“Lagao started from a whisper on the street. It had been an ordinary word before the Protocol: touchapplyaffection. Through careful manipulation of the oxytocin pathway, it attempted to simulate the neurological event of being touched. Doctors prescribed it for the worst of the withdrawal—not too different from morphine, but not nearly as strong. Hardly a dent in a lifetime of deprivation. The ones who couldn’t cope—mahroom, they were called, bereftdepriveddenied—would stumble towards Hamza, their skin nearly translucent from cold and want, ghostly frames listing sideways in the dense Lahore smog.”