EPILOGUE

I can hardly believe it, even though everything I’ve done for the past seven years has been aimed at exactly this. I am sitting here at a desk entering my notes, and the desk is in a ship and the ship is in space, and space is full of light. Lou-before hugs the series to him, dancing inside me like a joyous child. I feign more sobriety, in my workaday coverall, though I can feel a smile tugging at the corner of my mouth. We both hear the same music.

The identifier code on my ID gives my academic degree, my blood type, my security clearance . . . no mention there that I spent almost forty years of my life defined as a disabled person, an autist. Some people know, of course: the publicity surrounding the company’s unsuccessful attempt to market an attention-control treatment to employers brought us all more notoriety than we wanted. Bailey, in particular, made a juicy tidbit for the media. I didn’t know how badly it went for him until I saw the news archives; they never let us see him.

I miss Bailey. It wasn’t fair, what happened to him, and I used to feel guilty, even though it wasn’t my fault. I miss Linda and Chuy; I hoped they would take the treatment when they saw how it worked for me, but Linda didn’t until after I finished my doctorate last year. She is still in rehab. Chuy never did. The last time I saw him, he said he was still happy the way he was. I miss Tom and Lucia and Marjory and my other friends from fencing, who helped me so much in the early years of recovery. I know Lou-before loved Marjory, but nothing happened inside when I looked at her afterward. I had to choose, and—like Lou-before—I chose to go on, to risk success, to find new friends, to be who I am now.

Out there is the dark: the dark we don’t know about yet. It is always there waiting; it is, in that sense, always ahead of the light. It bothered Lou-before that the speed of dark was greater than the speed of light. Now I am glad of it, because it means I will never come to the end, chasing the light.

Now I get to ask the questions.