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"You promise?"

I soleht index finger "Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in hed "When did you learn that?"

"Yesterday, froirl who carinned "I am full of surprises"

"Yes, you certainly are," he said, and leaned across the table to kiss h ht not understand the gruesome details of h to understand that my problems didn’t end with any of the nasty physical side effects that I was being tested and ular basis My implant had kept me alive We still didn’t knohat that , every day, for the other shoe to drop

Talking to Syht terrors--if that hat they were-- myself to even more therapy, and possibly another sleep study at SymboGen I could deal with that If Nathan orried, I’d be a fool not to be

When I pulled away, Nathan smiled "Love you"

"I love you, too," I said "And I’ll talk to SymboGen I just won’t be happy about it"

"If you were, I’d start worrying about your sanity"

"I don’t trust Dr Morrison"

"You shouldn’t," Nathan said, with a wry shed, and then the food arrived, and we had better things to talk about

Nathan didn’t askelse important until the waitress ca over tonight?"

There was only one good answer to that question So I s for you to ask"

Nathan’s apart He had almost a quarter of the ninth floor, complete with a balcony on the wall that faced the Bay He had it decorated in what he assured ettable mishmash of Ikea and bachelor pad chic It didn’t look like either the sleekly sterile halls of the hospital or like Sally Mitchell’s roo, and so I loved it

But I loved hirabbed his hand and pulled hi for us Nathan illingly I’d been the one to first take our relationship sexual; he was always trying to go slowly, trying to let me be sure of what I wanted This hat I wanted This room, this place, this time, and a man who’d never met Sally Mitchell, but who loved led in the sheets and in each other, it felt like things would be better And I dreaery--which I didto admit, because I wanted to understand my dreams as much as Nathan did, if only because I orried about Sally rising froile psyche with her own, olderto bodies Bodies flying Bodies getting older, or losing teeth, or being seen in public without their clothes on Bodies everywhere, doing things

I never dreamt about bodies

Instead, I dreamt about the dark--the hot wars It was hot the way a sue, even in San Francisco, all humidity and untaken breaths It arm the way Nathan’s arms arm, comfortable and close and safe, and the two states weren’t antithetical at all They were two parts of the same whole When I dreamt, it was absolutely natural that hotness and war simultaneously It was only when I ake that it seemed like a contradiction And the dark…

The dark wasn’t like the dark in the aparthts were off, or the dark in the street when the sun went down It wasn’t even like the dark insideelse did The dark was It was entire and eternal, without question, and it didn’t need to be anything else, because there was nothing else that the dark could possibly be It was just the dark, the hot war but the hot war of the world’s ar nights, where it was just me and the hot warm dark, and part of me was still di in its own cocoon of hot warainst Nathan’s We enco outside that world wasn’t worth worrying about

So,else was still, and I slipped deeper down into dreams and the safety of the hot warm darkness inside uard™ line of products can be partially ascribed to canny advertising Theirdepartment hired an actress best known for her work in a series of horrora monster modeled off a species of parasitic wasp Her first info her A-list s, "I know a bad parasite when I see one Now it’s tiood parasite--one that wants to help you, not hurt you"

While SymboGen would quicklyroundwork had been laid, and people were beginning to trust the concept behind the Intestinal Bodyguard™ After that, all that remained was to sell the idea to the world