Wait! he thought. The pain is a constant. It’s easy to stay with it because it won’t go away. Time was short, they’d be calling for him soon.

      He sat upright again and closed his eyes. This time he focussed on the pain, imagined that he was breathing in and out through the agony of the wound. Within minutes he was rising up through layers of awareness. Incredibly, the pain receded the closer he came to it.

      here i am…nowww, he said into the centre of his injury and his mind surfed him close to the moment-

      “Hey there all you agiters, miskers and malcos, you’re getting free right here on the liberty plane. This here, this now is where everything begins and ends and it’s you folks that need it more than any. Want to stay with us? Then stay right where you are. Fastest way to leave the here and now is to try and stay. Try and attach to the concast and you’ll never stick. Be where you are now and you’ll always be with us.”

      Mathias had it now.

      He had to not care whether he stayed with the concast or not. He had to not even think about it. He understood other things too. This concast was for freedom fighters that were captured and tortured. It was for people who cared about some thing other than themselves, people willing to make a sacrifice. It existed for anyone who found the moment through extremity of circumstance; people like Mathias and the hundreds of thousands of libertarians that had lived and died before him. It was the universe’s response to suffering - a lifeline that could be reached by anyone regardless of intelligence or education.

      So simple, he thought. So beautifully simple.  

When the door opened, Mathias was standing ready.

      The gaoler made his usual comments and Mathias sent him love in return. It seemed like a very fair exchange. He walked to the chambers with the truncheon in the small of his back. His face was serene, without expression. The Ministers looked at him and he knew what they were thinking. They’d seen this look on people’s faces before. They patted him on the shoulder as they led him to the bloodstained chair and strapped him in.

      Mathias stared straight ahead, at something beyond the three of them, beyond it all.

      “We know there’s a place you go,” said the fat Minister. “We’ve heard so many of you speak of it. Last chance,” he said. “How does one find this place?

      “Stay right where you are,” said Mathias in flat tones.

      The Minister broke his nose with a chop of his flattened hand. The crack forced Mathias’s head back. Blood spilled from both nostrils and dribbled down his chin. It pattered onto his chest darkening the stains that were already there. It was the fourth time they’d snapped his septum. The pain was starry. Mathias used it.

      Focussed on it.