rial, Day 1, 12^th November 2025

I am breaking up or being pulled apart. Maybe my foundations were never strong enough, or perhaps the strain is too much. I suppose it doesn’t matter; the end result is the same.

Either way, it is clear that something is happening which is consuming me. It brings with it a tumbled multitude of memories. When they come, I lose track of now, of this crucial moment, and relive what brought me here.

Some part of me believes I am still in the court, apparently attentive, and looking as though I am concentrating.

I understand what I must do. I need to ground myself, to find a point of focus. There is a word the court keeps dancing around and tripping over. It is a word which offers a pinpoint of depth in the shallows of my confusion.

“Laboratory.”

Hawes-Smith threw it out to get it onto the record. Wellbright, the prosecutor, struggled to avoid it, calling that place “the playroom”. Well, it was where I grew up, but it was no playroom.