A little exercise was welcome at this stage in the science-hastened re-knitting of my tissues. While the Imperial guards carried a stretcher ready, Martin let me lean on him and walk up from the now-abandoned basement to face the smoky sky. We were somewhere in India, a festive downtown: clubs, galleries, spice bars, and walkways lined with windows packed with desire. The sun had not quite set, but smoke’s interference gave an early wake-up call to what few evening lights survived. The musk of snuffed fires wafted from all sides, and to our left a sea of shattered glass sparkled like faerie fire around a freshly gutted improv club. My tears began when I saw the composition kiosk of the club’s Amadeus set-set gutted in the street, its strings and cables draped across the ruins in triumphant garlands, like the intestines of a defeated giant. Graffiti covered the walls with slogans, opposing slogans, sloppy Hive sigils, and bull’s-eyes. One bull’s-eye had a crosshairs, and letters scrawled at its center to be the target: JEDDM. The silent shops had a sense of violated shock to them, as if affronted that we should catch them empty, like a theater set glimpsed in its naked frailty after the show. Looting had been everywhere. I can hear our Master Hobbes whispering over your shoulder, reader, saying this proves again that we are selfish, wicked beasts, but I think goods left unguarded breed forethought, not greed, a hunter-gatherer’s rational defensive fear of future chaos: If law and trade break down, will my fight for survival need this loaf? This coat? This spoon? We walked three slow blocks, passing an ironwork sculpture ripped into makeshift weapons, and a brawl preserved in spilled paint, footprints bright as wildflower chaos. The arched gate of a Utopian district loomed on our left, with four sentinels beneath, luminous in coats of tide marshes, 1450, 1950, and space-view sunset, watched in turn by three stern unicorns, a giant spider, and a whirlwind of silver-sleek winged snakes that thrashed like flying mercury. Apollo’s sun sigil did not show upon these coats, but I knew the Delians for what they were. In the square outside the gate someone had been burnt in effigy; it almost didn’t matter who.