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lenora_roseReal world first:
- I still haven't heard from World Fantasy Con, even just to say "Yes, we got it, we're considering, give us time..." and the polite query I sent was September First. E-mail wise in general, that's LONG. More, when I sent an e-mail to this address for a question before I sent the jury submission proper, I got a response in three days, which felt long but wasn't. Panic, panic....
- I just ended up switching my ceramics class around, and am taking the 9 credit-hour major instead of the 6 credit-hour advanced. The practical difference is that I have to work Mondays and Fridays, as Wednesday is now also officially class time.
- In sorting out my tools and all, I discovered three partly-finished bowls form the rush at the end of last term. Drier than ideal, but still in a condition to be worth finishing. And pretty! So I've done ceramics work.
- Totally failed to get any writing done on the Serpent Prince for the alst week and a bit. Every time I went to, I found some way to cat-vaccuum. Also, the scene that's been blocking itself out in my head is from the sequel. From fairly late in the sequel. Past where any prior draft has gone. I may knock it out just to get things shaken loose and running again,
- Colin got a Wii Fit. Some of the balance and aerobics bits are plenty of fun, actually, and the others have the merit of being exceedingly familiar. it also has another base advantage; even if you don't use it for the exercise you do that day, it acts as a reminder. We've found a few nitpicks; it's not possible to record an outside activity for a prior day, if you missed noting it down. It occasionally suggests good combos of exercises between the strength and yoga areas, but doesn't link to the uncompleted portions of the combo. Even though the Wii keeps a record separate form the disk, it can't transfer any kind of record from another game (DDR or the Sports, f'rinstance) so you have to switch disks and do it manually.
Our RPG took a not so nice turn this time. At least, not for my poor character. The following is only lightly edited.
Magda came to, feeling very much like she shouldn't have bothered. Consciousness was meant to be a natural state, not something one clawed after, like scaling a sheer cliff with fingernails alone. The effort left her exhausted before she'd begun, ready to sleep.
Her entire right side felt pulped; she couldn't distinguish the details beyond that, and knew trying would slide her right down the cliff she'd just beaten. But she wasn't entirely surprised that only her left eye could open.
She saw two things in that moment; Jimmy unwrapping bandages on her right arm, making vague approving clicks with his tongue. Bart sitting off to the side, his hand computer open and beaming a faint yellow light on his face. Of course, she thought. He'd be waiting when he could make the excuse - but he wouldn't have a truly spare minute. There'd be reports and schematics at least.
She'd have liked to ask what happened on the mission, but when Bart reached down to hit a key, panic clogged her throat. Muscles strained in her throat, to scream at him to stop - but all that made it out was a squeak. Too much; her fingernails cracked, and her hold slipped.
__________
She didn't actually remember the explosion. Or the minutes before, when the marine had blasted apart two bot-driven security vehicles. She only remembered the radio call, and the grin pulling at her cheeks as she lifted off, glad to be doing something useful to the away team. And actually, she wasn't even sure she had the right memory, because they'd had to tell her about the whole Atreis council meeting, about the schalli meeting the fishermen and getting on like a house on fire. The explosion had taken at least a day of memory, aside from that one possible blip, inexplicably glad.
Normal with head trauma. Easy words on Alex's lips. But the fact that he was the one patching her dressings when she learned what had shot her down made it too easy to make a connection; the hole torn in her mind so like to the ones Alex had discovered on board the Yeoman; the computer that had casually cut into peoples' minds and turned them into parts of itself.
__________
On the diagnosis and treatment chart, as recorded by Alex (His spelling was dreadful, or maybe just archaic.):
Rt. Arm: Singulur extenssive slash, severe loss of blood. Near severrance of ligature. Arterries patched or closed, as aproprriate, tendon reattachment sucessful, ditto ligaments. Muscle reknitting formula applied, also success. Skin patched. Full recovery expected, 2 weeks max.
Torso: Shotgun effect damage. SD fragments removed, minor muscle damage, no organic injuries. Reknit applied, skin sealed. Full recovery ~ 2 days.
Rt. Leg: Large fragment SD imbedded in thigh muscle, extenssive shotgun effect of smaler fragments. Loss of blood significant. Fragments removed, reknit level 2 applied sucessfully. Skin sealant. Recovery assumed 1 week, if patient walks enough to catalize deep tisue reknit.
That was as far as she got before reading one-eyed became impossible. Her eye tended to blur unexpectedly, or fill with fluid. The tear ducts on the other side leaked a fair bit, so of course the ones on the good side tried to keep up.
It didn't matter. She knew what she needed to. A chunk of superdense armour plating to the face left unmistakable results.
She breathed through her mouth, because it didn't hurt quite as much, though it made her throat feel dry and raw. (The air scrubbers still struggled after being overburdened for a week. She could blame it on that.)
The eyepatch made the flesh around her lost eye hothouse moist. The right side of her face pulsed each time she blinked; they'd patched the flesh closed to keep out infection, but the muscle didn't know, and jumped very time. That feeling was distinct from the ongoing hollow ache, or the unpredictable lightning that cracked across her upper skull. Or the ballooning pressure where half her nose had been.
The world seemed weirdly flat, and objects seemed to shift angles as if she moved at slightly the wrong rate. And that was while lying down. She kept herself entertained by reviewing what she recalled of optics, and the physics of vision.
She didn't much fight the order to remain lying down for the first day; mainly because the moment she sat up, she discovered the true meaning of vertigo. Alex had been off shift, but Jimmy, who'd been across the bay to feed Networks, got her back into the bed, reapplied another patch of false skin where her shout had torn the first dressing open. "Your brain got slammed back and forth in its case then had a lot of pressure put on it by the skull fragments. The scan suggests it's temporary."
But nothing in the universe would make her use any method to urinate that required assistance. Jimmy reluctantly fed her a drug that should ebb the pain back enough to let her try her legs; "you'll need to work the reknit into the subdermal anyhow."
Nobody had told her vertigo also meant dancing purple splatters or sudden glaring light sources where no light should be. Hand on the wall worked well enough when the floor dipped suddenly, or pitched up under her legs. But when the flares started, there was nothing she could do but drop to her knees, bend her head forward, as if in obeisance to some old god, until the desperate need to vomit passed.
Correction, she decided, a shameful two metres from her pallet. She could actually vomit.
Which made her head pound worse, pound so she wasn't sure she could move, so that stretching out her fingers to find the wall took long minutes. She couldn't argue when Jimmy hefted her up, brusque but steady, and hauled her into the wc. She couldn't see through the sparks enough to be sure if he left - he seemed to reappear while she was debating, or hear through the ringing of her ears.
When it subsided, she did find herself alone, the door closed behind her - and another painkiller on the counter right before her eyes. Her eye wouldn't work enough to identify the drug or the directions, but her fingers knew the shape of a tab stimulator. She curled her hand around it, found the push-button, and felt the sudden coolness wash through the flesh of her palm, and race in, towards her heart.
Less than a minute, and she could focus enough to wash, to scour her mouth out, and gulp down fresh water.
She didn't think she was ready, but she took her first look anyhow.
It wasn't so bad across her forehead. A narrow, slightly jagged line from peak to brow, deceptively smooth; Alex had been forced to slide in a plate beneath, where they'd picked out the broken pieces of her skull. It puckered in the middle, but not much worse than a knife-fighter's gash, and the medical skin held it together until real scar tissue could take its place, better than stitches. Under the hairline - advantage of a buzz-cut - it was indeed growing in white. Which would look ridiculous if she kept the buzz. Then again, her hair tended to explode in all directions if she let it grow, a thicket of corkscrews. Ridicule or ridicule, some choice.
Besides, nobody would be looking at her hair.
They hadn't replaced the chunk of bone at her brow, so the medical skin suddenly pulled taut over a hollow where none should be.
She flipped off the eyepatch, looked at the flayed remnants. They'd removed the remains of the eye itself, and sealed the rest together tom hold out infection, but though the swelling made it round and full as if an orb filled the socket, nothing could hide how many directions the lids had been slashed apart. It had bruised storm-blue, raced with heavy purple scabbing, and bitter black crevasses where blood had clotted. A handful of eyelashes jutted out, all askew, the long lashes she had once called her only good feature.
The scar continued beneath, patched together by the medics; she lifted her thumb in front of it. No discreet narrow line, this; there hadn't been enough skin left to pull the edges together. So they'd filled the gap - nearly two full centimeters - with medical skin and hoped. The flare of her nose on that side had been reduced to an iron-flat emptiness, the nostril a small hole, leaking a drop of pale fluid down her lip. The edges were crusted with more of the same, tainted brown with blood. She dabbed at that crust, winced, but made herself finish cleaning.
The damage twisted outward after that, across a cracked and wired cheekbone, through her inside jaw, leaving the lips, like the other side of her face, dragged askew indirectly, by the unnatural pull of missing skin and snapped muscle. Her skin tone hid most of the colour of this bruising, forcing her to guess whether the darker-still patches would be black or purple or blue on someone else. It left the unlikely mounds and bunches where none should be, sensitive to touch, on either side of that massive split.
All in all, she'd expected worse.
She knew the list of essential post-mission surgeries. For one, she'd like to breathe without feeling half her face might burst, and would treasure new sinuses. And they could re-grow the eye, and put the lid together properly. She'd lost two teeth entirely, and felt confident that a dental surgeon would have to mend cracks in several others before he filled that gap.
But she found herself hesitating over the gaping line itself. Sure, they could put her whole face back as it had been. She couldn't say whether she wanted them to.
"I'm alive," she said to that reflection. Then felt her ribcage jump, air sucked sharply in.
Because for just a moment, the words had felt powerfully right. She was alive. She'd have days of vertigo, months of pain, the slow business of healing and working through the stiffness.
But being alive - the surge it sent through her was not all that far from happiness.
She repeated it - though there was no shock to say it now, no bright pulse - and wobbled back to the pallet. Jimmy was gone, and the whole grav-platform that had supported Networks had vanished with him, so presumably the schalli had recovered enough to be returned to the aquatic portions of the ship.
Habit led her to reach for her hand computer before she really though about it. Her thumb flicked across the power panel; it didn't need more than a moment's awareness of body temperature and skin-print. It hummed under the touch, a buzz more felt than heard --
-- and the moment it came on, she felt her heart jump, and the medical monitor bleeped in concern. Her breath came quicker, and the purpling flares began again, edges softened by the medication.
She bent her head again, took deliberate, counted breaths until she had her heart rate under something resembling control. It was a tool. An old familiar tool. There was no more malignancy in it than there was in the antique pen on her officer's desk.
She made her hand close over the case, bring it up to where she could read it more comfortably.
Then sudden text printed itself across the bottom corner, bright rounded letters, mocking and mad.
Happy Birthday, Magda Kerren.
She flung it onto the pallet, and pressed her palm to her eye. Her head ached. There would be no end to this headache.
"It's not a virus," she said aloud. "It's a fucking automated message."
But she could not bring herself to reach across the quilt, or flip over the display, pale light leaking around the edges and limning the pilled fabric.
It took three tries to get her muscles to move at all, and she dropped it back onto the blanket once, her hands shook so. Her breath quickened when she turned it over, and she felt her body coil, ready to throw the thing if it proved to be a monster.
The message had vanished. As if the thing had realized it mistake and meant to apologize.
No, she said, as her vision wavered and the urge to shatter the machine away rose. She would not anthropomorphize. It was a toy. A tool. She swallowed the bile back down, and stroked her fingers over the keys, flexing them to work past the trembling. A tool she could handle.
Five minutes later, her brow beaded with sweat, the scar-ravaged side of her face streaked with leakage from the tear duct of her lost eye -- leakage that showed pink, blood-marked, when it landed on her shirt -- she managed to tap the last necessary key, and pushed the thing away from her with her foot.
Music spread through the bay, the selections left random because she hadn't been able to think or breathe long enough to choose a playlist. The air, slightly stale otherwise, took on a hint of aliac - again, the floral scent chosen for being the first on the list, the fewest necessary touches. She lay back, closed her eyes, and let herself breathe calm again.
When the last of the fear was gone, and the headache had ebbed further, she reached in front of her, eyes still shut, and moved her hands through the diagnostics sequence for the Raven, or an equivalent carrier. The actions came smoothly, even absent the tactile response, the low hums and clicks that meant all was well. Her hands slipped across the air, until she pushed down the lever at her side -- knuckles pressed the quilt at the end of the gesture -- and in her mind, the Raven lifted into the air.
She pressed her tongue to the place where two teeth should have been, absently, the edged throb so unlike the other pains that it seemed pleasant.
Time would tell if she could repeat the actions in a real pilot's seat, knowing that beneath the familiar electronic surface lurked a computer extensive enough that it could grow a mind, turn its attention to murder-suicide, and betray her. She had a thousand miles to go before she would consider herself a whole human being.
But it was one more step.
- I still haven't heard from World Fantasy Con, even just to say "Yes, we got it, we're considering, give us time..." and the polite query I sent was September First. E-mail wise in general, that's LONG. More, when I sent an e-mail to this address for a question before I sent the jury submission proper, I got a response in three days, which felt long but wasn't. Panic, panic....
- I just ended up switching my ceramics class around, and am taking the 9 credit-hour major instead of the 6 credit-hour advanced. The practical difference is that I have to work Mondays and Fridays, as Wednesday is now also officially class time.
- In sorting out my tools and all, I discovered three partly-finished bowls form the rush at the end of last term. Drier than ideal, but still in a condition to be worth finishing. And pretty! So I've done ceramics work.
- Totally failed to get any writing done on the Serpent Prince for the alst week and a bit. Every time I went to, I found some way to cat-vaccuum. Also, the scene that's been blocking itself out in my head is from the sequel. From fairly late in the sequel. Past where any prior draft has gone. I may knock it out just to get things shaken loose and running again,
- Colin got a Wii Fit. Some of the balance and aerobics bits are plenty of fun, actually, and the others have the merit of being exceedingly familiar. it also has another base advantage; even if you don't use it for the exercise you do that day, it acts as a reminder. We've found a few nitpicks; it's not possible to record an outside activity for a prior day, if you missed noting it down. It occasionally suggests good combos of exercises between the strength and yoga areas, but doesn't link to the uncompleted portions of the combo. Even though the Wii keeps a record separate form the disk, it can't transfer any kind of record from another game (DDR or the Sports, f'rinstance) so you have to switch disks and do it manually.
Our RPG took a not so nice turn this time. At least, not for my poor character. The following is only lightly edited.
Magda came to, feeling very much like she shouldn't have bothered. Consciousness was meant to be a natural state, not something one clawed after, like scaling a sheer cliff with fingernails alone. The effort left her exhausted before she'd begun, ready to sleep.
Her entire right side felt pulped; she couldn't distinguish the details beyond that, and knew trying would slide her right down the cliff she'd just beaten. But she wasn't entirely surprised that only her left eye could open.
She saw two things in that moment; Jimmy unwrapping bandages on her right arm, making vague approving clicks with his tongue. Bart sitting off to the side, his hand computer open and beaming a faint yellow light on his face. Of course, she thought. He'd be waiting when he could make the excuse - but he wouldn't have a truly spare minute. There'd be reports and schematics at least.
She'd have liked to ask what happened on the mission, but when Bart reached down to hit a key, panic clogged her throat. Muscles strained in her throat, to scream at him to stop - but all that made it out was a squeak. Too much; her fingernails cracked, and her hold slipped.
__________
She didn't actually remember the explosion. Or the minutes before, when the marine had blasted apart two bot-driven security vehicles. She only remembered the radio call, and the grin pulling at her cheeks as she lifted off, glad to be doing something useful to the away team. And actually, she wasn't even sure she had the right memory, because they'd had to tell her about the whole Atreis council meeting, about the schalli meeting the fishermen and getting on like a house on fire. The explosion had taken at least a day of memory, aside from that one possible blip, inexplicably glad.
Normal with head trauma. Easy words on Alex's lips. But the fact that he was the one patching her dressings when she learned what had shot her down made it too easy to make a connection; the hole torn in her mind so like to the ones Alex had discovered on board the Yeoman; the computer that had casually cut into peoples' minds and turned them into parts of itself.
__________
On the diagnosis and treatment chart, as recorded by Alex (His spelling was dreadful, or maybe just archaic.):
Rt. Arm: Singulur extenssive slash, severe loss of blood. Near severrance of ligature. Arterries patched or closed, as aproprriate, tendon reattachment sucessful, ditto ligaments. Muscle reknitting formula applied, also success. Skin patched. Full recovery expected, 2 weeks max.
Torso: Shotgun effect damage. SD fragments removed, minor muscle damage, no organic injuries. Reknit applied, skin sealed. Full recovery ~ 2 days.
Rt. Leg: Large fragment SD imbedded in thigh muscle, extenssive shotgun effect of smaler fragments. Loss of blood significant. Fragments removed, reknit level 2 applied sucessfully. Skin sealant. Recovery assumed 1 week, if patient walks enough to catalize deep tisue reknit.
That was as far as she got before reading one-eyed became impossible. Her eye tended to blur unexpectedly, or fill with fluid. The tear ducts on the other side leaked a fair bit, so of course the ones on the good side tried to keep up.
It didn't matter. She knew what she needed to. A chunk of superdense armour plating to the face left unmistakable results.
She breathed through her mouth, because it didn't hurt quite as much, though it made her throat feel dry and raw. (The air scrubbers still struggled after being overburdened for a week. She could blame it on that.)
The eyepatch made the flesh around her lost eye hothouse moist. The right side of her face pulsed each time she blinked; they'd patched the flesh closed to keep out infection, but the muscle didn't know, and jumped very time. That feeling was distinct from the ongoing hollow ache, or the unpredictable lightning that cracked across her upper skull. Or the ballooning pressure where half her nose had been.
The world seemed weirdly flat, and objects seemed to shift angles as if she moved at slightly the wrong rate. And that was while lying down. She kept herself entertained by reviewing what she recalled of optics, and the physics of vision.
She didn't much fight the order to remain lying down for the first day; mainly because the moment she sat up, she discovered the true meaning of vertigo. Alex had been off shift, but Jimmy, who'd been across the bay to feed Networks, got her back into the bed, reapplied another patch of false skin where her shout had torn the first dressing open. "Your brain got slammed back and forth in its case then had a lot of pressure put on it by the skull fragments. The scan suggests it's temporary."
But nothing in the universe would make her use any method to urinate that required assistance. Jimmy reluctantly fed her a drug that should ebb the pain back enough to let her try her legs; "you'll need to work the reknit into the subdermal anyhow."
Nobody had told her vertigo also meant dancing purple splatters or sudden glaring light sources where no light should be. Hand on the wall worked well enough when the floor dipped suddenly, or pitched up under her legs. But when the flares started, there was nothing she could do but drop to her knees, bend her head forward, as if in obeisance to some old god, until the desperate need to vomit passed.
Correction, she decided, a shameful two metres from her pallet. She could actually vomit.
Which made her head pound worse, pound so she wasn't sure she could move, so that stretching out her fingers to find the wall took long minutes. She couldn't argue when Jimmy hefted her up, brusque but steady, and hauled her into the wc. She couldn't see through the sparks enough to be sure if he left - he seemed to reappear while she was debating, or hear through the ringing of her ears.
When it subsided, she did find herself alone, the door closed behind her - and another painkiller on the counter right before her eyes. Her eye wouldn't work enough to identify the drug or the directions, but her fingers knew the shape of a tab stimulator. She curled her hand around it, found the push-button, and felt the sudden coolness wash through the flesh of her palm, and race in, towards her heart.
Less than a minute, and she could focus enough to wash, to scour her mouth out, and gulp down fresh water.
She didn't think she was ready, but she took her first look anyhow.
It wasn't so bad across her forehead. A narrow, slightly jagged line from peak to brow, deceptively smooth; Alex had been forced to slide in a plate beneath, where they'd picked out the broken pieces of her skull. It puckered in the middle, but not much worse than a knife-fighter's gash, and the medical skin held it together until real scar tissue could take its place, better than stitches. Under the hairline - advantage of a buzz-cut - it was indeed growing in white. Which would look ridiculous if she kept the buzz. Then again, her hair tended to explode in all directions if she let it grow, a thicket of corkscrews. Ridicule or ridicule, some choice.
Besides, nobody would be looking at her hair.
They hadn't replaced the chunk of bone at her brow, so the medical skin suddenly pulled taut over a hollow where none should be.
She flipped off the eyepatch, looked at the flayed remnants. They'd removed the remains of the eye itself, and sealed the rest together tom hold out infection, but though the swelling made it round and full as if an orb filled the socket, nothing could hide how many directions the lids had been slashed apart. It had bruised storm-blue, raced with heavy purple scabbing, and bitter black crevasses where blood had clotted. A handful of eyelashes jutted out, all askew, the long lashes she had once called her only good feature.
The scar continued beneath, patched together by the medics; she lifted her thumb in front of it. No discreet narrow line, this; there hadn't been enough skin left to pull the edges together. So they'd filled the gap - nearly two full centimeters - with medical skin and hoped. The flare of her nose on that side had been reduced to an iron-flat emptiness, the nostril a small hole, leaking a drop of pale fluid down her lip. The edges were crusted with more of the same, tainted brown with blood. She dabbed at that crust, winced, but made herself finish cleaning.
The damage twisted outward after that, across a cracked and wired cheekbone, through her inside jaw, leaving the lips, like the other side of her face, dragged askew indirectly, by the unnatural pull of missing skin and snapped muscle. Her skin tone hid most of the colour of this bruising, forcing her to guess whether the darker-still patches would be black or purple or blue on someone else. It left the unlikely mounds and bunches where none should be, sensitive to touch, on either side of that massive split.
All in all, she'd expected worse.
She knew the list of essential post-mission surgeries. For one, she'd like to breathe without feeling half her face might burst, and would treasure new sinuses. And they could re-grow the eye, and put the lid together properly. She'd lost two teeth entirely, and felt confident that a dental surgeon would have to mend cracks in several others before he filled that gap.
But she found herself hesitating over the gaping line itself. Sure, they could put her whole face back as it had been. She couldn't say whether she wanted them to.
"I'm alive," she said to that reflection. Then felt her ribcage jump, air sucked sharply in.
Because for just a moment, the words had felt powerfully right. She was alive. She'd have days of vertigo, months of pain, the slow business of healing and working through the stiffness.
But being alive - the surge it sent through her was not all that far from happiness.
She repeated it - though there was no shock to say it now, no bright pulse - and wobbled back to the pallet. Jimmy was gone, and the whole grav-platform that had supported Networks had vanished with him, so presumably the schalli had recovered enough to be returned to the aquatic portions of the ship.
Habit led her to reach for her hand computer before she really though about it. Her thumb flicked across the power panel; it didn't need more than a moment's awareness of body temperature and skin-print. It hummed under the touch, a buzz more felt than heard --
-- and the moment it came on, she felt her heart jump, and the medical monitor bleeped in concern. Her breath came quicker, and the purpling flares began again, edges softened by the medication.
She bent her head again, took deliberate, counted breaths until she had her heart rate under something resembling control. It was a tool. An old familiar tool. There was no more malignancy in it than there was in the antique pen on her officer's desk.
She made her hand close over the case, bring it up to where she could read it more comfortably.
Then sudden text printed itself across the bottom corner, bright rounded letters, mocking and mad.
Happy Birthday, Magda Kerren.
She flung it onto the pallet, and pressed her palm to her eye. Her head ached. There would be no end to this headache.
"It's not a virus," she said aloud. "It's a fucking automated message."
But she could not bring herself to reach across the quilt, or flip over the display, pale light leaking around the edges and limning the pilled fabric.
It took three tries to get her muscles to move at all, and she dropped it back onto the blanket once, her hands shook so. Her breath quickened when she turned it over, and she felt her body coil, ready to throw the thing if it proved to be a monster.
The message had vanished. As if the thing had realized it mistake and meant to apologize.
No, she said, as her vision wavered and the urge to shatter the machine away rose. She would not anthropomorphize. It was a toy. A tool. She swallowed the bile back down, and stroked her fingers over the keys, flexing them to work past the trembling. A tool she could handle.
Five minutes later, her brow beaded with sweat, the scar-ravaged side of her face streaked with leakage from the tear duct of her lost eye -- leakage that showed pink, blood-marked, when it landed on her shirt -- she managed to tap the last necessary key, and pushed the thing away from her with her foot.
Music spread through the bay, the selections left random because she hadn't been able to think or breathe long enough to choose a playlist. The air, slightly stale otherwise, took on a hint of aliac - again, the floral scent chosen for being the first on the list, the fewest necessary touches. She lay back, closed her eyes, and let herself breathe calm again.
When the last of the fear was gone, and the headache had ebbed further, she reached in front of her, eyes still shut, and moved her hands through the diagnostics sequence for the Raven, or an equivalent carrier. The actions came smoothly, even absent the tactile response, the low hums and clicks that meant all was well. Her hands slipped across the air, until she pushed down the lever at her side -- knuckles pressed the quilt at the end of the gesture -- and in her mind, the Raven lifted into the air.
She pressed her tongue to the place where two teeth should have been, absently, the edged throb so unlike the other pains that it seemed pleasant.
Time would tell if she could repeat the actions in a real pilot's seat, knowing that beneath the familiar electronic surface lurked a computer extensive enough that it could grow a mind, turn its attention to murder-suicide, and betray her. She had a thousand miles to go before she would consider herself a whole human being.
But it was one more step.
