Rustam Fatihler, the Conqueror, sought centuries ago to unite the myriad warring tribes of the peninsula under a single banner, hence, the Dream of Rustam.

And after all this time, the Protectorate of Rustam amounts to two meagre towns, devoid of resources, kept propped up by foreign funds. That, you know.

Four centuries ago, approximately.

Glad that the time he spent on the whistle wasn't wasted after all.

The material must know fear.

AAAARRGH! KILL ME! KILL MEEEEE!

Like the screams of babies, the sound bypasses all logic and goes directly for the panic response.

Death. Madness. Decay.

Nothing can stop it. A chemical panic holds your entire body hostage.

You catch a glimpse of a deformed hairless face, bone-white skin, flaring simian nostrils.

Fear is yours. You are both terrified and terrifier.

You barely flinch at the violent torrent of sound that washes over you. It makes you feel...

A burst of cold and fetid sweat as your body poisons itself with stress chemicals.

THE FLAILING LIMBS OF THE BODY POLITIC SUFFER WHILE THE HEAD BURIES ITSELF IN THE SAND.

You're in Ramses's houseboat, he's alive... nothing bad is happening...

Your friend is dying. This is his death knell you're listening to.

He keeps his hands loose, but he's coiled within, like a mauled animal.

All around you, an invisible audience leans forwards in their seats.

Offer a prayer to Deneb.

What she means is the real account will be buried in a centre-held file for 30 years. You will never so much as glimpse the outside of its folder.

There's nothing to consider. We're locked in to Dissociation Nation. Nothing can possibly hurt us now.

It's at this moment, as the Paleolithic huntress pinches shut the great aurochs' lower intestine with one hand while with the other she expertly slices the hide around the anus from without, that the boundary is suddenly and fatally crossed. 'What am I doing here?' her brain asks in her own voice, as her head falls back and the terrible weight of sentience descends on her with a roar.

A solitary anchorite in a cell of aluminium and carbon fibre, 400,000 kilometres above the world.

An insane thought flits across your consciousness, to be kept absolutely to yourself.

A fresh appraisal. Impressed.

Probability of a future encounter: 0.000006%. Then again, the odds of your trajectories intersecting as they did were far lower.

He doesn't know, but he has suspicions he's not prepared to share yet.

Who is this man?

Fanatical, biased, not to be taken literally.

Mystery solved. PSEUDOPOD listened to a priceless tape and lost his soul.

Is it possible to reconstruct an Einzeltone XR?

Wishful thinking on his part. When it comes to the exclusive, the top secret, the government-commissioned... someone's always held onto a spare.

Physarum polycephalum, to be specific.

Collect a sample.

Belonging to the order of things that should not exist.

The child trembles in his ice bath. He can't tell the shivers of cold from those of fever, nor the numerous unknown words in the book from the gibberings of his delirium, but he sits there and trembles and holds the matico leaves to his brow.

Psychic salivary glands water at the prospect of unknown neurological fun right at the edges of lethal.

It's not the drugs. This man was born high.

Get on his level.

That's a 'would'.

They'll ask for the moon.

Of course she does. No more playground shit. Operant CASCADE has arrived.

Fucking coward.

Waves curl endlessly onto a shore of fine pebble. Pascal takes the lid off the teapot, notices two men walking up the garden path. He opens the door with a smile.

This is an open goal. A match-winner. Don't overthink it.

Horrific chemical orgasm. A hallucinogenic purge of everything stored within the brain's archives, known to the laywoman as life flashing before your eyes.

It's over, operant. You've failed.

You let him get away.

In spite of you, the knowledge slips into its natural niche in your brain - common sense, inevitable in retrospect.

Checks