There's nothing to consider. We're locked in to Dissociation Nation. Nothing can possibly hurt us now.

There is a correct answer, but neither of you know what it is.

It's like she's handing you a trophy cup with the corpse of a small animal in it.

But not like this. These feelings aren't mixed. They're on entirely different planes from one another.

One more relationship smothered with a pillow and buried in the courtyard.

Into the dustbin it goes.

BURNED OUT IN THE HAZE OF IT ALL LONG DISTANCE CALLS

The digital birdsong of a signal jammer. When you want your target to know they're being disrupted.

The Illuminated Empire awakens.

Like a rabbit. Scenting danger.

The receiver buzzes warmly in your hand. In the wiry nerves of the city you just left, ideologies crash against one another like waves. Across the Developed World and beyond, telephones begin to ring...

Increasing chance of precipitation as a front of high pressure moves across the Noscorrentes Sea. The temperature is 16 and falling.

The flight path from Luz's costal airfields to Portofiro is approximately 60 kilometres, or 3 minutes at supersonic speed.

Under your feet, the buoy and the boat jostling in the sea swell. You keep your balance, just barely.

THE PARADE. FLOATS AND CONFETTI. DON'T FORGET.

False.

An outrageous call after what you pulled off. Time to abuse the refs.

Pencil sounds disconcertingly impermanent.

A distinction that will preoccupy you in the small hours for many years to come.

A cool, dry air seems to emanate from the phone line.

Tk. The sound of a box being marked on a standard form.

She's done this many times before. She'll say as little as possible. Treat it like a formality to get through the moment.

Another tk. Another form.

There's another Melita, she thinks, looking at the same form but filling it in differently. She wishes she were that Melita.

Tk. The sound of a box being marked on a standard form.

She's done this many times before. She'll say as little as possible. Treat it like a formality to get through the moment.

A sigh. That's all she can manage just now.

Tk. The sound of a box being marked on a standard form.

She's done this many times before. She'll say as little as possible. Treat it like a formality to get through the moment.

One of many such things -- non-choices, counter-factuals, pebbles in the mind's shoe -- that make up a life.

Tk. The sound of a box being marked on a standard form.

She's done this many times before. She'll say as little as possible. Treat it like a formality to get through the moment.

A sigh. That's all she can manage just now.

Further warbling would be a mistake.

A casual intimacy to the interrogators' posture, slouched toward each other. They're partners.

He'll do it again.

Brace yourself.

The crease of latex against plastic, amplified in your skull.

Aural torture. Wicked.

SILENCE.

Whispering to each other in low, urgent tones. They're beginning to panic.

Bitter.

The sensation will haunt you.

The doctor blows onto his tea. A smell of mint rises with the steam.

Come on... Don't tell them... Lie...

You cough, it burns.

Continue, he's saying.

The words circled beneath the doctor's signature return to you.

Silken web of awareness, holding dark tides in place.

It's at this moment, as the Paleolithic huntress pinches shut the great aurochs' lower intestine with one hand while with the other she expertly slices the hide around the anus from without, that the boundary is suddenly and fatally crossed. 'What am I doing here?' her brain asks in her own voice, as her head falls back and the terrible weight of sentience descends on her with a roar.

Checks