lichen could be the key to what motivates the Authority – mines everyone knows about, produce various minerals, crystals, but it’s the lichen they scrape off the buildings, what everyone thinks is waste, that actually make the Authority’s corrupt pseudo-aristocracy it’s wealth.

The shiny kit in the waste-disposal centre is what tips the revolutionaries off to what they are up to.

Open with Shelley having tried, and failed, to get a hangover, having drunk all her ration of alcohol for, ooh, a month. Like half a bottle of vodka or something. She’s quit college, again, and she’s got serious writer’s block. She tries over and over to write the opening line of a new Detective X novel, and fails. She only answers her aunt’s summons because she figures the day is already lost. She thinks things can get no worse; of course they get a LOT worse. Hehe.