Left to his own devices, Drex would have been out of the locked basement and up to street level again within minutes, before his captors even had time to unpack their needles. But these were not his own devices. They were somebody else’s, perhaps more than one somebody’s, and devilishly enigmatic besides.

A strange array of elegantly designed yet unfathomably complex miniature machines lay spread across the small room’s one, otherwise-bare shelf. One of them might have been a shell splitter for stubborn pistachios. Or perhaps a toenail remover. Another that at first appeared to be a burnished and fissured brass avocado pit responded to a slight tap by expanding into a graceful, almost spherical cage for a finch.

Devices, yes: this they certainly were. But devices, it seemed, devised to do little more than puzzle the curious mind of a captive. The inventors clearly knew that if you ask the questions, you control the discourse. And the question posed by these was clearly: What are you supposed to use me for?