What could be accomplished in understanding the miraculous in the everyday if we could truly see the hidden underpinnings of the world. Whether through truly immersive virtual reality or other method. Whatever the process to that end, however you were changed or contaminated or released or mutated or entangled … Afterward, you’d walk down your street and everything would be identical to what you’d see with your own eyes … except you’d also see the chemical signals in the air from beetles and plants, pheromone trails laid down by ants, and every other bit of the natural world’s communications invisible to our primitive five senses. You’d also see every trace of pesticide and runoff and carcinogens and other human-made intercessions on the landscape. It would be overwhelming at first.

But once you got used to it, you’d look at the ground and it’d open up its layers, past topsoil and earthworms, down into the “deeper epidermis,” so to speak, until you’re overcoming a sense of vertigo, because even though you’re standing right there, not falling at all, below you everything is revealing itself to you superfast. And maybe then, while still staring at the ground, even more would open up to you and you’d regress to the same spot five years, ten years, fifty years, two hundred years ago … until when you look up again there’s no street at all and you’re in the middle of a forest and there are more birds and animals than you could ever imagine because you’ve never seen that many in one place. You’ve never even seen this many old-growth trees before. You’ve never known that the world was once like this except in the abstract.

That sounded like Silvina, and the onrushing truth of that made me light-headed. Like I’d gone from being cold to hot, hot, hot. I knew, in that moment, that this place had meant something real to her. I knew this was her place, once upon a time.

A shame, then. How so little else lived here. The smell and how gutted it looked, with most of the stools gone. Dust coated everything. At the far end of this space, a doorway and a sign that just read “Organic Mechanic.”

After a time, I walked through the doorway.

[57]

Once, Shot had an aquarium that somehow reminded him of his navy days. Sometimes old friends we didn’t know would visit him and his behavior would be contrite, all right, and we knew we had nothing to fear. They’d hang out in his rooms, drinking until dawn. A low, muffled murmur and scattered laughter. A part of his life we weren’t allowed to know. But we didn’t want to know. Shot stood up straighter when they visited, had this look in his eye like he was a hero. I especially didn’t want to know what he thought a hero was.