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It is the one to sleep

The color of the lights seeold--and it takes me a moment to realize why The ports in all the apartments are on I’ve seen Society-wide broadcasts like this on winter evenings before, when the sun goes down early and we are awake for part of the dark

But I’ve never seen people watching ports this late

At least, not that I remember

What could be so important that the Society would wake everyone up?

I pass through greenspaces, now colored cool blue and gray, and I find h the heavythe keycode The Society will note my lateness; and someone will speak to me about it An hour unaccounted for here or there is one thing; this is half a night, the kind of time that could be spent in a myriad of nonapproved ways

The elevator slides as noiselessly as an air train up to my floor, the seventeenth, and the hallway is eht seeps through, but when I open the door to my apartment, the port waits in the foyer, as usual

My hands fly tomy need to scream before my mind has taken in what’s before , I could never have conceived of this

The portscreen is showing me bodies

It’s worse even than those burned, flung-aside, blue- Worse than the stone rows of graves in the settlehter doith care and farewell The sheer numbers make this terrible, oes up and down the rows so that we can see how many bodies there are Up and down and up and down

Why are atching?

Because they’re showing the faces The caister either recognition or relief and then it ain

And then another me, where Hunter took us

Is that what they’re doing? Have they found a neay to store us?

But I see now that the people on the screen are alive, though far too quiet and far too still Their eyes are open and unseeing, but their chests ely dusky and blue

This isn’t death but it is alone Close enough to see but out of reach

Each person is tethered to a clear bag with a transparent tube running into their arh the patients’ veins? Are their real veins gone and now they’re threaded with plastic? Is this a new plan of the Society’s? First they take our ile skin and haunted eyes, shells of e used to be?

I reh the Carving, the papery circles that used to contain hu creatures and their busy, brief lives

In spite of azes on the patients’ faces The people don’t look like they are in pain But they don’t look like they are in anything

The point of view shifts, and now I think we’re watching fro houses these people We’re looking fro at all of the sick

Man, woman, child, child, woman, man,have the ports been showing this? All night? When did it begin?

They show the face of a man with brown hair

I know him, I think in shock I used to sort with him, here in Central Are these people in Central?

The i, merciless, pictures of people who cannot close their eyes But I can closeand I turn blindly toward the door

And then I hear a man’s voice, rich and melodic and clear

"The Society is sick," he says, "and we have the cure"

I turn slowly back around But there is no face to put to the voice; just the sound The ports show only the people lying still

"This is the Rising," he says "I am the Pilot"

In the tiny foyer the words echo fro back to me from each corner, every surface in the room

Pilot

Pilot

Pilot

For months I have wondered what it would be like to hear the Pilot’s voice

I thought I ht feel fear, surprise, exhilaration, excitement, apprehension

I didn’t think it would be this