"Submission again.  Back and forth, back and forth from aggression to submission and back again."  She pumped her arm as if it were a piston.  "Just like a little machine--you see?  It's all automatic behavior."

"Hey, Kreesh--you're the neurobiowhatever here, right?  Put in a good word for me.  Get me out of this conversation."

Krishna reddened.  He would not meet Gunther's eyes.  "Ms. Chang is very highly regarded at the Center, you see.  Anything she thinks about thinking is worth thinking about."  The woman watched him avidly, eyes glistening, pupils small.  "I think maybe what she means, though, is that we're all basically cruising through life.  Like we're on autopilot.  Not just you specifically, but all of us."  He appealed to her directly.  "Yes?"

"No, no, no, no."  She shook her head.  "Him specifically."

"I give up."  Gunther put his cards down, and lay back on the granite slab so he could stare up through the roof glass at the waning Earth.  When he closed his eyes, he could see Izmailova's hopper, rising.  It was a skimpy device, little more than a platform-and-chair atop a cluster of four bottles of waste-gas propellant, and a set of smart legs.  He saw it lofting up as the explosion blossomed, seeming briefly to hover high over the crater, like a hawk atop a thermal.  Hands by side, the red-suited figure sat, watching with what seemed inhuman calm.  In the reflected light she burned as bright as a star.  In an appalling way, she was beautiful.

Sally Chang hugged her knees, rocking back and forth.  She laughed and laughed.

*

Beth Hamilton was wired for telepresence.  She flipped up one lens when Gunther entered her office, but kept on moving her arms and legs.  Dreamy little ghost motions that would be picked up and magnified in a factory somewhere over the horizon.  "You're late again," she said with no particular emphasis.

Most people would have experienced at least a twinge of reality sickness dealing with two separate surrounds at once.  Hamilton was one of the rare few who could split her awareness between two disparate realities without loss of efficiency in either.  "I called you in to discuss your future with Generation Five.  Specifically, to discuss the possibility of your transfer to another plant."