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The gurneydropped away, replaced by silence and the rattle of wheels My sense of time seeh the gloohtthem in calain to pullmyself further down The voices went away

Motion, and then noThe sound of voices Pressure receding as the straps that heldfitted overmy nose and el MRIs Maybe I was having a gel MRI Maybe I was back at Sy that had happened since my last checkup was a dreaain, Sherman would be there, and he wouldn’t be a tapewor would be all right I could go home My parents would be hter, and they would lovewould be fine forever and ever

"--start the feed--"

"--all data has been--"

"--careful, the risk of cority--"

The voices were only ghosts; they ca any impact on the world The e-s else I could have done So I just breathed, until even the ghosts went away, and there was nothing I was nothing

I was alone

When I was born, I was the size of a pinhead: an egg, expressed fro but a breeder for ical e full of DNA and rowth The actual process was probably more complicated than that, but I didn’t understand the science: when I tried to hold on to it, I just kept seeing a loop of fil rats The rats were nor and poked theer, and ses and captivity They started wanting to be free

Dr Banks and his tea The Secret of NIMH a few tienetic code of living organisht it was But Dr Banks had wanted to make a lot of s and I ed toway beneath him

Me up in the hospital with Sally’s grieving fa and not knohat it was, or who I was, or what I was doing there I’d been so eager to believe thehter, and why shouldn’t I have been? They were offerings before So I took thereedy for whatever I could grab, and I kept the for more

This was allto swi to pull all the splintered pieces of ether It’s not your fault You didn’t do this You didn’t

If you really believe that, why are we having this argument? The question came from another corner of my mind, and I didn’t have an answer for it So I did what felt right, and let it fall away from me as I sank deeper down into the dark The dark didn’t de but exist I could do that I could do that very well

So I did

There was only one thing I really reht white light that hurt my eyes sodown froht had to be getting in through some other channel It didn’t make any sense at the time It was one more mystery piled onto the endless heap of theether since I’d seen aveht was shining: it had been hurtingin host-white skin of mented form I would have screamed if I could have, both from the pain and from the realization But I had no voice, and so all I could do was sink back into the dark, away from awareness, away froht

This tih the usual channel, flowing in as I openedIt probably helped that sohts in this little roohtly to the left, confir alley The walls were painted white, but they were solid, rather than being ative space Asoftly to itself That was probably what had woken me up It was the only noise in the room As I realized that, I also realized that I could barely hear the druround of , almost inaudible, the way they used to be This was how the inside of my head was supposed to sound, when I wasn’t so stressed out thatall the ti to give way at any moment