When they weren't running ships, meddling with alien civilisations or planning the future course of the Culture itself, the Minds existed in those fantastic virtual realities, sojourning beyondward into the multi-dimensioned geographies of their unleashed imaginations, vanishingly far away from the single limited point that was reality.

The burnt and bleeding man staggered to his feet, dazed and unbelieving, and asked the startled townspeople who came running whether his fireman and guard were safe. He was kept away from the smouldering crater where his engine had been, and taken to hospital.

Speeches during parliamentary debates, however, belong to linguistic action patterns in which interruptions and hecklings (Burkhardt 2004) are generally conventionalised and accepted as facultative reactions […]

So he spoke, and it seemed there was a little halting at first, as of men not liking to take Blackbeard's name in Blackbeard's place, or raise the Devil by mocking at him. But then some of the bolder shouted 'Blackbeard', and so the more timid chimed in, and in a minute there were a score of voices calling 'Blackbeard, Blackbeard', till the place rang again.