The old act awakens dormant pathways to tactile memory. Even the pulse returns to his palsied hands.

Among listening devices, he's back in his native element, if only for a moment.

Stripped off his wounds. Back raw into danger.

Guttural, breathless, and somehow strained, as though in the middle of some physical exertion.

Cumulatively, Ramses has listened to more phone sex than you will ever have in your life.

As ever, he has a remarkable ear for the rhythms, the things that slip...

The suggestion of usable information is cruelly whisked away.

Irrigational miracles. This is her shit.

Every little act a show of defiance in the face of imagined enemies, down to even his passphrases.

Success nears. Big man hungers.

He can almost taste those anticonvulsants.

All sense of humour is gone. All he wants is to go chasing after those meds.

Unnamable homemade concoctions surround the motor cortex and zero in for the kill.

Synaptic routes light up. A grid of variables emerges: timing, sight lines, crowd density...

Unless we don't call him. You've already got us, you don't need him too.

Just because you think something, doesn't mean you need to say it.

Why didn't we think of that?

THE MARKET HAS FAILED. THE TIME HAS COME FOR STATE-DRIVEN REDISTRIBUTION.

The illusion's gone. You can hear him slurring.

It's not just about this call. He's only now remembering that this is his element.

A fraction of the gang reunites! Not all is lost.

A daughter, maybe.

A national tragedy for Portofiro; an excellent quarter for EMTERR.

Look at the cosmonauts' expressions: pride, determination, joy. These aren't commemorative; they predate the disaster.

Safe to assume these were manufactured in the months leading up to the disaster.

You imagine Karolina's fingers wrapping around the small toy -- a comfort she's reached for since she was small.

Maybe Karolina took it with her when she moved out? A little souvenir, keeping her closer to home.

Portofiro's doomed space program, as you well know.

Portofiro's failed space program. These toys are yet another remnant.

'Permanently'.

A big hit of his own dwindling supply gives the old man a fleeting high.

The saliva smacking in his throat and mouth is louder than any words formed.

'Territories' meaning, in this case, La Luz's island states -- briefly independent, now reannexed.

The laughter leaves in its wake something like conversational scar tissue.

A joke in poor taste. A stamped passport for a country that no longer exists.

The subject, whether immediate or eventual, of the negotiations the prisoner told you about.

Doused with cold water, all three of the pilots seem to sober up as your words hit them.

He edges out onto a thin sheet of memory, like a child on a frozen lake.

No translation needed, and not the slightest hint of irony. Yes.

You picture the words in bold on the cover of the world's least enthusiastic travel brochure.

That was a growl, not an attempt to speak. He would be making the same noise if he could talk.

If that's true, he might know where you can find the Head of Human Capital.

In which case the phone-hog must be one of the negotiators Dante mentioned.

Wherever there is money, the bloody hand of transnational capital is never far away.

It may have been the techno-fascists that destroyed his homeland, but it's the entrepreneurial types that his disdain is really reserved for.

BEHOLD! THE TRUE FACE OF THE SO-CALLED DEVELOPED WORLD.

In your gut you already know what's coming.

Now you see it. Camouflaged in wrinkles, a necktie of scar tissue nestled in the folds of his throat.

How does the human mouth work? How is it possible that our grunts and growls are comprehensible to others, silent or not?

He knows because he's tried.

Checks