Tegan has quickly lost all sense of time. Although their environment is regulated by periods where the lights dim a little without ever fully turning off, and by the meagre meals that appear through a trapdoor in the ground, it is impossible for her to say whether it is night or day.

She has finally become accustomed to the narrow space, and to the fact of having to do private things under the constant gaze of someone she can't see. On the other hand, she does not become accustomed to the solitude. To the total lack of contact with anyone other than the disembodied voice, with which she can only have minimal conversations. At the end of an indetermined period, she realizes that she could even accept the presence of the Master. After an even longer time, she realizes that she would give anything to hear his mockeries of the human race.

"What have I come to?" she sighs.

"Pay attention," she hears one morning - or one evening, perhaps. "Follow the corridor."

One of the small walls of the room disappears. The corridor, which is just as wide as her cell, stretches before her. It seems interminable.

She heads forward as quickly as her legs allow; they are no longer accustomed to walking. After several minutes, she realizes that she has forgotten to put on her flats and that they are still in her cell. But when she turns around to get them, she bumps into a wall. It is impossible for her to go back the way she came.

So, she continues barefoot. She hasn't worn the pink suit that caused her incarceration for a long time. When she had asked for a change of clothes, they gave her a tunic and trousers of grey cloth. And when she had called for her clothes again, she had not received a response.

Finally, she emerges into a medium-sized room. Or rather, a glass cage inside that room. There is a second cage beside hers. The Master is there. He glances at her with an expression in which she reads a mixture of anger and fatigue. The same things she feels. Finally, he is not so different from her. Shut up alone with himself for weeks, he has come to have similar thoughts.

He is wearing the same type of grey tunic and trousers set, except he still has his shoes. And hair that is too long.

Me too, she thinks. My hair has grown without being trimmed properly.

She calculates that if his speed of hair growth is equivalent to that of a human, that makes it about three months that they have been locked up, three terrestrial months.

But his beard has the shape of the one he was wearing before. She guesses by the colour of his cheeks that the shaving is fresh. Exhibit A, then, she thinks.

The other exhibits, their clothing and personal objects, are placed on a table which separates the two transparent boxes from the rest of the room.

This one has light grey walls, as did her cell and the corridor that brought her here.

Near the wall facing them, there is a slightly elevated pulpit. A man, appearing in an opening that closes immediately, comes to take a seat there. A very ordinary man, undistinguished face, also dressed all in grey. He is neither young nor old, neither tall nor short, neither fat nor thin. Tegan has the impression of seeing the model standard of a base Human.

In a monotonous voice, without granting them a look, he begins to read the list of their misdeeds on a screen lying on the reading desk before him:

"Wearing non-standard clothing without authorisation. Wearing of non-standard facial hair style without authorisation. Possession and wearing of non-standard objects without authorisation. No presentation of the aforementioned objects' receipts. No presentation of identification cards."

He stops and raises his eyes to them.

"And worst of all, identification impossible. You are not on file. I could even say that legally, you do not exist."

"So, since we do not exist," the Mater retorts sardonically, "we cannot have committed all that you're accusing us of."

The official - Tegan can't help but give him that name, for want of a more appropriate on - adds with obvious disgust, as if such an act has forever sullied his beautiful, orderly existence,

"We have given you a temporary identity in order to hold the trial. We had to build it from scratch."

He taps on the screen.

"Mr. John Smith," he announces, "and Miss Liz Jones."

"My name is Tegan Henson - maiden name Jovanka," the prisoner protests.

"Prove it," replies the man. "Do you have official documents to present?"

"Not here. I didn't have my ID card on me when I left the house."

"ID card? I don't know that. What I need is a birth certificate duly authenticated by the Officer of Legal Births. An up-to-date vaccination certificate. A non-death certificate issued by the registrar of non-deaths, not older than afortnight and certified by two witnesses. Your lease and a rent receipt dating from less than a month ago, and a certificate proving that you behave as a responsible tenant and do not disturb the neighbourhood."

"This is ridiculous!" Tegan exclaims. "Who walks around all the time with all those papers?"

"Everybody, of course," the official assures her stiffly.

"Listen," pleads the young woman. "Be reasonable. We're not from here. We don't know all your rules. You can't tell us off for not following rules we don't know anything about."

"No-one is supposed to ignore the law," he replies sententiously. "And now, be quiet - you are wasting my time. I am going to calculate the sentence."

Again, he spends a short time consulting his machine.

"The computer has added together your very numerous crimes, and the result is what I expected - that is to say, death. Such breaches of essential discipline to any society worthy of the name deserve no less."

Tegan hears a sarcastic laugh coming from the cage beside her.

"I, of all people, am going to be convicted for dressing in black and wearing a beard?!" mocks the Master.

"Yes," Tegan murmurs. "Ironic, isn't it? Wait!" she continues for the benefit of their interlocutor. "You can't do it like this! We need...attorneys, lawyers, I don't know - who do you have for that here?"

"The procedures have been extremely simplified. All of the history of defences, accusations, jury debates, was completely useless. Now, do excuse me, Ms. Jones, but my schedule is very full.

A sliding wall descends from the ceiling and separates them from the rest of the room. The glass wall also starts to slide towards them, forcing them to rejoin the narrow corridor they followed on the way. Again, Tegan finds herself alone.

"Follow the corridor," intones the same voice that had notified her of this order just minutes before.

She has no choice but to obey. This time, it leads her to a booth equipped with a chair covered in grey leatherette, and a small tablet protruding from the wall. On this tablet is a button A single, nondescript button, rather large, round, also grey.

"Sit down," says the voice.

Once again, she cannot do otherwise. The door has just closed behind her, and the space is so narrow that the only solution is to sit down in the seat. She is barely seated when metallic bands come out of the arms of the chair and immobilize her wrists, while the same thing happens with her feet and ankles. Finally, a third strap encircles her shoulders, and a helmet descends from the ceiling and sets itself on her head.

The upper part of the wall loses its opacity, and through it she sees a room identical to her own. In the chair, the Master is seated, also tied up, and also wearing the same round, metallic helmet.

The voice of the official who read them the charges and determined the sentence - or rather, let the computer calculate their sentence - rings out again.

"This is an auspicious day for you, Mr. Smith and Ms. Jones. In my great indulgence, I have decided that one of you will escape your fate. Better than that, you will decide yourselves who will live and who will die.

Do you see the button in front of you? If you press it, the process, which will kill your companion, will start. Who will be the fastest? But - that would be too simple, wouldn't it? For the moment, the buttons are deactivated. They will activate themselves in an unpredictable manner, and without you knowing. You will never know, when you press it, if it will have an effect or not. Two factors are going to divide you: your own will, and chance. Amusing, isn't it?

Ah - one last thing: there is a deadline. After that, if you are still alive for whatever reason, we shall return to the tried and true, basic sentence: death for both."

The bracelet around their right wrist disappears. The Master stretches out his arm and presses the button. At the same moment, Tegan shouts,

"Master, no!"