Duncan began to mutter to himself. It was a habit he’d developed in the years after the war. It did not endear him to many people.

“But I’ve finally gotten it right,” he said. “I’ve finally documented all of it.”

Sirin had let me read some of the manuscript in his office. It was riddled through with strange symbols, strange characters. It contained much that was personal to Duncan’s life. It rambled. It made sense only in spurts. I felt, reading it, that several different people had collaborated to write it, only two or three of whom were sane or had consulted with the other writers. (I agree. It was a bad time. I could not control my shape. I could not get my bearings. Keeping myself cooped up in that room, working on the essay, I let other parts of me infiltrate the text with their opinions. From hour to hour, my body changed, making it hard to concentrate on my task. In the end, it all seemed right to me, but there were so many of me then.)

Duncan frowned and looked away (to hide a mushroom blossoming on my cheek). “So he doesn’t want it.”

“Duncan,” I said, “I’m not sure even AFTOIS will want it. It doesn’t make all that much sense.”

Duncan stood, pasted a smile onto his face, kept to the darkness.

“What about you, Janice?” he said. “You could edit it. You could give Sirin what he wants. At least some of what he wants. And I’ll save the rest for something else.”

This response shocked me. The old Duncan—or at least a Duncan who wasn’t this vulnerable—would have taken his manuscript back from Sirin. But I remember making excuses for Duncan as I stood there. The times had passed us by. Duncan needed money to pay for his tiny apartment and his space at the Spore, so we had to take what we could get. But I never really understood why he didn’t fight for himself more, why he gave in so easily. I’m not sure I ever will. (Because, Janice, I was becoming what I believed in. I was becoming it. And it might have been strange and unknown, never to be recognized, but it meant more to me than words on a page by then.)

“I can try,” I said.

“Thanks! Thanks,” he said, so pathetically grateful he even gave me a hug. “That’ll work out fine then. Go tell Sirin,” he said. “Go tell Sirin. Make Sirin happy.” (I needed you to leave. I was getting ready to change again, and sometimes now when I changed, I would assimilate things around me.) So I went to tell Sirin.

What had taken Duncan two months to write took me three days to edit. I simply discarded anything that didn’t make sense and tried to keep anything that hinted of a chronological history. Duncan read over the result mournfully, added a few more footnotes, changed some of my line edits, and gave me his approval in such an offhand way that I was even madder at him for the ease with which he had given up.