, combed what is left of my hair after forty-seven years of male life, then left the room.

I was halfway along the corridor towards the bank of elevators when I remembered I had not switched off all the lights. I went back.

Inside the room I read again the message on the door. I wondered what the usual charge was they warned against, for breaking this rule. I also wondered how the hotel would know what I had done. Did they have a camera? A meter?

Next to the message was a special holder, containing a tall, narrow booklet entitled What You Need to Understand about Horizontal and Vertical Mutability. I riffled through it, thinking about dinner, but the print was small, there were words and phrases I did not immediately recognize, and the important stuff was summarized in big letters on the last page. These said in effect: always turn out all the lights and every electrical appliance when you leave the room. (The air conditioning and heating were specifically exempted.)