It all began with a soliloquy in a setting which was distinctly surreal.
The timber-panelled chamber in the neo-Gothic Guildhall in Derry was dominated by an ancient pipe organ but furnished with futuristic electronics.
The arduous expedition towards the truth of Bloody Sunday set out in hope and with resolute purpose yesterday, its panoply of legal talent armed with a formidable array of laptops, closed-circuit television screens and wall-mounted cameras.
Yet paper and print are still very much part of this controversial inquiry tribunal: behind the bench where the three learned judges sit up to 100 bulky ringbound files are stacked on shelves, a material reminder of the vast repository of documentary evidence already gathered.
The man of the moment yesterday - and for many days to come - was Mr Christopher Clarke QC, counsel to the tribunal. In a protracted solo performance, he is "taking bearings" for the journey ahead, setting the scene and outlining a possible route for the tribunal through the dense undergrowth of conflicting claims.
Aged 53, he is head of Brick Court Chambers in London, one of the top four or "magic circle" chambers, and has worked almost exclusively in commercial practice. He is a deputy High Court judge and a judge of the Court of Appeal of Jersey and Guernsey.
Yesterday he outlined a provisional frame of reference for the copious body of evidence. If the evolving evidence was not to become "a bewildering kaleidoscope", it would be necessary to distinguish patterns as they emerged, he asserted.
For many of the relatives of Bloody Sunday victims who filled the several gallery rows reserved for them, his detailed historical exposition must have verged on the bemusing, but they listened with intense concentration.
The family members and the surviving wounded walked in procession to the Guildhall yesterday morning behind a banner which read: "Time for Truth".
They had to brave the gathered media, with television and radio vans and satellite broadcast equipment clogging Guildhall Square.
Reporters invited them to recount, once again, the trauma of their experiences.
Some, like Ms Linda Roddy, were happy to oblige. Her brother, Willie Nash (19), was shot dead at the rubble barricade in Rossville Street, and Lord Widgery's report had implied that he had been handling a gun or nail bomb.
"I'm looking forward to going in there now. At least it's a beginning," she said. "But if they had done it [the first inquiry] right in 1972 we wouldn't have to be back here."
Nonetheless, she wants to attend "every day, if humanly possible".
Inside the barrel-roofed chamber, red and green lights winked on a six-foot bank of computer consoles as technicians tested the "real-time" evidence transmission and retrieval system which makes this probably the most electronically-sophisticated inquiry ever held.
Counsel preened and chatted until a hush descended for the entrance of their lordships.
Yesterday was the first step in a search for truth and perhaps justice upon which a great many hopes reside.
Many were heartened to hear Mr Clarke's assurance: "While truth may be the first casualty of hostilities, it has formidable powers of recovery."