In a pocket, two light blue marbles disappeared.

Paul pulled back his left sleeve and saw a line of scar fade.

“I’m sorry.” He reached out, placed rough hand against the dimpled cheek.

“Paul?”

He nodded, smiled with a sadness beyond stillness, beyond that yesterday.

“I’m sorry.” A whisper, an approach, lips speak into a soft warm curl of ear. “Erase.”

She faded.

West studied the floor.

“Get me out of here.” The author choked back something, swallowed those concepts and closed his eyes. “Program stop.”

Time heals nothing by itself.

Survival depends on forgetting. Excision. Formatting. Re-formatting.

an exhalation, a lip upturned, the infinitesimal field of blonde, crow’s feet from a life too

Pattern slams back into form. Hiss and release, a chamber door opens. Billowing steam. (Where does it

The author cracked the release system of his helmet, which opened in a dozen places and peeled away to reveal a face studded by whiskers and scar. He wondered why helmets in science fiction novels were almost always big globes of glass. Vulnerable. The helmet he’d designed for this novel used direct sensory submersion behind an armored collapsible blade paneling system. Safer. No glass. In the armor, he breathed slurried nitrox gel, if you could consider it breathing at all.

West, Benton. Displays. He slumped into a vacuum chair beside the girl.

“It was a good run.”

He looked up. “Guess so.” Ran fingers through hair. “Scissors?” And they were.

“The triumphant warrior begins another transformative process?” She grinned, but her teeth didn’t show.

That sound the scissors make on sweatened hair, the tickle just before depattern of the severed strands. Scentless flashes of

“The helmet needs work.”