There’s no sleep like bad sleep. Just because the universe doesn’t count the total trip time against us, so far as we know, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t pass somewhere, somehow. What’s it like to be half-aware of blind blankness for ten thousand years? I’d like to tell you, but there aren’t words.
When we come awake again—fully awake and not just numbly miserable—most of us are scattered, some in the cubbies, a few in the canes, Bilyk and DJ jammed between ribbons—squirming. We pull our squad together and inspect ourselves, creepily convinced we’ve shriveled like the corpses in the cages. But we don’t seem to have changed at all.
“Join the Skyrines and tour hell,” Jacobi says.
Tak comments how different this is from the trip on Lady of Yue, where we came awake fresh and raring to go. Every scale has a different feel, brings a new set of questions.
Like, what’s this thin layer of sparkling dust on our skin and clothes? We all start rubbing, as if we could wipe away everything that’s happened.
“Searcher dust,” Jacobi says. The searchers attend to us like patient servants, silent, respectful. Jacobi isn’t happy with them, however. As they try to help her brush away the dust, she hits them with clenched fists—an exercise in futility. They back off, but do not otherwise react.
“I hate how they just don’t get mad!” Jacobi says.
“Let them be,” Tak says. “They’re not hurting anyone.”
“They’re fucking squids, goddammit!” Jacobi says. We’ve all gone so far from discipline and training that anything can happen to us, around us, and we wouldn’t know how to react.
Ishida holds up her metal hand, covered with little bright points. We watch them fade. After the sparkling dust evaporates, leaving only a cool tingle, we wonder if it was ever there at all.
“Anybody want to swear off having kids?” Ishikawa asks.
“Solemnly,” Ishida says.