The cloud offered freedom from the encumbrance of discrete storage - generous government subsidies for a burgeoning tech industry supported the ruse. Evan clusters with the others under an awning to stay out of the snow, while inside, a group of enterprising youngsters are discreetly storing his hard drives in an unmarked white van.

He performs the ritual of checking his empty pack. Someone from inside produces papers and tobacco, and a cute girl with a sleeve of angelic tattoos obliges him with a hand-roll. Evan tucks it behind his ear, handwritten ip address invisible on the inside of the paper.

Evan tries to navigate around the rapidly greying slush, doing his best not to drag the wheels of the hard case he's lugging behind him through the worst of it. Evan and his brother used to run a computer store, before the cloud. They still make some business from terminals, but that's not where the real money is any more.

A bright eyed woman on a poster proclaims 'Nothing To Hide, No Need To Worry'. He grimaces. Beneath the band stickers and high-impact plastic lie several petabytes worth of hard drives nestled in pink anti-static foam, heading for market.