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"The Other . . . he was the one who took my sight from me so long ago. I understand that now, understand the puzzled doctors, the unanswered questions beneath the diagnosis of hysterical blindness. I do not think he did it cruelly, or even accidentally, in the way Sellars believes he plunged children into comas, trying only to make them quiet and tractable. No, he was with me there in the darkness of the Pestalozzi Institute, with me in a way I could not understand at the time—in my ears, but also in my mind. And when the lights came on, dazzling me, hurting me so that I shrieked and shrieked, he tried to do a kind thing. He made the light go away.
"Dying, he has given it back to me.
"He touched me at the end, at least I think he did. I felt him as I had not felt him since I was a child. For a moment, a brief instant, we were children again together, both afraid of the dark. He . . . touched me as he gave himself up. He touched me, then he was gone.
"I wish I had been with him at the end, riding down the night sky in flames like a bolt of divine lightning. Perhaps then I would have gone too, dissolved in that great fiery tantrum. It would be a simple solution. I long for a simple solution, although I am far too cowardly to effect one myself.
"Listen—Martine is talking to herself again, as always. Alone. In darkness by choice, even though I can now see. Back in my world beneath the world.
"For the others, life goes on. Sellars and his friend Ramsey and Hideki Kunohara, already they are busily organizing how things will be. Renie and Florimel have loved ones to attend to—they do not need me now. What use would I be, anyway? I thought once I could help Paul Jonas. I realized, even if he did not, that there was no life for him offline. I even daydreamed that if we survived we could make a sort of life together in the network—a virtual life, but a life. The witch and the wanderer. The patron spirits of the Otherland.
"Now everything has changed. Paul is dead and I have lost the thing that made me different, made me valuable. With my sight no longer suppressed, my brain struggles to make new co
"I have listened to my journal. I will listen to it again, I suppose, even though I no longer know the woman who spoke those words. There is little else to do. Perhaps one day I will go out into the real world and explore it with my new eyes. Perhaps that is something to live for. Perhaps.
"But for a moment I had a world for myself. I had friends—comrades. Now they have their lives back. We will talk, of course—such a bond does not disappear overnight, or even quickly—but the uncomfortable truth is that they had lives to go back to and I did not. We lived through terrifying time, in a place of unbelievable danger and terror. But I was alive there. I mattered there. Now . . . what?
"It is hard to think. It is easier to rest. It is easier to keep to familiar darkness.
"Code Delphi. End here."
Renie settled into the cushioned seat and wished she was using better gear.
All those weeks in a perfect imitation of reality just so I could feel myself being gouged, slammed, shredded. Now that there's something nicer to feel, I'm linked in from a sidewalk VR shop and I can't experience it properly.
"I thought the others told me your bubble-house was destroyed," she said to Hideki Kunohara. She gestured at the huge, round table, at the view through the hemispherical roof of the towering outsized trees and of the river like a surging ocean all around. "You rebuilt it quickly."
"Oh, this one is much bigger," he said, amused. "Since we needed a meeting place, I thought I would accommodate it in my new construction." He settled back in his chair. "I remember your friend—!Xabbu, I believe?—but I do not know your other guest."
"This is Jeremiah Dako." Renie waited while Jeremiah leaned across her and shook Kunohara's hand. "If it hadn't been for him and two others, !Xabbu and I wouldn't have survived to attend this . . . meeting."
"This is quite amazing." Jeremiah seemed stu
"Not just here—but yes, the network is a pretty overwhelming place." She frowned slightly. "And you're not even getting a very good idea of what it can really be like. Why are we here like this? We could have arranged to use much better gear."
"You must ask your friend Sellars," Kunohara said. "He should join us any moment."
"I am here." Sellars, still in his wheelchair, appeared at one end of the large table. "Apologies—things are very, very busy. What is it they must ask me?"
"Why we couldn't use better gear," Renie said. "Our friend Del Ray Chiume would have been happy to arrange some VR rigs through his UN co
"It was not the quality of the gear I objected to," Sellars told her. "And in the future we will certainly arrange better access for you. But for various reasons I did not think it a good idea for you to be using United Nations equipment, even arranged by a friend."
"What does that mean?
"I will explain when everyone is here. Ah, Mr. Dako, we meet at last—at least in person. Well, perhaps that isn't entirely accurate either. Face to face? I hope your leg is healing well."
"You . . . you're Sellars." Jeremiah seemed a bit overwhelmed. "Thank you for what you did. You saved our lives."
The old man smiled. "Most of us in this room have saved each others' lives. Your courage helped keep Renie and !Xabbu alive so they could play their own very important parts."
"It was you who called in the military, wasn't it? Tipped them off that someone had broken into the Wasp's Nest base?"
Sellars nodded. "It was the only thing left I could do to help you. I was very busy at the time. I'm glad it worked out." He lifted his head as if hearing a distant sound. "Ah. Martine is here."
A moment later Martine Desroubins appeared—or rather, an almost featureless sim popped into view in one of the chairs. Renie was startled. She had wondered whether she would actually get to see Martine's real face, even though Sellars had arranged that all the rest of them looked like themselves, but she could not help feeling that the barely-humanoid sim was a step backward.
"Hello, Martine," said !Xabbu. She only nodded.
She's hurting, Renie thought. Hurling badly. What can we do?
Renie was quickly distracted by the arrival of T4b and Florimel, who appeared only a half-minute apart. She already knew T4b's true face, although she had never seen him with his lank black hair combed and all his subdermals ignited.
"Only lit 'em halfway," he explained. "More classy, seen?" He lifted his arm to display a perfectly normal left hand. "Wish this was far shiny still, like in the network. That was crash!"
Florimel's real face was a bit of a surprise. She looked younger than the peasant sim in which she had spent so much time, perhaps only in her middle thirties, with an open, attractive, square-jawed face and a functional haircut not much longer than Renie's own. Only the black eyepatch made her someone who would provoke a second look.
"How is your eye?" Renie asked.
Florimel kissed her on both cheeks, then did the same for !Xabbu. "Not good. I'm mostly blind in this eye, although there is better news about the ear—my hearing is coming back." She turned to Sellars. "But I am grateful for the help, not just with my own injuries, but with Eirene. Hospitals are very expensive."