Desperation from despair. Down the steps and out of the apartment onto a rainy street. Midnight. Silence. A taxi straight to the coach station. A night spent in the 24 hour coffee shop next door, waiting for the gates, watching the downpour. A bacon sandwich and onto the X257 to London. Wailing babies mean no sleep but at least distance is being crossed, away now, and now the decision has been made, nothing can put an end to it.

Out into the bustle beyond Victoria. Mid-day. Noise. A flight beneath the earth, spiralling down down down, a fan thundering pursuit behind. Dimly glowing tiles. Train screaming through the black, pale figures staring anywhere but into each other's eyes.

A glimmer of a plan surfacing from within the swaddled thoughts. The friend in Croydon is too close. Breathing space. End of the line and a local bus in a concrete yard, out to Sevenoaks. The return of trees and coalesced vapour. Frost crystallising on the grass and dreams of somewhere warmer.

But not Spain. The hydrocab goes to Madrid but there is still enough on the card for Cyprus. The switching off of the phone to stop the ceaseless buzz. A change of scale. Waves becoming ripples, cracks in the varnish of the ocean. Clouds, and dusk above model towns.

Descent and only one destination of note in a country like this. Flurried retreat from the veiled figures in a toilet with ultraviolet beams dancing on the ceiling. A sharp panic but the steps up to the maglev are glass and reassuringly signposted. Three minutes to the port. All the documents in place and ready for the faceless security screens. This has been at least half prepared for some time.

Hunger through the numbness, an animal belonging returning at last. Noodles facing the door, waiting for signals. None. A number on the plasma and this seems to be right. Direct conveyor to Port 7, no baggage required.

Icy hand at the bubble. A scrutiny of too many eyes and a private neural link to release the grip. Electronic babble instantly dowsed in air-conditioned pinks and blues. Seven-minute safety transfer, lightpod dashing up to the vessel. Darkness, fire in the earthquake rumble, a scream, and then smooth, gliding peace and stars and from somewhere deep within, the stirring of relief.

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Seven-hour sleep tickled by jumbled dreams and the synthfibre of the pillow. Twelve hours of language downloads and maps and culture. Five minutes examining the loners and families and card games and excitement in peoples of all colours and shapes and state matters, and the realisation that you are one of them.

Fifty-five hours of stasis.

Warning siren. Safety nets and ramps and a glimpse of yellow. A pause in the port, and a brief request at the twelfth-storey terminal. Another decision made. The confirmation clink as the compartments in the right femur are unsealed and the contents transferred. Ten-minute reflesh bay, overlooking the city.

But this isn't it. At 32.5 it is still too cold. And the gracefully curving demiforged towers just seem ugly after so long anticipating them.

The funds cover the funnelboat all the way to the eastern hemisphere. A parade of wonders in dagger-edged blazing sunlight. Harvest ribbons dancing to the horizon on the backs of the sapphire dunes. The phone was left behind on the hypervessel. Links severed and files deleted. Only the crystal vastness and blank wonder and then the town on the side of the jewelled crater sparkling in the afternoon and promising the long-awaited rest.

Beacons pulling the plane to a standstill. An opened door and glorious, burning fire in the air. Dizziness and a hurried exchange at the filter depot. A turning onto a narrow ledge overlooking eternity and a leap to safety as a hovercraft rockets onwards. A following of the line past strange buildings and unrepeatable sounds, a tumble onto the craft and a hissing, bucking flight over the infinite drop, jostled by suffocating trignots and dodging the genbots as they fight for trade.

A thirty-minute circling of a shimmering embankment, a neon message projected from a sleek eating place across the towlights. Up onto the second slide and whirled straight into the absorption chamber at the top, because the cares of the human body can wait when the mind is quivering to be unleashed onto new worlds and even newer lives.

A step up to the balcony, a hand on the bubbling pot of aromatic gas of the Genkarla elite, and then you look out onto unimaginable vistas and infinite possibilities, and into the stabbing, blinding horror that the universe is small, and everything is the same.