Here Mitchell's narrative, by virtue of comparing May 5 with the May 3 reference above , imposes an official timeline on the riot, whose chronology, as we have seen, is irretrievably lost. Here again he overwrites Decoud, for if the fight against Gamacho's "Nationals" took place on May 3, then by Decoud's chronology Nostromo would depart on May 6. Mitchell even overrules the regular narrator, whose account would place Nostromo's departure on May 7.

The riot, of course, marked the abyss of Separatism, with the complete breakdown of society and the loss of all unifying illusion. The implication that time itself is a human construct that dissolves in the darkness is one that Mitchell's "historical" narrative must emphatically squelch.