Sonya imagined escape after escape—run like hell? Scream for help? […] She resolved to make her death a screaming, thrashing one. Give the woman a few scars or bruises to remember her by.

“Kindly take off your armor and write it on these sheets of paper. You will get it back on exit. Please put your shoes, gloves, helmets and masks in this basket. You must enter the cardinal chambers willingly, and you must do so naked.”

In terms of the legal system, volunteering would be a viable alternative to life in prison. Volunteers would never return to Earth once they left, so the British government acquiesced to let him sign up.

At home I told my mom, “My flower sensei said I lack a Japanese soul. Said I was hopeless and a danger. Said I was harboring peonies about to explode into full-blown rebellion, like the terrorists down south. He treated me as if I was a Shin-Kalifonia sympathizer.”

“If I don’t kill this tea-master, this Kahoru . . . Hidemitsu will take it as a betrayal, won’t he? And he will call for my death, in turn.”

My ears ring like the bell in the old village church before the soldiers burned it and its inhabitants to the ground. I do not recognize the symptoms of this malady.