Meera Krishnan’s panel worked for fourteen weeks and wrote 406 pages. The minutes had room for 400 characters. Every word that went into them was true.

At twenty past six, by the fourth-floor lifts, a junior panel member stops the Secretary with a question he does not have to answer. She wants to know whether anyone knew, and built it that way anyway.

For eight months Meera Krishnan knew the system could not audit its own confidence. She told one colleague. He said everyone knew, it was in the design notes, and went back to work. So did she.