He sat down on a grassy bank and looked at the city that surrounded him, and thought, one day he would have to go home. And one day he would have to make a home to go back to. He wondered whether home was a thing that happened to a place after a while, or if it was something that you found in the end, if you simply walked and waited and willed it long enough.

‘There was a guy in prison named Jackson,’ said Shadow, as he ate, ‘worked in the prison library. He told me that they changed the name from Kentucky Fried Chicken to KFC because they don’t serve real chicken anymore. It’s become this genetically modified mutant thing, like a giant centipede with no head, just segment after segment of legs and breasts and wings. It’s fed through nutrient tubes. This guy said the government wouldn’t let them use the word chicken.’

Mr. Ibis raised his eyebrows, ‘You think that’s true?’

‘Nope. Now, my old cellmate, Low Key, he said they changed the name because the word ‘fried’ had become a bad word. Maybe they wanted people to think that the chicken cooked itself.’