The blotchy black mark she impresses on my hand will still be there tomorrow morning, a confused barcode, unsure of what exactly it encodes.

If I don't leave now, I won't get to work in time.

You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I’m hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused.

Sarafov was the first off the mark, but the other divisions did not jump off until an hour later and achieved nothing.