"If it's not true, it's overkill," he comments flatly. "There's too many moving parts, even one of these changes would be enough to fully disorient most of us, but they've gone all in. Which suggests a complexity of arrangement that's either utterly insane and unsustainable - or this is, to at least a functional degree, real."

He drags one hand down his face as he thinks, and knots them both in his lap. Playing with his left hand reflexively, almost obsessively. "The best thing we can do is learn how the rules work here, learn the limitations of what we're up against - only then can we learn how to undermine them."