Chang strapped the prisoner (who would only identify himself as a Mr. 
PhyrePhox) to a heavy X-shaped rack that was normally used for canings. 
This was purely a humanitarian gesture; it would prevent PhyrePhox from 
thrashing wildly around the room and injuring himself. Chang also stripped the 
prisoner from the waist down and situated a bucket under his
organs of elimination. In so doing he happened to expose the only actual injury 
that the prisoner would suffer during this entire procedure: a tiny, neat scab 
in the base of the spine, where the court physician had thrust in the spinal 
tap the previous afternoon, and introduced a set of 
nanosites—nanotechnological parasites—under the supervision of 
Miss Pao. In the ensuing twelve hours, the 'sites had migrated up and down the 
prisoner's spinal column, drifting lazily through the cerebrospinal fluid, and 
situated themselves on whatever afferent nerves they happened to bump up 
against. These nerves, used by the body to transmit information such as (to 
name only one example) excruciating pain to the brain, had a distinctive 
texture and appearance that the 'sites were clever enough to recognize. It is 
probably superfluous to mention that these 'sites had one other key feature, 
namely the ability to transmit bogus information along those nerves.