“Maybe it won’t be as bad as we think,” he sighed, moving his eyes off of mine. “Even if the worst should happen, maybe it won’t be a doomsday ending.” He fingered the shard, turning it over in his hand the way the girl had her syringe. “What was it Miller said?” he asked. “Agents of change, nothing more? If that’s true, then maybe…” He leaned back in his chair and put a finger to his forehead, rubbing his temple in that way he’d had since he was young, when something heavy was on his mind. “Maybe some of us will adapt,” he mused. “Maybe some of us will survive. Maybe it will be enough.” He leaned back in his chair, shoulders slumped, his head still cocked to one side. His knees and elbows dangled, limp, in four uncoordinated directions, like a puppet off its strings. “It’s just another way to communicate, after all. We should be able to control it. We should be able to use it, in the end. Every form of communication in history, some have found a way to lie. Why should this be any different?” A hand feeling at his neck, in the same area where Miller’s wound had been, suggested there might be a very good reason. I couldn’t see the swelling yet, or the telltale redness blossoming beneath the skin, but the look on his face was one of such sorrow, such loss, he had to be feeling something.

“Bring me home,” he whispered.

“I can’t do that,” I answered.

“Why not?!?” he demanded. “If it has to happen, why can’t it happen there? You’ve got the power.” He found a spot on the side of his glass where a drop of the bubbly had beaded and dried, and rubbed it clean with one of his thumbs. His eyes remained averted. “They’re coming in anyways. I know they are. Just have them take me out with them. Put me in quarantine, and just…just let me see the world again before I go. Let me see the leaves on the trees, and the orchards in bloom, and the endless fields of wheat, and the clouds in their majestic sky. Let me watch the panoply of one last glorious sunset, and remember all the constellations as the starts come out to play. Let me take a walk in the park, and feel the grass beneath my feet, and hear the din of the rank and file buying their pasties and kewpie dolls from cheesy vendors hocking their wares, and smell the sweet of the country breeze as it comes wafting from the plains. Let me hoot at a pretty girl. Let me eat a real meal, made with fresh meat and fresh vegetables, and roasted coffee with real cream and real sugar instead of this freeze-dried shit we’ve got down here, and let me smoke one last cigar, before these fuckers snuff me out. Let me go out like a man. Don’t let me go like…” the background of the holo flashed an image of Miller, spasming and clutching at the side of his face. He looked even more twisted and pale than he had on the playback. A ghoulish hyperbole from Britt’s imperfect memory.

“I can’t,” I repeated. “They’d crucify me. You know they would.”

“Yeah…” he choked on the word.

The background of his holo ran through all the pleasures he had just described. He glared at the me from the foreground, enjoying them in spite of my negation of the chance to make them real. I felt pangs of animosity, and had to work to suppress them. And all at once I found it that much easier to understand why Rauch had snapped.

“It doesn’t have to end this way,” my holo said. “You could fight. You could at least try to finish Miller’s work, or you could queue up some of your own.”

“Without the tower?” Britt pondered the shard.

“You could use the side station.” I said. “Or, hell, you could fix the tower. You didn’t fry the processors, just some of the circuitry. A few spare parts and a coat of paint, and she’s as good as new.”

“And just as useless. I had to wipe the operating system, remember? How many months did it take our top guys to customize that thing before it reached its full potential? Working with just the two of us, with the blunt instruments we’d be forced to work with, it would take us years.” His screen showed both him and the girl, each slaved to the lesser console, aging noticeably as they tried to replicate the code.

I folded my hands. There was another glitch in his holo, where a handful of frames showed my arm extended, reaching for another drink, then back to clasped, with no transition in between. “Point is,” I said, “it doesn’t have to be the end. You don’t have to hang it up. You never know what might happen if you just keep fighting.” I moved my hand towards my mouth in a way that could have been a sip of liquor, could have been a touch on my cheek. It was eerie, watching myself on the screen this way, not always knowing what I was doing, and having no idea why. “Like you said, some will adapt. Some will survive.”

“Maybe,” Britt whispered. He held up a hand, palm outward, in a stigmata pose. “But I ain’t one of them.” His hand shook. Blood gushed from the vein he had opened. I’d been so engrossed watching myself on his holo that I hadn’t even seen it happen.

“Oh, Britt…”

“I’m sorry,” he let his hand fall to his side. Blood squirted from his wounds as they dropped below his heart. The glass had been a faulty tool. The cut it made had not been clean, but rather a staccato series of gouges that played back and forth across the vein. As a result, the blood didn’t sheet like I’d imagined. It sprayed as from a leaky hose. “I’m sorry for the mess we’ve made. I’m sorry we all let you down. And I’m sorry for…this,” he gestured with his bleeding wrist. “It’s a coward’s move, I know that. So call me a coward if you must. I just…I just couldn’t…” he trailed off, and the image of Miller flashed again.

“I know,” I whispered. “It’s okay.”

Neither of us had much to say as blood gathered on the floor. It spread at a steady rate, forming the now familiar shape that also lay before my feet. The color drained from Britt’s face. His motions shortened, weakened and slowed. He reached down with his uncut arm and tried to help things along, but collapsed after a couple of squeezes, lacking even that much strength.

“Hey,” he mumbled, as the last of his alertness waned, “you remember that weekend we spent…in the Maldives, eight or nine years ago? When we were…blowing off some steam after…after that month we spent in lockdown…when we were…getting our clearance?” He was struggling to stay awake at this point. His eyes would close for a second, and roll senselessly in their sockets as they detached from the waking world, then fly back open as he thought of something he wanted to say. His lids were twitching from the strain.

“You mean at that beach resort? When we found out that ladies’ volleyball circuit was staying in the next wing over?”

“Yeah…” Britt smiled. He licked his lips and swallowed. Not without effort. “And…you know how some folks believe…that the thoughts you’re thinking as you die…they define your afterlife?”

I nodded.

“Well?” he croaked. “Little help?”

Ha, I thought. Same old Britt. I almost smiled.

“Sure.”

The background filled with images of tanned bodies in bikinis laughing and playing around in the sand. If they were just a little curvier than they’d been in real life, just a teensy bit leaner and a touch more toned, well, I wasn’t going to say a word.

“Thanks.”

He slid deeper into his chair. His breathing shallowed, and his pulse began to fade. The blood from his wrist slowed to a trickle. His eyes closed again.

This time, they did not re-open.