It was just after 5am on Friday, September 19: the first day of a new Scotland.
In a backroom at Edinburghs Dynamic Earth, Alex Salmond sat huddled with his advisers, each staring intently at a sheaf of papers.
Every few seconds Salmond would nod - or frown, and slash a biro across the page.
His spin doctor Kevin Pringle would suggest alternative lines for what would be the most important speech his boss would ever give.
Titled A nation reborn, it was an address not only to a divided country but to a curious world. A tentative first step into history.
Alex Salmond standing victorious, if things had turned out differently
In the background, Salmonds chief of staff Geoff Aberdein paced back and forth in front of a TV carrying Sky News.
He alternated between two mobile phones, checking each every few seconds. Behind him, Mary Pitcaithly appeared on the screen and made it official. Yes 50.3, No 49.7.
The wall reverberated with an explosion of cheering from the Yes campaign staffers waiting next door.
Salmond smiled, but he could only savour the moment for a few seconds before a BlackBerry was thrust into his face.
Cameron, Aberdein said.
The Prime Minister was gracious, congratulating Salmond on making history and wishing Scotland the very best.
He was sure my successor would work constructively to carry out the democratic will.
Hes going, Salmond commented, tossing the phone back to its owner.
The first minister returned to his speech as Sky broadcast scenes of jubilation in Glasgows George Square, already dubbed Yes Square.
A split screen showed Better Together headquarters, where Labour MPs and young activists milled around dejectedly, sipping on flat Irn-Bru and occasionally hugging one another.
Salmonds speech would make a generous pitch to No voters, aimed at calming fears and heading off any disturbances. Scotland would be moving forward as one.
Suddenly, Aberdein was holding an iPhone in front of him.
Did he change his mind? Salmond quipped, taking the phone.
The words that came from the other end brought it all home in an instant. Hey Alex, its Barack.
In his resignation speech on the steps of Downing Street Cameron confirmed that the UK Government would respect the result.
Publicly, Salmond bragged about having made both the Union and the Prime Minister redundant but privately he knew Camerons departure was bad news.
He would be succeeded by George Osborne, a more ruthless political operator who would drive a harder bargain at the negotiating table.
At the opening negotiation session in November, Salmond pushed a currency union, but Whitehall rejected the suggestion out of hand.
Voters in England would not wear it. It was a red line for the new prime minister.
This left Salmond with no choice but sterlingisation. It was the worst of all worlds, but it would have to do until Scotland could create a central bank, build up reserves and develop a currency.
So many Scots packed up in response that nationalist vigilantes began camping out at Gretna Green and pelting cars they suspected of sneaking over the border to England.
The flight of high-earners had distorting effects on the fragile economy. A sudden glut of residential properties for sale caused Edinburgh house prices to plummet.
In Glasgows west end, the situation was graver still. So many residents moved out of Dowanhill that the Byres Road Waitrose considered reducing its opening hours.
Channel 4 saw an opportunity and broadcast a Location, Location, Location special from Newton Mearns.
Salmond deployed his smooth-talking and cynical savvy to allay fears. He pledged big tax cuts for families and small businesses alike, to be funded by North Sea oil revenues.
The annual GERS publication, due in March, was delayed. Meanwhile, public services would continue to be funded as long as Scotland remained part of the UK.
The first minister ordered secret planning to begin for an emergency budget to be tabled after independence day. Tax cuts would play no part in it.
The Prime Minister was experiencing difficulties of his own. A growing faction on the Tory right was pressuring him to play hardball with Scotland.
They wanted a population share of North Sea oil and, mindful of the SNPs plan to ramp up immigration, a hard border. Osborne acceded to many of these demands.
He wanted to ditch Camerons promise of an in/out EU referendum and had to give the right something in return.
The Prime Minister became Mr No, kicked a European referendum into the long grass, and called a spring general election.
Tory campaign materials depicted Salmond as a bank robber loading armfuls of English cash into a getaway car driven by Ed Miliband.
If Labour wins, hell get away Scot free, the slogan read. The Tories romped home.
The crude Conservative campaign rallied support for Salmond at home but polls signalled rising uncertainty about independence. It all hinged on EU membership.
Reports out of Brussels said the Commission was divided on whether Scotland could be exempted from euro membership.
In the end, the debate proved academic, for that autumns regional elections in Catalonia saw a separatist alliance win an outright majority, explicitly linking their case for independence to Scotlands decision.
Facing a constitutional crisis, Spain announced that it would veto EU membership for any region or nation that seceded from a member state.
Make an example of Scotland and Catalonia would back down. The stir of misgivings turned into a tornado of panic.
One Scottish bank after another re-headquartered in London. Scottish mortgages were sold off to the highest bidder.
Supermarkets shut up shop, unwilling to absorb the crippling costs and logistical headaches that came with maintaining a supply chain in a country outside the single market.
When they fled, thousands of jobs vanished and the reduced competition sent prices soaring.
The BBC chose this moment to announce that access to its TV and radio output after independence would require payment of an additional levy.
The Strictly Surcharge would cover the cost of the Corporation renegotiating UK-only rights agreements.
Jubilation as Scotland votes for independence in alternative reality
The spiral, once begun, only spun more violently. The independence white paper had talked about a Scottish economy buoyed by oil prices of $113 a barrel but now Brent crude was below $50.
Much of the generous social spending promised during the referendum campaign was not affordable.
To make matters worse, the UK Government announced that state pension liabilities for those normally resident in Scotland would transfer to Holyrood on independence day.
An incandescent Salmond maintained that the Treasury had an obligation to meet the pension costs of UK taxpayers.
At a meeting of the Scottish Cabinet, he proposed suing the Chancellor, rhyming off the various tax lawyers the government could retain.
Someone thought this an opportune moment to leak the delayed GERS figures, revealing that an independent Scotland would begin life with a deficit of £12.4 billion.
This prompted an anonymous SNP minister to tell one reporter that Scotlands economy resembled Zimbabwe without the sunshine.
The quote infuriated Salmond because he knew it would stick, and it did.
If the independence project was imploding on the domestic front, things werent much better overseas.
During the campaign, Lord Robertson was mocked for warning that the forces of darkness would simply love it if the UK was forced into years of internal turmoil.
Yet, just six months after polling day, Vladimir Putins tanks pushed beyond Crimea and across the rest of Ukraine.
Kyiv fell in short order and Moldova was annexed thereafter. Hemmed in by Russia and its puppet regimes, and with Turkey opposing Nato intervention, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania inked neutrality pacts with Moscow.
Salmond had managed, in the words of a Wall Street Journal editorial, to bury the British Union and revive the Soviet one.
President Obamas second call was less cordial than the first. It was made clear that maintaining the UKs continuous-at-sea nuclear deterrent was a strategic priority for Washington.
And so an indefinite lease was signed to give the UK time to build new bases for the subs and the warheads.
Ten years later, work still hadnt begun on either and Trident remained on the Clyde.
By the close of 2015, support for independence had cratered. Polls showed two-thirds in favour of remaining within the UK.
There was a campaign for another referendum but it went nowhere.
No one, on either side of the Tweed, fancied trying to put this hectic mess back into its box, only for it to burst out again a few years down the line.
The people of Scotland had made their decision and it was going to be respected, whether they liked it or not.
They did not like it, and polling pointed to an SNP drubbing in the 2016 Holyrood elections.
Salmonds personal approval figures had taken a nose-dive, aided by his decision to retitle himself Prime Minister, First Secretary of State, Secretary of State for Global Affairs, and Minister for the New Scotland.
The business cards alone will bankrupt us, one MSP cracked.
The men in grey kilts wielded the dagger and Salmond was replaced by Nicola Sturgeon just in time: come polling day, the Nationalists clung on to control of the Scottish Government by just one seat.
By now, Scotland had become an embarrassing distraction for the UK Government and it wanted the issue to go away more than it wanted to be seen as resolute.
Compromises were struck and work began on infrastructure and logistics. A Bill was brought before Holyrood to nationalise the Burger King at Glasgow Central Station for renovation as a passport control facility.
Bute House and Downing Street agreed a date for formal secession: November 2, 2016.
All parties were so relieved to have reached a deal that no one caught the significance of the date. November 2: the day, 318 years prior, that Captain Pennecuiks fleet came ashore at Darien.
Unable to borrow against a currency, the now-independent Scotlands only source of income was the revenues it raised.
Against her better judgement, Sturgeon was forced to dust off Salmonds emergency budget.
There would be mass layoffs in the civil service; drastic cuts to local government, policing, transport and climate change.
Tuition fees would make a comeback while primary and secondary schools shifted to a temporary four-day week to allow a culling of teacher numbers. A top rate of income tax was introduced at 80 per cent.
In her budget response, opposition leader Ruth Davidson questioned the imposition of eye-watering excise duties. I can see the case for minimum pricing, she told Holyrood, but at nine quid for a pint, I cant help but wonder if we need maximum pricing.
Overnight, someone took a black marker to the Welcome to Scotland sign at the border, scrawling underneath: now twinned with the IMF.
In fact, more colourful suggestions had been made. As Cabinet papers revealed decades later, Bannockburn only narrowly avoided being turned into a Braveheart-themed golf resort operated by Donald Trump while a Saudi prince had to be let down gently after a civil servant pointed out that ministers couldnt sell him the Stone of Destiny because it belonged to the Crown.
Independence was a project built on hope and hype and when it came to be stress-tested by reality, it crumbled under the weight.
Voting Yes, it turned out, did not translate into living in one of the worlds wealthiest nations, as Yes Scotland had promised, but rather in a country which learned the hard way that an expansive state is an expensive one.
It took the removal of the Barnett formula for Scottish nationalists to grasp just how pivotal that subsidy was to funding the spending priorities they most cherished.
Scotland had to adjust to the fiscal facts of life. When Covid-19 hit, Holyrood could not afford to prop up the economy to the extent that Westminster did, and nor did it have the wherewithal to purchase sufficient supplies of the Pfizer vaccine as early as Whitehall.
But by far the most painful adjustment involved the NHS. Universal healthcare free at the point of delivery was no longer feasible given Scotlands budgetary position.
It began with the restoration of prescription charges but in time it extended to co-payments for GP visits, X-rays and blood tests, routine stays in hospital and non-urgent procedures. It was the issue that split the SNP.
That the Scottish Governments reforms made Scotlands health service the most efficient in the British Isles, and that the Tory right was calling for England to follow Scotlands lead, was an irony lost on most Nationalists.
They wanted Scotland to be free to make its own calls - just not these calls.
There were voices clamouring for Scotland to roll out significant tax cuts to attract business, brains and investment away from London.
The phrase Singapore on the Clyde was being thrown around. But there was no money to fund this vision and even if Scotland could make a go of it, it would be a success few would cheer for.
No tax cut could ever make up for the British identity of which Unionists were robbed. Independence hollowed out a part of their soul and nothing could repair it.
Many nationalists, for their part, came to realise that what they wanted was not independence but autonomous dependency: government by themselves, paid for by someone else.
And thats where we find ourselves ten years on from the referendum.
Independence wasnt the one big disaster that Better Together predicted; it was a series of little disasters, of endless rows and crises, of consequences unforeseen and all-too-foreseen, and above all of disappointments.
A thousand lessons learned and a million private regrets. The dream was not worth it but the wake up came too late.