Transition. Part 21

"Way of making money," I told her.

"Hedging your financial bets?"

"Something like that."

"Sounds... totally parasitic." Another insincere smile.

"Nah, honest, we make a lot of money for a lot of people. We make money work. We make it work harder than anybody else. That's not parasitic at all. Your banks banks are parasitic. They just sit there, absorbing stuff from the people actually making the money. We're out there, we're predators. We're operators. We make the profits happen. We make money perform. We make money work." I'd already said that, I knew, but I was getting enthusiastic. Plus I'd taken a toot in the Gents five minutes earlier and it was still hitting me. are parasitic. They just sit there, absorbing stuff from the people actually making the money. We're out there, we're predators. We're operators. We make the profits happen. We make money perform. We make money work." I'd already said that, I knew, but I was getting enthusiastic. Plus I'd taken a toot in the Gents five minutes earlier and it was still hitting me.

She snorted. "You sound like a salesman."

"What's wrong with being a salesman?" I asked. She was starting to annoy me. "I mean, I'm not, but so what if I was? What do you do, Chloe? What's your business?"

She rolled her eyes. "Graphic design," she sighed.

"That any better than being a salesman?"

"Bit more creative, maybe?" she said in a bored voice. "Slightly more meaningful?"

I put both forearms on the bar. "Let me guess, Chloe. Your dad's loaded. You-"

"f.u.c.k off," she said angrily. "What's he got to do with me?"

"Chloe," I said in mock horror. "That's your dad you're talking about there." I snapped my fingers. "Trust fund," I said. "You're a Trusty."

"No, I'm f.u.c.king not! You don't know anything about me!"

"I know I don't!" I protested, pretending to match her in general upsettedness or whatever. "And you're not making it easy for me, quite frankly!" You never want to overdo that kind of thing, though. I made a sort of deflating motion, dropping my shoulders and my voice. "What have you got against me, Chloe?" I asked, trying to sound just a little hurt but also being careful not to overdo the plaintiveness.

"The thing about money, maybe?" she suggested, like it ought to be obvious. "The whole greed thing, yeah?"

"Look," I said, sighing. I was already thinking this wasn't a chat-up situation any longer. I just wanted to say stuff that I'd been thinking about, stuff that I'd sort of wanted to say to people like her before but never got round to. Plus, of course, there are some women that when you stop trying to chat them up and start treating them like a bloke you're arguing with, they really like that and that that can get them into bed where trying to chat them up normally never would. So, definitely worth trying. can get them into bed where trying to chat them up normally never would. So, definitely worth trying.

"The greed thing," I say to her. "Everybody's greedy, Chloe. You're greedy. You might not think so but I bet you are. We're all out for number one. It's just that some of us don't kid ourselves about it, know what I mean? We all want everybody to think the same as we do and we think they're stupid if they think any different. And when it comes to love and relations.h.i.+ps, we're all looking for the right person to wors.h.i.+p us, because that'll make us happy, aren't we? Wanting to be happy that's selfish, isn't it? Even wanting there to be no more poverty or violence I mean, it's all b.o.l.l.o.c.ks cos there always will be: both. But that's us being selfish cos we want the world to be the way we personally think it ought to be, know what I mean? You can dress it up as wanting other people to be happy, but in the end it comes down to you and your own selfishness, your own greed."

Chloe held a hand up, almost touching my mouth. "Greed and selfishness aren't the same thing," she said. "Close, but not the same. And they're both different from self-preservation and general self-interest."

"Still, close, like you say."

She sighed, drank. "Yeah, close." She looked like she was studying something behind the bar.

"There's nothing wrong with a bit of greed, Chloe. It's what makes the world go round. Wanting to get on, wanting to better yourself, being ambitious, know what I mean? Wanting the best for yourself what's wrong with that? Wanting the best for your family what's wrong with that, either? Eh? It's great having the luxury of thinking about other people, the poor and the starving and all that, but you only have that luxury cos somebody's been thinking for themselves and their family."

She turned to me, big eyes wide and bright. "You know what? You remind me of somebody, Ade," she said.

"Somebody nice?" I asked. Sarcastically, if I'm honest about it.

She shook her head. I liked the way her hair moved, though I was resigning myself to never running my fingers through it or breathing in its perfume or using it to pull her head back towards me while I f.u.c.ked her from behind. "No," she said. "He's one of those men who was packed off to public school when he was just a little kid-"

"Yeah, well, I wasn't."

"Ssh." She looked stern. "I heard you out. The point is, because of that or not, he decided that everybody's out for themselves and n.o.body really cares for anybody else, though some people pretend to. He's looked after 'Number One'" she did that finger-waggly inverted-commas thing "exclusively ever since and he can't see there might be something wrong with that. In fact, he can't even see that what he's got there is just a single point of view, and a pretty perverse one at that; as far as he's concerned it's some great truth about people and life that only he and a few other realists have worked out. Thing is, he's got a problem. Maybe he's still infected with some tiny remnant of human decency or something, but he can only really really be content with himself and his despicable egotism if he's satisfied that his self-centred att.i.tude doesn't make him a freak. For his own peace of mind he needs to believe that it's not just him, that anybody who claims to care for others is lying; maybe because they're frightened to admit they only think of themselves too, or maybe because they actively want to make people like him feel bad about themselves." be content with himself and his despicable egotism if he's satisfied that his self-centred att.i.tude doesn't make him a freak. For his own peace of mind he needs to believe that it's not just him, that anybody who claims to care for others is lying; maybe because they're frightened to admit they only think of themselves too, or maybe because they actively want to make people like him feel bad about themselves."

I was starting to think that Chloe had been on the marching powder too, though somehow it didn't look like she had, know what I mean? She wasn't speaking the way you do when you're c.o.ked up. But, f.u.c.k me, she was still speaking: "Socialists, charity workers, carers, people who volunteer to help others; they're all and he's quite convinced about this they're all in reality mean-spirited b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, either self-deceiving b.a.s.t.a.r.ds or for their own filthy left-wing reasons deliberately trying to destroy the self-esteem of normal, healthily ambitious people like him. Because if only everybody looked after their own interests everything would be fine, see? Level playing field, with everybody nakedly ambitious and selfish; everybody knows where they are. If some people aren't totally selfish, or, even worse, pretend pretend not to be selfish, then it messes up the whole system. It makes it more unfair, not fairer, the way they'd claim. He calls people like that do-gooders, and they make him angry. I think he would actually prefer do-badders, which is a pretty f.u.c.ked-up att.i.tude when you think about it. He feels quite strongly that these charlatans needed to be unmasked. Always on about them. Never misses an opportunity to complain that they're liars and frauds. Frankly, Ade, altogether, it makes him sound like and I firmly believe he actually is a complete c.u.n.t." not to be selfish, then it messes up the whole system. It makes it more unfair, not fairer, the way they'd claim. He calls people like that do-gooders, and they make him angry. I think he would actually prefer do-badders, which is a pretty f.u.c.ked-up att.i.tude when you think about it. He feels quite strongly that these charlatans needed to be unmasked. Always on about them. Never misses an opportunity to complain that they're liars and frauds. Frankly, Ade, altogether, it makes him sound like and I firmly believe he actually is a complete c.u.n.t."

Funny, isn't it? The c-word has no discernible effect on me. Wood-wise, I mean. You'd think when a woman uses the term it'd be quite s.e.xy, but it isn't. Weird.

I nodded. "Ah-ha," I said. "Old boyfriend?"

"No, Ade. My dad. You remind me of my dad." Chloe drained her drink and patted me on the arm. "Sorry, dear." She nodded. "Now, here are my friends, coming back from the loo, looking a bit more sorted, thankfully." She slid daintily off her bar stool. "I think we'll be moving on. Interesting to talk to you, Ade. You look after yourself, yeah?"

And off all three of them f.u.c.ked.

Her f.u.c.king dad dad? I f.u.c.king wanted to slap the bint.

The Philosopher I have always had nightmares. Long before I became a soldier or a policeman, long before I killed GF's father or became a torturer, I would have unpleasant, threatening, frightening and distressing dreams. Perhaps they became worse for a while, on a few occasions maybe, especially just after Mr F. However, I believe that my decision not to pursue any further personal vendettas, and to act only when I felt I had the backing of some greater authority and that there existed a viable legal and moral framework supporting my professional actions, helped, as it were, to clear my conscience. At any rate, my nightmares decreased in severity afterwards.

They did not disappear. They would still haunt me. People did, faces did, sounds did, screams did especially. Some were very recent in origin: the latest subject, their roar of initial defiance, the following howls of agony and the eventual, inevitable pathetic whimperings and pleadings for mercy, sometimes accompanied by the information required in the first place, more often with nothing of use because the subject knew nothing useful to begin with.

I became a little disillusioned, I suppose, though that had nothing to do with the nightmares. It was just that our job never seemed to end, never seemed to achieve very much. There were always more subjects, and gradually a greater overall number of subjects at any given time, from a greater spread of ages and from more and more backgrounds and professions. Society seemed to be collapsing around us. The Christian Terrorist threat seemed only to increase despite the best efforts of the government, the security services and ourselves, and the real terrorists or terrorist suspects appeared to be joined by those who had fallen foul of the increased security measures and laws which the initial increases in terrorist activity had made necessary in the first place.

My colleagues and I comforted ourselves with the thought that however bad things might be or even might get, just think how much worse everything would be without our dedication and professionalism.

I finally received some long-deserved promotion and began to take on more administrative duties, taking me away from the front line, as it were, though not entirely. In busy periods I would help out and when colleagues were unexpectedly absent I would fill in for them. Both situations seemed to occur rather more often than the department expected or I'd have liked. I began to see a department-approved counsellor, and my doctor put me on some medication that worked relatively well, at first at any rate.

I established a mutually pleasing relations.h.i.+p with a lady police officer and found some solace in that, as I believe she did as well. We had decided to go on holiday, looking for some winter sun.

This was required, certainly in my case. I had lately started to have increasingly distressing nightmares that centred around being killed in my home, waking up to find ex-subjects, especially deceased ex-subjects, standing at the foot of my bed, still in the state we had left them when my department had finished with them. They would stand and stare at me in the darkness, silent but filled with accusation. I could always smell the bodily fluids and sometimes semi-fluid solids that subjects were p.r.o.ne to evacuating either right at the start of the interrogatory episode or when they were under especially p.r.o.nounced pressure. I would wake up in a sweaty knot of sheets, terrified that I had myself wet or soiled the bed.

Just the prospect of such unpleasantly interrupted sleep was bad enough. My doctor put me on some more pills, to help me sleep. I found that a nightcap of whisky helped as well.

I might claim that I had a premonition regarding what happened at the airport. Though I think, in retrospect, that it was simply a memory of the CTs who had attacked the airport some years before, taking the weapons off the police guards and running amok with them. In any event, I was surprisingly nervous as my fiancee and I arrived at the airport. n.o.body had attacked this airport for several years, nor had anyone succeeded in bringing down an aircraft either, despite a few near things, so I kept telling myself that there was nothing to worry about, but my hands were shaking as I locked the car door and picked up our luggage trolley.

Part of my nerves was due to the fact that I had, over the last year or so, begun to worry that I might b.u.mp into an ex-subject in a social situation or in a large crowd, and that they would attack me or even just shout and scream at me, or just quietly point me out to their friends and family as their erstwhile interrogator. I must have interrogated thousands of people over the preceding decade-and-a-bit and they were not all dead or in prison. There must be hundreds still at large, those whose crimes had been relatively minor or who had bought their release by turning informer, or who had been the victim of malicious denunciation. What if I encountered one of them? What if they fell upon me or embarra.s.sed me in front of other people? This had preyed on my mind more and more recently. Statistically, it had to happen eventually.

Nowadays, all too often, I thought I did indeed see such people. I tried never to memorise or even casually remember the faces of any of my subjects as my dreams showed, they proved all too memorable without any effort being made on my part but nevertheless I had started to see faces in the street or in parks or shops or anywhere else where there were other people, really which I felt certain I had last seen tear-streaked, contorted in agony, mouth open in a scream or sealed with tape, their eyes popping, faces turning red.

I had stopped going out quite so much as I had used to. I entertained more at home, had groceries delivered.

We entered the terminal building. I found the beady-eyed gaze of the expressionless border police, paramilitaries and soldiers intensely rea.s.suring. n.o.body would be surprising these fellows and stealing their weapons. They took a family just in front of us to one side for a luggage spot check.

We went to the bar after the rather long-winded and laborious check-in process. I claimed I needed a stiff drink after that, and also that I was a slightly nervous flyer. We spent half an hour there before we thought we ought to go through the main security barrier. I drank three or four gla.s.ses to my fiancee's one, which she did not finish.

There was a long queue for the security barrier. I had guessed as much from the latest internal security services threat-level alert and had allowed for such in our schedule for the day so far, despite some complaints.

We shuffled forward. I was trying to read a newspaper. Police and soldiers walked up and down by the side of the line, looking at people. I started to worry that I might look suspicious just because I was trying so hard to look as though I was reading the paper, and was so obviously sweating. I could think of a few psychological/physiological parameters that I was fitting into all too neatly.

I put the newspaper down and looked around, trying to appear normal, unthreatening. At least, if I was taken out of the line my ident.i.ty cards and especially my security forces special police pa.s.s would secure a speedy end to any suspicion and doubtless an apology. The line still stretched twenty metres ahead of us. Two desks out of three working, scanning pa.s.sports and checking tickets before admitting people to the main security area where the hand luggage would be sniffed and scanned.

The coloured family a couple of metres ahead of us would probably attract extra attention. A young man just beyond them carried a kitbag he'd be lucky to get checked as hand luggage. He was an army draftee, judging by his uniform, but even so. We shuffled forward some more.

My fiancee took my hand and squeezed it. She smiled at me.

My most disturbing feelings recently had been something close to treacherous. I had come to think that the CTs had a point, even that all terrorists had a point. They were still wrong, still evil and still had to be resisted with all the means at our disposal as a society, including emergency measures, but the question that had started to occur to me was: were we any better? I put this down to the depressing realisation that people were all the same. They all bled, they all burned, they all begged, they all screamed, they all reacted in the same ways. Guilty or innocent; that made little difference. Race made none. s.e.x, little. CTs were more fanatical, certainly, but I had begun to doubt they were any more fanatical than the extremists on "our" side who firebombed their congregations or crucified whole families in remote farms.

Ordinary Christians, caught up in the trawls of their areas and families and friends.h.i.+p groups, were just the same as ordinary people. We all were. Almost without exception we human beings were weak and dishonest and cruel and selfish and dishonourable and desperate to avoid pain and torment and incarceration and death even to the point of implicating those we knew full well to be completely innocent.

And that was the point. We were all the same.

There was no difference. We reacted in the same ways to the same actions against us; I'd seen it a thousand times many thousands of times. So what had driven the CTs to such desperate acts, to such mad fanaticism? Any society, any large group, any substantial creed contained sub-groups of people who would crack first under pressure and turn to violence and extremism. But what had created that pressure in the first place? Who had created it?

And would we, the ordinary, decent people, the security services, my own department for that matter swapped at birth in the cradle; I don't know have reacted any differently?

I was still sure we were doing the right thing, but such questions had come to plague me.

At the head of our slowly shuffling queue, between the two open desks, there was a big hip-high transparent plastic bin which contained all the knives, tweezers, pocket knives, metal toothpicks and tools and other bits and pieces which had been confiscated from absent-minded or ignorant people unaware of the relevant restrictions. It looked nearly full. I wondered if the bin's contents would be sold as second-hand pieces, or melted down, or thrown away.

The young trainee soldier ahead of us walked out of the line when he was about five metres away from the bin and waved at the surprised-looking border police official scanning the pa.s.sports. The young fellow was saying something, sounding amused or jocular, not angry or frustrated. I imagined that he was late for a flight, perhaps liable to be posted AWOL if he didn't get through ahead of the rest of us. I looked back. The nearest police officer, behind us, shook his head and started to head for the front of the queue, where the young man had reached the big bin and was starting to talk to the border control official. He put his heavy-looking kitbag down and stretched his back, putting his hands behind his neck in an unconscious parody of the position the approaching policeman would soon be asking him to a.s.sume if he persisted in this attempt to obtain priority. I heard people around us tutting.

The big heavy kitbag was lying right behind the giant plastic bin full of sharps.

To this day I don't know exactly what made me react the way I did. I started to cry out, then somehow knew that there was no time, and pulled my fiancee to the side, throwing her down towards the wall and trying to throw myself on top of her.

That is all I can claim to remember.

The young soldier was a CT, a suicide bomber. The kitbag contained a blast bomb. The explosive charge it held could be made larger than it would have been otherwise because it required no shrapnel; the transparent bin provided that.

Thirty-eight died, not counting the bomber. Both border control gate officials perished, as did the policeman who had been on his way to find out what was happening. Everybody ahead of us in the queue died instantly or within seconds, save for one baby asleep in a backpack cradle. For three or four metres behind where we had been standing, almost everybody died. My fiancee lived for five days. I was on the critical list for about the same amount of time and in intensive care for a further month. I had lost my left eye and left leg and both eardrums.

What I thought most tragic and somehow hopeless was that the young CT suicide bomber had not murdered a real soldier for his uniform or even just stolen it; he really was an army draftee, and one who had come from a good, well-off, well-educated family of unquestionable loyalty and social credentials and who had pa.s.sed all the relevant weeding-out stages and psychological tests with flying colours. He had only converted to Christianity, in secret, a few months earlier. A kind of conclusive despair settled within me when I learned that, and I had not, being quite frank about it, been in the best of spirits beforehand.

I was in a private room at the hospital, still in some pain a couple of weeks after leaving the Intensive suite, when a lady came to see me while I was snoozing. I got the impression of a short, bustily attractive woman, well dressed and strongly perfumed. I didn't recognise her, and wondered a little groggily due to the painkillers if she was one of my ex-subjects, arrived to inflict a bruise upon a bruise. She held my wrist as though about to take my pulse, then encircled it, her hand a bracelet, and with that, and no further ceremony, suddenly I was somewhere else.

The Transitionary My new friend Adrian insists that he must be personally present to be of the most help, so is on his way. However, it will take most of the rest of the day for him to get here.

I wander the abandoned palace for a while, imprisoned within all this luxury and s.p.a.ce, reluctant to show signs of life in case anybody is watching and equally reticent about leaving it. I feel safe here, even as I fret at the feeling of confinement and the prospect of presenting an unmoving target for the next five or six hours. I stand looking at a walk-in freezer on the ground floor. The freezer is switched off, dark, dry, its thick, stepped door wedged open by a shrink-wrapped case of Coca-Cola. I s.h.i.+ver, suddenly remembering the time I came here when it snowed, when I met my little pirate captain, and the very first time I came to this world, when I tasted its unique fragre.

During the initial moments of that original visit, knowing nothing of the place save for that first hint of its true essence, I'd happily have bet somebody else's bottom dollar this was a Greedist world, a world where the untrammelled pursuit of material wealth and the virtues of money itself were extolled, venerated and even wors.h.i.+pped. Not as an original act of faith of course; we always give ourselves more credit than that. Accidentally, rather. Perdition awaits at the end of a road constructed entirely from good intentions, the devil emerges from the details and h.e.l.l abides in the small print.

I claim no moral superiority here. People like me get to see this more clearly than most only because we are privileged to witness lots of non-unique examples spread across a variety of worlds, not because we are intrinsically wiser or more ethically refined. And even I knowing full well that the technicalities profoundly matter have to accept that it is precisely from the details, from the clutter and the turmoil of existence, that the fatal blow inescapably arises, like a freak wave, overwhelming, from the distributed chaos of the ocean.

The specifics will claim me one day; the details always deliver in the end.

There are as many types of capitalism as there are types of socialism or any other ism for that matter but one of the major differences a major difference founded on what appears to be a minor detail between whole bundles of ostensibly fully capitalist societies centres (indeed, depends) on whether commerce is governed by private firms and partners.h.i.+ps, or by limited companies.

I'd lie if I claimed I possessed any congenital interest in economics, but from what I've gathered over the years the invention and acceptance of the limited company means people can take big risks with money not their own and then if it all goes wrong lets them just walk away from the resulting debts, because the company is somehow regarded as being like a person in its own right, so that its debts die with it (not the sort of fairy story a partners.h.i.+p is allowed to get away with).

It's a piece of nonsense, really, and I used to wonder that legislatures anywhere bought into this blatant fantasy and agreed to give it legal house room. But that was just me being naive, before I realised that there was a reason why it always dawned on all those ambitious, powerful gents in all those various legislatures that this ludicrous hooey might actually be quite a good idea.

Anyway, limited company worlds often progress faster than other types, but always less smoothly and reliably, and sometimes disastrously. I've looked into it and frankly it just isn't worth it, but you can't tell that to anyone caught up within the seductive madness of the dream; they have the faith, and are forever relieved by the invisible hand.

I kick the case of Coca-Cola aside, letting the freezer door thud closed.

There is a generously sized kitchen in the Palazzo. It also has no electricity, of course, and no other sort of power I can get to work, but it does have drawers full of cutlery and cupboards full of tin cans. I eat cold peas by candlelight.

As I begin to relax, I discover a need to know how many peas are on the spoon I am eating with. Oh dear. I thought I'd shaken that weakness off.

I try to ignore this absurd compulsion and just keep on eating, but it is as though there is an elastic band joining the plate and the spoon, or a membrane in front of my face, physically preventing me from bringing the spoon to my mouth. Preposterous as it may be, it is actually easier to give in and count the peas. I cannot arrive at an accurate figure just staring at the slowly collapsing pile on the spoon, of course (though I'm sure an estimate would be pretty close to the final figure), so I have to spoon the load onto the plate and count them there. In the dim glow of the single candle, this is harder than it sounds. I have to sort them into files of five to ensure accuracy. Having arrived at a figure it proves impossible to pick all the peas up again. I push them back into the ma.s.s of peas on the plate and take up another spoonful. That first spoonful was a pretty typical one, I reckon. This one poised before me now is also pretty typical, so ought to have the same number of peas.

But does it? I am growing annoyed at myself and my stomach is growling at me, still mostly empty, but I need to know. Was that first spoonful typical? Did I arrive at a reliable number before? I let this latest sample slide onto the side of the plate and count them as well. Slightly more than the first spoonful. I take an average of the two. Though even as I do this I realise that two just seems an inadequate number. One more sample ought to do it. Three is the number required for triangulation, after all.

There, this third spoonful contains a number in between the first two spoonfuls; a straddle, a sure sign that we are zeroing in on the right number. I decide to take no more nonsense from myself and just eat this spoonful. This works and I am able to sit back again. I sigh through my nose as my teeth and tongue quickly convert the ma.s.s of peas into a single lump of paste inside my mouth. I swallow and sit forward, scooping up the next mouthful of piselli picolli piselli picolli. On the table the candle flame flickers, as though s.h.i.+vering.

I stop and let the spoon fall back into the plate. I stare at the candle, remembering.

And then, suddenly, I was not merely remembering. I was- I watched her move her hand above the lit candle, through the yellow flame, fingers spread fluttering through the incandescing gas, her unharmed flesh ruffling the very burning of it. The flame bent this way and that, guttered, sent curls of sooty smoke towards the dim ceiling of the room where we sat as she moved her hand slowly back and forth through the gauzy teardrop of flame.

She said, "No, I see consciousness as a matter of focus. It's like a magnifying gla.s.s concentrating rays of light on a point on a surface until it bursts into flame. The flame is consciousness; it is the focusing of reality that creates that self-awareness." She looked up at me. "Do you see?"

I stared at her.

I was here, here with her, in this place, right now.

This was not a memory, not a flashback. Certainly we had taken drugs and we were still at this point under their influence, but this was definitely not some addled consequence of their effects. This was startlingly immediate and unquestionably vivid. Real, in a word.

She put her head to one side a little, flexed an eyebrow. "Tem?" she said softly. "Are you listening?"

"I'm listening," I said.

"You look distracted," she told me. She pulled the sheet that was all she wore a little tighter about her, as though she was cold. She took a breath, went to speak.

I said, "There is no intelligence without context."

Her brows flicked momentarily into a tremulous frown.

"That's what-" Still frowning, she sat back, removing her hand from the candle flame; it curled out after her fingers in a long flexing trail of glowing yellow, as though reluctant to let go of her. "Have I said this to you before?" she asked.

"Not really," I said, watching the candle flame restore itself. "Not as... No."

She looked at me with what could have been either suspicion or bafflement. "Hmm," she said. "Well, it's like a magnifying gla.s.s, and the partial shadow it casts around its focus. The halo of reduced light around the bright spot at its centre is the debt required to produce that central concentration. In the same way, meaning is sucked out of our surroundings and concentrated in ourselves, in and by our minds."

(Her hair-) Her hair, a brown-red spill of curls across her shoulders and along her slender neck, formed a quiet nimbus around her canted head. Her deep orange-brown eyes looked almost black, reflecting the poised stillness of the candle's flame like some image of the consciousness she had been talking about. They looked perfectly still and steady. I could see the minuscule spark of the flame reflected in them, unwavering, constant, alive. She blinked slowly, languorously.

I recalled recalling that the eyes only see by moving: we can fasten our gaze on something and stare intently at it only because our eyes are constantly consumed with dozens of tiny involuntary movements each second. Hold something perfectly and genuinely still in our field of vision and that very fixity makes it disappear.

"I love you," I said.

She sat forward suddenly. "What?"