As the loop plays out across the sky people stop working to stand up and see themselves magnified across the heavens as they plead and weep and cry before a lens that doesn’t care. The canned laughter and syrupy music only serves to make the humiliation ever more complete were it even necessary for that to be so right now.

Iseult and Gilly watched in wonder as they stood under shelter in the courtyard of their gulag.

‘What on earth can all this be?’ asked Gilly with a tremble. ‘I cannot begin to understand.’

‘And that is exactly why we should focus on the things we do know,’ said Iseult. She put her hand of the old man’s shoulders.

‘Why focus on the darkness when it is the light that keeps the night at bay?’