Ninety minutes later, exactly as Martin had promised, a sharp-dressed security officer walked into the lobby of the Regent Bay Resort carrying a black leather briefcase, and asked for me by name.

He was calm, professional, unhurried, the physical embodiment of the machine that had activated on the far side of the world.

He opened the briefcase on the granite desk, and inside it were the things that gave me back my existence: an emergency provisional passport, a pre-configured smartphone already loaded with everything I would need, an envelope of local currency, and, tucked into the lid, a first-class ticket home, departing from Phuket in three hours.

Ninety minutes.